Please accept my candidacy for election to the technical committee.

Election season is both a time of intense activity as well as (hopefully) a time
to self-evaluate and commit or recommit to a personal vision of OpenStack.
OpenStack is exactly as we define it and I hope many folks are taking a bit of
time to consider their vision as well as the meaning of one's personal work and
efforts in that vision.

I'd like to share some of my vision as well as what I find meaningful in my
daily activities.

Vision: creating cloud software that our users can use
That's a paraphrase of the OpenStack mission statement (both in its present form
and in the form that is undergoing amendment currently). The vision that gets me
up everyday (or middle of the night if it is Tuesday and I'm chairing a third
party meeting) is that I'm engaged in creating software that makes clouds and
that our users are using. Now many of my activities may seem far removed from
the creation of software parts some days but that is the motivation that drives
my actions.

Some of my daily activities: answering questions in -infra, helping folks debug
logs, reviewing project-config patches and discussing design of project-config
related concerns, attending weekly meetings of other teams, chairing two third
party meetings per week

That might not seem like much, and I used to be able to do more things that I
could list, but some days it is all I can do to read backscroll and keep up
with the conversation in channel at the same time. Our incredible growth has put
us in a position of having to be in fire-fighting mode in what used to be a few
times per release, to being in fire fighting mode once a week, to being in
fire fighting mode all the time. I'm concerned that our wonderful, incredible
growth as an entity is causing some teams to not have the time they need to
communicate with each other.

I'll add in here a quote I came across the other day from Viktor Frankl,
Austrian psychiatrist:
"Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story
and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole
phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in
danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of
responsibleness." Now Viktor goes on to say he thinks the United States should
build another statue, I'm not going to hold my breath on that but I do agree
with Viktor in as much as the portion I have quoted here.

I think we as a community need to start taking a look at our responsibilities,
to ourselves as people, to our co-workers and team members and to others in
the community as well. Businesses don't decide how we treat each other, only we
can decide that. We are putting an awful lot of pressure on each other and we
don't seem to be allowing for a pause.

Folks who are able to be effective in these circumstances have all undertaken
personal choices about how much input they can address at any given time. Yes
we need new contributors and those willing to teach and mentor them are
appreciated for their actions, but we also need to start valuing each other
again on a daily basis, some days for just continuing to show up and do our best.

Good jazz musicians know the basic patterns of jazz but the most important
quality they have is to listen. To play with the intent of pausing and letting
someone else take centrestage for 8 or 16 bars, then taking a turn themselves.
Jazz works because of the ability to pause and listen. I'm concerned we as a
 group have lost our ability to pause, and by extension to listen.

I don't have solutions, I do have some observations. I also am effective at
leading and moderating discussions. Any solution our group finds needs to come
from the group. It is hard to have a group discussion any more, we have moved
to talking points in order to get things done and that is sad for me to
witness, as I see listening as a group as a strength. I also consider
solutions coming from the group as a strength as well.

One last point I will make is that operators are becoming more effective at
communicating their needs, to each other and also to developers. I think
there are some good structures in place to foster that communication and I
see that as a huge benefit to OpenStack.

Thanks for reading.

Please read all the candidate platforms and please vote.

Anita Kuno. (anteaya)