Open Stack

Hello everyone,

I am hereby announcing my candidacy for a renewed position on the
OpenStack Technical Committee (TC).

I have been following the OpenStack ecosystem since Kilo.
I went through multiple companies and wore multiple hats (A cloud end-
user, an OpenStack advocate in meetups and at FOSDEM, a product owner
of the cloud strategy, architect of a community cloud, a deployer, a
developer, a team lead, a technology analyst), which gives me a unique
view on OpenStack and other adjacent communities. I am now working full
time on OpenStack for SUSE.

During my time at the TC, I worked on refactoring the TC health check
process, worked on community goals selection, and worked on different
TC activities to help both the community and my company.

During my first term, I have experienced or seen pain in the OpenStack
processes: project health checks, community goals, release name
selection are just a series of examples. I "learnt the ropes" during
that first year, but I don't think the quality of life of the OpenStack
contributors has increased, which was one of my personal goals.

If I get elected, I want to change the TC from the inside, and through
that, change OpenStack. These are not just changes I can drive from the
outside as they involve mindset changes. Without further ado, here are
a few of my crazy ideas.

First, I want to make the TC a birthplace for innovation, instead of
being so process oriented. I have the impression our processes dulled
innovation. I want to remove processes, name conventions, and just
allow people to propose ideas (if possible, the wildest and craziest
ideas) to the TC. I believe this would help people feel empowered to
change OpenStack.

With the fact that we are more and more organising ourselves as teams
of specific interest, I would like the TC to issue more official
stances on how to implement OpenStack-wide changes/best-practices with
the help of field experts. That would mean issuing more "goals" for the
projects and define a roadmap more actively. (I would love to see
recommendations on using the last features of the python language to
simplify our code base for example!)

Finally, I would like us to try a new kind of periodic "leadership"
meeting. In those meetings PTLs and SIG chairs would discuss the issues
they are recently facing. That means sharing all together, being a
ground for proposing new ideas again. PTLs are too overburdened by
their work and don't have the occasion to share
experience/expertise/crazy ideas on tech debt reduction for
example. I believe this would bring people closer together.

Thank you,
Jean-Philippe (evrardjp)