Greetings everyone! Over the past few weeks I’ve been in a number of discussions regarding some of our most very fun topics. Branding, Trademarks, and Interoperability. I think this is a good time to revisit these topics because of the conversion from the OpenStack Foundation to the Open Infrastructure Foundation. The further broadening of the larger community represents both an opportunity and a checkpoint in which we should likely ask ourselves some questions to help guide our future path. I think what has made some of these discussions difficult in the past is because we intertwined the topics. To meet the perceived needs of the past, we ended up building and encoding specific models and concepts when the only project was OpenStack. We were trying to foster and develop an expansive ecosystem at that time. Then, it likely seemed logical to encode this as part of the bylaws. Except those processes have left us with something that is difficult to amend, change, or adapt moving forward. And even that seems like a daunting issue in itself, before we consider that non-openstack projects have different needs. This does not mean we can not nor should not ask ourselves what is important. We must identify where we want to see things in the future for such programs. If we don’t identify these things, then we can not measure future success nor possibly identify new needs. Besides, who else is better suited to lead projects to become more agile and responsive to emergent needs if not the board itself? So with those thoughts in mind, I would like for us to all mentally take a step back and try to answer some basic questions to help frame future discussion. * Where do we see the value in the trademark and associated branding? What is important? What is less important? * How do we see branding and trademarks evolving now that the foundation scope has expanded? * What is the desired end goal of trademark and branding programs? Are there multiple specific end goals? And then there is the topic of interoperability. Looking forward it seems like there is more than one level of interoperability that needs to be thought of and cared about. * At what level should we, the board, encourage cross-community/cross-project/product/service interoperability? * What is the end goal of interoperability in our evolved scope? * Is the board the right level at which to have the discussions and ultimately the technical management of the fine details regarding interoperability? I’m posing the last question for a very important reason. Our scope has widened. We have zoomed out. The bigger picture is our focus as the board. The lower level details of any project’s interoperability do require fine details and specific context. To unfortunately use another photography analogy, the repeated zoom in and zoom out does not help us keep our focus on the bigger picture. As a board, we need to track the picture consistently and constantly, which is the only way we can best frame our discussions and resulting outcomes. I hope this email brings about discussion on these topics. Not necessarily a discussion of how or what, but more of a discussion of means to unlock and enable. Thanks, -Julia