Open Stack

confirmed

On 07/10/14 10:06 PM, Adam Lawson wrote:
> Hello everyone!
> 
> I'll be perfectly straight and dedicate paragraph #1 to address the
> painfully obvious. A number of you are probably reading this after seeing
> 'TC Candidacy', looked at my name and wondered 'who is this guy?' In short,
> I'm pretty low-key but I've been heavily involved in Openstack since the
> Folsom release - advising, architecting and deploying Openstack-based
> application clouds for numerous companies and end users. I'm probably a lot
> like many of you in fact; not the loudest or most witty voice in the room,
> I read more than I write, I don't bully ideas and I've never run for
> anything in my life because I hate the spotlight. But the importance of
> Openstack in the cloud marketplace is increasingly important as is the
> integrity of its technical direction. So I'm going to step on a limb here
> and enter the circle.
> 
> My involvement has been primarily focused on large designs and deployments
> of custom automated Openstack clouds. And while I am more than proficient
> in Python and numerous other languages including .NET/J2EE and others, my
> greatest pleasure has been architecting solutions that are powered by
> Openstack. Focusing on that has really given me a unique perspective. Not
> just on individual components and how they interact with each other, but
> also how they collectively perform within the context of a heterogenous
> hybrid cloud solution while adhering to industry best practices. This
> perspective is one that I hope to bring to the technical committee if the
> Openstack community is so inclined. Not only to shepherd how Openstack is
> put together but to help enable an easier and more seamless adoption cycle
> within the enterprise.
> 
> Lastly in the spirit of full disclosure, I am the principal architect for
> an Openstack consulting company I founded which strives for an accelerated
> enterprise adoption of the open cloud through, in part, the successes of
> Openstack. So one could say I am vested in Openstack in a pretty unique way
> compared to most others. So where technical direction is concerned, I
> believe I have a deep well of experience from which to draw via designing
> and developing production Openstack clouds in the real world - day in and
> day out - which I believe would be of immense value to the TC and the
> community supporting the project itself.
> 
> I know there are some really smart people who want to also serve on the TC
> with focuses on various areas of Openstack and thankfully the committee was
> designed to accommodate multiple unique perspectives for that very reason.
> My hope is that the community chooses to include my program-agnostic
> architectural influence to the TC while maintaining the same work ethic and
> unyielding commitment to efforts that will deliver excellence to and within
> the Openstack platform.
> 
> So without any further adieu, below are my thoughts re the requested
> questions and thanks for your consideration!
> 
> *"My name is Adam Lawson, running for election to the Openstack Technical
> Committee, and I approve this message."* ; )
> 
> *Topic: OpenStack Mission*
> *How do you feel the technical community is doing in meeting the OpenStack
> Mission?*
> 
> *“To produce the ubiquitous Open Source Cloud Computing platform that will
> meet the needs of public and private clouds regardless of size, by being
> simple to implement and massively scalable.”*
> 
> The whole point of mission statements is merely to identify what we are
> striving to achieve or accomplish within the organization. With that said,
> I feel that technical leadership is the first step to accomplishing a
> technical goal. So to that end, the existence of the TC is a positive first
> step. But it's just one step or many more to come.
>  Within this particular TC cycle, I'd like to see the TC demonstrate
> leadership to drive a reduction of lingering technical debt and address API
> and module standardization. Openstack in its current form has a number of
> challenges that are affecting our ability to scale and while some of this
> can be solved organizationally, technical debt and standardization are
> challenges that will not be easy to resolve and might not even be 100
> percent solvable within a single release cycle. But I look forward to how
> the TC *will* shepherd improvements to both process and the product and
> help drive the mission.
>  On a side note, "easy to implement" is still just a goal and the
> engineering requirement to deploy and manage Openstack is still a
> prohibitive hurdle for many organizations. But we have more than one tool
> in front of us that will help us to help others who want to use Openstack
> but .. can't. That's something I'd really like to see change soon.
> 
> *Topic: Contributor Motivation*
> *How would you characterize the various facets of contributor motivation?*
>  I like what I read earlier today: "People want to do work that matters and
> enjoy doing it." This sums up Openstack contributors very well but it sums
> up a lot of us too though, doesn't it.
>  Many of us are lucky enough to be able to work on Openstack full-time as a
> job. There are many others who work with Openstack in the context of
> Consumers, Users, Operators, Solutions Architects where it is not their
> full-time job but they participate with the Openstack community because of
> other reasons. Whatever the reason (philanthropy, my good looks), folks
> want to work on what matters and if it doesn't matter, there is no
> motivation to continue.
>  - I see friendly interactions within the community even when we disagree.
> That's motivating.
> - I see members within the Openstack community soliciting and offering help
> to each other - even between companies who could technically be called
> competitors. That's motivating.
> - I see the same people who earn a living on selling and supporting
> proprietary deployments of Openstack offering their assistance and
> perspectives to those who are not using their product and possibly never
> will. That's motivating.
>  The culture developed and nurtured by the Openstack community is nothing
> short of admirable and from someone who is socially-driven (despite my
> little shell), I have to say that so long as the TC adheres to and advances
> this culture, motivation will be easy to find for those who desire to get
> engaged.
>  For those who need a little help, I think the Upstream University is
> another place to encourage new contributors and get them motivated through
> empowerment via learning/knowledge and the satisfaction of watching their
> hard work being used and consumed by countless companies and individuals.
> *Topic: Rate of Growth*
> *There is no argument the OpenStack technical community has a substantial
> rate of growth. What are some of the consequences of this rate?*
>  I believe Openstack is on the cusp of experiencing growth pains like it
> never has before. I don't think we've even touched on what those pains will
> look like when we hit some of our long-term adoption goals/milestones. But
> pain drives change and change that drives improvement is good. So we can
> all tell change is on the horizon.
>  One of the consequences of rapid growth can be disproportionality between
> different areas of the Openstack and its community. Code might get ahead of
> docs, the need for process might get ahead of the definition of those
> processes and scale requirements might reveal all of those unsightly warts
> we've been content to ignore for the last year.
>  I don't see growth as having consequences per se. Without wanting to sound
> cliché, I see Openstack as approaching growth-related challenges that we
> need to treat as real opportunities. So long as we focus on the task at
> hand and not lose sight of the 'why' not allow overwhelm-ment (is that a
> word?) from affecting the measure of correction that may be needed to
> resolve a challenge, I think we'll continue  to land on our feet from cycle
> to cycle.
> 
> *Topic: New Contributor Experience*
> *How would you characterize the experience new contributors have currently?*
>  I mentioned Upstream University earlier and I think it's worth repeating
> that working on something that matters is motivating.
>  I do *not* believe however that maintaining the status quo is ever an
> acceptable approach with technical leadership as provided by the TC.
> Quirks, 'that is the way we've always done it' and 'get used to it' are
> completely unacceptable. We can't discourage change if it helps but we
> can't allow unnecessary or poorly-prioritized changes to negatively affect
> our progress on the project as whole either.
>  With that said, I'm pretty sure new contributors that are contributing to
> Openstack (more than casually) understand the dynamics around contributing
> to a high-volume open source project like Openstack. For those who do not,
> the learning curve can be pretty steep but beneficial. And we need to be
> careful not to allow the process to suffer for high performers in the name
> of inclusiveness.
>  One of my goals, if elected, will be to facilitate a superior product via
> process(es) that enables a scalable contribution pipeline for experienced
> developers - coupled with an effective onboarding process for those who are
> just getting started with Openstack's development cadence. I think the
> priority definitely needs to be where we get our biggest bang since our
> resources are obviously not unlimited but I hope that an effective
> contributor experience does a good job at accommodating both new and
> existing contributors and I hope we aren't afraid to challange the status
> quo if we're failing that goal somehow.
> *Topic: Communication*
> *How would you describe our current state of communication in the OpenStack
> community?*
>  While I think our communication overall is encouraging and moving in a
> positive direction as a whole, I think cross-project and communication
> between developers and the consumers remains to be a challenge.
> Understandable though when you have multiple mailing lists with countless
> updates and program owners and contributors who can't possibly read every
> message to se if there's something that requires their attention.
>  IRC and email tends to be our forte but I envision expanding the Operator
> Summits to include cross-project summits where brainstorming between 2-3
> programs that compliment each other (i.e, Swift/Sahara,
> TripleO/Ironic/Nova) can be *highly* beneficial. I know we already have
> mid-cycle meet-ups but this level of collaboration might even benefit from
> a dedicated design summit. No sponsors - just a place where ideas dedicated
> to the technical direction of Openstack share the spotlight. Just a thought.
> 
> *Topic: Relationship with the Foundation Board*
> *The technical committee interacts with the foundation board on several
> different fronts. How would you describe these interactions?*
>  There's a world of difference between project governance and technical
> leadership. I admittedly have not sat down with the Foundation members
> within a TC context so I couldn't speak to how it works well or not today.
> But what I can say is that I've read what the other candidates who have
> served on the TC in the poast have shared and my interpretation is that
> things seem to be a bit frosty.
>  But I've run into this before. Regardless, I think a clear definition of
> roles and responsibilities would be of value to both the Foundation and the
> TC and the relational elements that affect their ability to work together
> effectively. I'm looking forward to seeing this interaction firsthand and
> making up my own mind. But until then, onward and upward!
> 
> *Foundation:* http://www.openstack.org/community/members/profile/11026
> *IRC:* greenhorn
> *Website:* http://www.aqorn.com/about
> 
> Mahalo,
> Adam
> 
> *Adam Lawson*
> 
> AQORN, Inc.
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> 
> 
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