Happy Birthday OpenStack from SF Bay Area Open Infra

I love birthday celebrations! They’re so full of joy and reminiscing of years gone by. Discussions of “I knew her when” or “Remember when he… ?” They have a tendency to bring separate communities of people together in unique and fun ways. And we all know how passionate I am about communities…

So when Rain Leander suggested that I attend the SF Bay Area celebration of OpenStack’s 8th birthday as one of my last tasks as interim community lead for RDO, I jumped at the chance! Celebrating a birthday AND getting to know this community better, as well as reuniting with friends I already knew? Sign me up!

I arrived at the event in time to listen to a thought-provoking panel led by Lisa-Marie Namphy, Developer Advocate, community architect, and open source software specialist at Portworx. She spoke with Michael Richmond (NIO), Tony Campbell (Red Hat) and Robert Starmer (Kumulus Tech) about Kubernetes in the Real World.

Lew Tucker, CTO of Cisco, spoke next, and said one of my favorite quotes of the night:

Cloud computing has won… and it’s multiple clouds.

My brain instantly jumped to wondering about the impact that community has had on the fact that it’s not a particular company that has won in this new stage of technology, but a concept.

Dinner and mingling with OpenStack community friends new and old was up next, followed by an awesome recap of how the OpenStack community has grown over the last 8 years.

While 8 years in the grand scheme of history doesn’t seem like much, in the Open Source world, it’s a big accomplishment. The fact that OpenStack is up to 89,000+ community members in 182 countries and supported by 672 organizations is a huge feat and one that deserves to be celebrated!

Speaking of celebrating… we at RDO express our appreciation and love for community through sharing food (Rocky Road ice cream, anyone?) and this celebration was no exception. We provided the best (and cutest) mini cupcakes that I’ve ever had. The Oreo cupcake with cookie frosting gets two thumbs up in my book!

The night ended with smiles and promises of another great year to come.

Here’s to the next 8 years of fostering and building communities, moving the industry forward, and enjoying the general awesomeness that is OpenStack.

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