Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. :) Of course, this should be continued. This is probably the very few chances that grassroots interactions still happen with OpenStack community, as it stands now. In our part of the world (I coordinate for PH and attend ASEAN/APAC events whenever I can), adoption momentum and awareness is very, very difficult to build. Maturity of market is probably one aspect. Resources is another. 1) Those who can support directly are vendors (appliances / etc) that cater to mostly a handful of capable enterprises some of whom are still struggling with Diablo/Essex/Folsom due to 'certified' infra hw as provided by some vendors; 2) With other behemoths throwing money and attention and people on a more regular basis, this 1x a year is surely the most minimal that OpenStack community can have globally. E.g. monthly or bi-monthly lunch&learn by AWS happens in hotels attended by 80-120 people. Not trying to compete, but surely can't just let them have all the attention. 3) Success stories always begins with the innovators, then other adopter levels come in. Bridging the chasm in our region needs way more support. Chick'n-Egg, as always. No Market, No Major Support. No Major Support, No Market. In short, go go go. But smarter, less rigid, more supportive, more support (although cash helps a lot, ship official materials (not just swags but probably reference materials, I know --- internet --- but the best people who can trigger faster awareness still reads them books =D) we can distribute not just on parties but regularly in other related events/workshops (python, API integration, Hybrid Cloud events, etc) ... I went to a recent cloud expo in Asia. I was the only one speaking of OpenStack directly in a sea of talk about containers and AWS and hybrid and abstracted OpenStack service providers and etc etc etc... Not one word of OpenStack... Suddenly missed attending OpenStack summits then... Cheers, Dean Marc On mobile >>> On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 11:05 PM, Kendall Waters <kendall@openstack.org> wrote:
Hi everyone,
For the past few years, the Foundation has contributed funding & graphics for "birthday parties" organized by official user groups around the world. It's something we have celebrated each year in July, and in 2015 we hit a pretty big milestone with the 5th birthday. We typically create and distribute graphics and a presentation, help promote the events and give qualifying groups $500 USD to supplement costs for food / space / etc.
Since we passed the 5-year milestone, we wanted to start a discussion with user group leaders and the community to see how much value you find in the birthday parties. Are they an important tradition for your local community members, or should we redirect funding and efforts to other user group activities, such as sponsoring speaker travel?
We would love your feedback - are the OpenStack birthdays something that you would like the Foundation to continue supporting?
Cheers, Kendall
PS - User group leaders should also have received communication from your local Ambassador directly about the availability of funding for special activities. If you haven't seen that yet, contact your Ambassador: https://groups.openstack.org/ambassador-program
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