I'd like to throw my hat in the ring for the TC election.

My name is Ben Swartzlander (bswartz on IRC) and I've been PTL for the Manila
project for the entire life of the project. I'm also relatively active within
the Cinder project, and I've been part of the OpenStack community since Essex.

My reasons for running for TC are fairly simple. There are some changes I'd
like to see and I think that I'll have more ability to effect change if I'm
part of the TC.

The first thing I'd like to change is that I'd like to see OpenStack start
acting more mature. It *is* fairly mature now but in many ways we still have
the habits of a shiny new project. I would like to see way less time spent on
new features and much more time spent on stability and quality improvements.

Specifically I'd like to see dramatically more automated testing of stuff we
already have. Not gate tests that run for every checkin but serious automated
nightly regression style tests that actually cover realistic use cases and
take several hours to run.

I would like to see more frequent releases. I hold up the Linux (kernel)
project as an example to emulate. Linux releases a new major release about
every 2 months. OpenStack has held to a 6 month release cycle for it's whole
life but I think we can and should move to shorter cycles. In a similar vein
I think serious effort needs to be spend on LTS (long term support) --
specifically the ability to upgrade across multiple releases without anything
breaking. The deprecation policy needs to change if we want to get this right.

I would like to see fewer new projects and more focus on existing projects and
possible integration between them. Long ago it was decided that OpenStack
should be a loose federation of related projects but many feel that OpenStack
should be a unified product. This has created a cognitive dissonance that
pervades nearly every discussion I have about architectural decisions within
OpenStack and I feel the TC owes this topic more consideration. If we decide
we're all working on a single product then we need to change the way we act.
If we affirm that we really are just working on a bunch of loosely related
things then we need to disband working groups/and cross-cutting projects that
are trying to push for uniformity.

Lastly I feel strongly about community and the Python language. I am not a
language zealot but I know from experience that adding more programming
languages to an existing project is ALWAYS WRONG and I will fight any proposal
to add more programming languages to OpenStack.

I don't expect everyone to agree with my ideas but if enough of you do, vote
me onto the TC and I'll do my best to gradually change things for the better.