Open Stack

I'm sending this note to signify my self-nomination to the User
Committee. I'll start with a quick introduction, as I haven't yet had
the chance to meet every single person in the OpenStack world (though
sometimes I feel like I'm getting pretty close!).

I've been involved with OpenStack since the Essex release, working as
CTO at a startup (Morphlabs) focused on making OpenStack easy to
consume. Professionally, I've been lucky to maintain an influential
presence in the OpenStack community regardless of where I've worked,
especially around community building. For example, I've organized
meetups and assisted in organizing an OpenStack Days event, and will
continue to try to bring together those who are developing, deploying
and using OpenStack.

As co-chair of the App Dev Enablement Working Group, I've had the
opportunity to work closely with some of the people trying to improve
the experience we offer folks developing applications that run on
OpenStack clouds. The experience has also shown me some of the things
we can do to dramatically improve how the user-facing side of our
community works.

As the original PTL of the Community App Catalog
(https://apps.openstack.org) I had the chance to build upon the
content and audience ever since helping launch it at the Vancouver
summit. With this cycle I'm stepping down from holding that position,
though I'll still be working very closely with the new PTL, Matthew
Wagoner. Most importantly, that project has acted as a great starting
point for new users of OpenStack clouds, which has influenced my
perspective and keeps me thinking about what it means to use an
OpenStack cloud when you're not the person who deployed it in the
first place.

The User Committee was created as a way to represent the needs of the
diverse range of OpenStack users. The challenge, however, is that the
committee has not scaled as quickly as the rest of OpenStack. I was
very excited to hear talk of expanding the UC during the Austin
summit, and to see it take final shape in Barcelona. (Thanks a ton to
Shilla, Jon and Edgar for providing such excellent leadership and
having the foresight to grow the committee.)

One of the most important things I believe I can help with is
improving the bridge between the UC and the developer committee. We
have seen a lot of growth in the working groups over the last year.
They seem to lack clear lines of communication between their groups
and the developers, and to many there is still a sense that the
working groups exist just to make lists of things for developers to
do. We don't have to look very far to see conversations that highlight
the disconnect I'm talking about [1][2], where the cross-posting
between mailing lists leads to two threads on the same subject with
different audiences.

Having spent the bulk of my time in the OpenStack world on the
developer side, I believe I can help facilitate a better conversation
across all parties in our distributed community and build a more
functional bridge between the users and the developers.

Improving the coordination and feedback loop between the folks
committing code and the folks identifying real-world needs is critical
to ensure the success and long term viability of OpenStack. Keeping
tight integration across all components for a project of this scope
without a "benevolent dictator" is an incredible challenge. It's one
reason many other open source foundations are watching us closely—to
see if it's actually possible to encourage innovation and contribution
without losing focus on the core mission. To date we have seen amazing
dedication and leadership displayed by the Technical Committee in
service of this goal; I will do everything in my power to ensure the
User Committee provides guidance with equal impact and utility.

We also have a communication problem between the various working
groups, though there have been some great efforts in the last few
months to resolve those issues. The biggest thing missing is crystal
clear guidance around putting together and operating a working group,
especially around communicating and coordinating with other groups.
Similar to the guidance provided from the TC on starting a new
OpenStack project, we can provide clear steps to follow and define a
framework specifying what outputs should look like and how individual
working groups can define how they will measure success.

Regardless of whether I'm elected to the User Committee, I will be
working on these issues, as well as those we're discussing in the App
Dev Enablement WG (and probably all the other random things that are
always coming up - I have trouble saying no when I think I can help!).
Professionally, I've got complete support for these efforts from my
employer (IBM), not to serve as a voice for my organization but to
serve as a voice for the users. Personally (as a user myself), I care
an awful lot about OpenStack and I think serving on the User Committee
is an ideal opportunity for me. I'm excited at the prospect, and hope
I win your vote!

[1]: http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2017-February/111511.html
[2]: http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/user-committee/2017-February/001638.html

-Christopher