How a small team can deliver big impact with OpenStack, foodie picks for the Vancouver Summit and whether is cloud computing is the next mass-market car industry…

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Here’s the news from the OpenStack world you won’t want to miss — the musings, polemics and questions posed by the larger community.

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In Case You Missed It

Ahead of the Amazon earnings call, The Economist took a peek at the cloud computing industry. In its opinion, cloud providers run the risk of ending up "somewhat like airlines and mass-market carmakers: chronically afflicted by overcapacity, constantly struggling to achieve a decent margin and perennially hoping that their competitors will keel over first." It’s always interesting to read 30,000 foot-view of a mainstream weekly (this is, at best, what your relatives will know about what you do all day) and don’t miss the comments section.

Think big is always better? Think again. Mercado Libre’s 14-person team handles one of the world’s largest e-commerce sites, thanks to OpenStack. More about how they do it — and the challenges of finding those stellar team members — on Computing, free registration required.

Ed Leafe, OpenStack hacker at IBM, spent some time manning the OpenStack booth at the recent PyCon. His experience, recounted on his personal blog, will ring true for anyone who’s been on the front lines.

"Some had heard the name, but not much else. Others knew it was “cloud something,” but weren’t sure what that something was. Others had installed and played around with it, and had very specific configuration questions. Many people, even those familiar with what OpenStack was, were surprised to learn that it is written entirely in Python, and that it is by far the largest Python project today. It was great to be able to talk to so many different people and share what the OpenStack community is all about."

Speaking of community, Citrix joined the OpenStack Foundation as a corporate sponsor this week. The press release features welcome aboard messages from fellow members at Cisco, Intel, Mirantis and Rackspace.

Veteran IT journalist Mike Vizard at Talkin’ Cloud had this to say about the Foundation’s newest member: "If nothing else, having Citrix contributing to the OpenStack Foundation should considerably reduce a level of noise in the open source community that for all intents and purposes at this point has become little more than a distraction."

Wondering what’s up with open virtual networks (OVN)? Russell Bryant, Red Hat software engineer and individual director at OpenStack, has an OVN status update ready for you.


Diane Mueller, who lives near Vancouver, will be sharing her tips for discovering the best in eats, drinks and activities city in Superuser’s special Summit print edition….Until then, check these out:

https://twitter.com/hyakuhei/status/591545840478593024

https://twitter.com/juldanjou/status/590535621145452544

https://twitter.com/dbpercona/status/591622819999391744

https://twitter.com/mestery/status/590885522484113408

https://twitter.com/sdague/status/590664853066506242

https://twitter.com/juldanjou/status/589055511246589952

We feature user conversations throughout the week, so tweet, blog, or email us your thoughts!

Cover Photo by Gerry Balding // CC BY NC