Dear OpenStack,
Tomorrow will be my final day working at StackHPC before I move to a new role outside of the OpenStack community.
My journey with OpenStack began at Cray 10 years ago, trying to coerce a very fresh Ironic project into managing a rack of PCs and resulting in the SNMP power driver [1]. Since then I moved to StackHPC where I've deployed and maintained many OpenStack systems of different sizes, generally with an element of High Performance Computing (HPC).
I've been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to get involved in upstream OpenStack development. Over time I grew from contributor to Kolla & Ironic core to Kolla PTL for 5 cycles. I attended several summits and PTGs, and this really helped in working out how to navigate and get more involved in the community. More recently I have been more focussed on downstream than upstream work, but still marvel at the way so many people around the world come together to volunteer their time and effort to build complex software ecosystems.
I'd like to thank everyone in this community who has helped me over the years. It really is a special place.
To anyone standing on the sidelines wondering how to get more involved - speak up on IRC, join the PTG, triage bugs, review some code. It doesn't need to take up too much of your time. If you're like me you'll feel self-conscious at first, and unsure about the value you're providing. But keep at it, and over time you'll become an important part of the community.
All the best,
Mark