80 lines
4.3 KiB
Plaintext
80 lines
4.3 KiB
Plaintext
Please accept my candidacy for election to the technical committee.
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Election season is both a time of intense activity as well as (hopefully) a time
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to self-evaluate and commit or recommit to a personal vision of OpenStack.
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OpenStack is exactly as we define it and I hope many folks are taking a bit of
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time to consider their vision as well as the meaning of one's personal work and
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efforts in that vision.
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I'd like to share some of my vision as well as what I find meaningful in my
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daily activities.
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Vision: creating cloud software that our users can use
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That's a paraphrase of the OpenStack mission statement (both in its present form
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and in the form that is undergoing amendment currently). The vision that gets me
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up everyday (or middle of the night if it is Tuesday and I'm chairing a third
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party meeting) is that I'm engaged in creating software that makes clouds and
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that our users are using. Now many of my activities may seem far removed from
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the creation of software parts some days but that is the motivation that drives
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my actions.
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Some of my daily activities: answering questions in -infra, helping folks debug
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logs, reviewing project-config patches and discussing design of project-config
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related concerns, attending weekly meetings of other teams, chairing two third
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party meetings per week
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That might not seem like much, and I used to be able to do more things that I
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could list, but some days it is all I can do to read backscroll and keep up
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with the conversation in channel at the same time. Our incredible growth has put
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us in a position of having to be in fire-fighting mode in what used to be a few
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times per release, to being in fire fighting mode once a week, to being in
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fire fighting mode all the time. I'm concerned that our wonderful, incredible
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growth as an entity is causing some teams to not have the time they need to
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communicate with each other.
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I'll add in here a quote I came across the other day from Viktor Frankl,
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Austrian psychiatrist:
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"Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story
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and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole
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phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in
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danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of
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responsibleness." Now Viktor goes on to say he thinks the United States should
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build another statue, I'm not going to hold my breath on that but I do agree
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with Viktor in as much as the portion I have quoted here.
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I think we as a community need to start taking a look at our responsibilities,
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to ourselves as people, to our co-workers and team members and to others in
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the community as well. Businesses don't decide how we treat each other, only we
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can decide that. We are putting an awful lot of pressure on each other and we
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don't seem to be allowing for a pause.
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Folks who are able to be effective in these circumstances have all undertaken
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personal choices about how much input they can address at any given time. Yes
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we need new contributors and those willing to teach and mentor them are
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appreciated for their actions, but we also need to start valuing each other
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again on a daily basis, some days for just continuing to show up and do our best.
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Good jazz musicians know the basic patterns of jazz but the most important
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quality they have is to listen. To play with the intent of pausing and letting
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someone else take centrestage for 8 or 16 bars, then taking a turn themselves.
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Jazz works because of the ability to pause and listen. I'm concerned we as a
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group have lost our ability to pause, and by extension to listen.
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I don't have solutions, I do have some observations. I also am effective at
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leading and moderating discussions. Any solution our group finds needs to come
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from the group. It is hard to have a group discussion any more, we have moved
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to talking points in order to get things done and that is sad for me to
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witness, as I see listening as a group as a strength. I also consider
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solutions coming from the group as a strength as well.
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One last point I will make is that operators are becoming more effective at
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communicating their needs, to each other and also to developers. I think
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there are some good structures in place to foster that communication and I
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see that as a huge benefit to OpenStack.
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Thanks for reading.
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Please read all the candidate platforms and please vote.
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Anita Kuno. (anteaya)
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