Note: OpenStack voting is limited to community members – if you registered by the deadline, you will receive your unique ballot by email.  You have 8 votes to distribute as you see fit.

I believe open infrastructure software is essential for our IT future.  

Open source has been a critical platform for innovation and creating commercial value for our entire industry; however, we have to deliberately foster communities for open source activities that connect creators, users and sponsors.  OpenStack has built exactly that for people interested in infrastructure and that is why I am excited to run for the Foundation Board again.

OpenStack is at a critical juncture in transitioning from a code focus to a community focus.  

We must allow the OpenStack code to consolidate around a simple mission while the community explores adjacent spaces.  It will be a confusing and challenging transition because we’ll have to create new spaces that leave part of the code behind – what we’d call the Innovator’s Dilemma inside of a single company.  And, I don’t think OpenStack has a lot of time to figure this out.

That change requires both strong and collaborative leadership by people who know the community but are not too immersed in the code.

I am seeking community support for my return to the OpenStack Foundation Board.  In the two years since I was on the board, I’ve worked in the Kubernetes community to support operators.  While on the board, I fought hard to deliver testable interoperability (DefCore) and against expanding the project focus (Big Tent).  As a start-up and open source founder, I bring a critical commercial balance to a community that is too easily dominated by large vendor interests.

Re-elected or not, I’m a committed member of the OpenStack community who is enthusiastically supporting the new initiatives by the Foundation.  I believe strongly that our industry needs to sponsor and support open infrastructure.  I also believe that dominate place for OpenStack IaaS code has changed and we also need to focus those efforts to be highly collaborative.

OpenStack cannot keep starting with “use our code” – we have to start with “let’s understand the challenges.”  That’s how we’ll keep building an strong open infrastructure community.

If these ideas resonate with you, then please consider supporting me for the OpenStack board.  If they don’t, please vote anyway!  There are great candidates on the ballot again and voting supports the community.