Open Stack

All-

I'd like to announce my candidacy to continue serving on the Technical Committee.


Platform
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OpenStack is one community comprised of many parts and we must view ourselves as one unit. As a TC member, I will continue to place the interests of the larger community over those of those of individual projects.

There are several key areas I'd like to see the TC focus on:

Development
	The Technical Committee should serve as a high level forum to facilitate defining cross project technical and procedural requirements. While many of our programs share commonalities, there are still differences in policies and technical decisions. The TC should continue its work to build consensus and reduce the differences between the projects so the community can function as one body.  

Cross Project Communication
	Cross project communication is essential to maintaining a unified stable OpenStack release.  When serving as PTL, I worked to facilitate a mid-cycle meetup specifically designed to increase interaction between QA and Networking teams.  I believe the TC should promote similar cross-project initiatives where deep collaboration enhances the unity of our community.

Process
	A recurring theme during the most recent term of the TC has been the refinement of our program and project maturation process. The committee needs to continue this work as it clarifies and strengthens the criteria used to determine the kind of projects and programs that fit within the scope of integrated releases and how they move through the progression of incubation to graduation.  The growth of our community project ecosystem is very exciting, but we’re currently limited in our ability to scale the number of incubated projects.  The TC should examine how we can better scale the number of incubated projects while ensuring a successful integration into the release process.

Unified Experience
	For OpenStack to be successful we must strive to provide a unified experience for both users and deployers.  Users want tools that are well documented and easy to use. The documentation and tools must be portable across deployments (both public and private) so that users do not need to concern themselves with the implementation details. At the same time, deployers should be able to upgrade between releases and maintain a known level of compatibility. Our community has invested significant effort to improve this experience and this should remain a focus going forward.


About Me
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I am currently a member of the Technical Committee and a former PTL. Believing that OpenStack is a unified community, I have contributed code and reviews to nearly all of our integrated projects since my first contribution during the Essex cycle. I believe that cross project contributions are essential to foster collaboration and sharing of ideas within our community. I'm a member of the Stable Release Team and the Requirements Team. My work on both teams provides a cross project view of our community with an eye towards stability and consistency.  Outside of development, I travel extensively to advocate and educate on OpenStack and interact with our community of developers, deployers and users.

We have built a very special open community through the contributions of many.  These contributions have powered our phenomenal growth and I'm excited about our future!

Thanks,
mark