Superuser TV

New York OpenStack community celebrates two 6th birthdays this year

Only blizzards stop one of the oldest user groups from getting together.

July 19, 2016
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OpenStack celebrates its 6th birthday this month. There are parties from Argentina to Vietnam, find one near you from OpenStack’s worldwide list and raise a glass.

We’re also celebrating with the OpenStack community with short interviews from around the world to offer a glimpse of OpenStack’s impact on a local level.

Superuser’s second interview features New York City User Group, which celebrated on July 13. (The first was one of the community’s newest groups – South Africa.

In addition to celebrating the OpenStack Foundation’s birthday however, they also celebrated their own 6th birthday. To celebrate both occasions, they hosted a birthday party with 50 members of their group, stickers and a cake featuring both 6th birthday and official user group logos.

In this 9-minute Superuser TV segment, Kenneth Hui, a senior technical marketing manager at Rackspace, OpenStack Foundation ambassador and OpenStack New York and Philadelphia co-organizer describes growing in conjunction with OpenStack, the challenges faced throughout the years and what he hopes to see out of OpenStack in the future.

Hui, who has been involved with of the New York City User Group for the last three years, has seen “an upshot in the number of people who are taking a look at OpenStack” during his tenure. The people involved have changed, too. "There were a lot of vendors in the beginning," he says.
"As adoption grows, we’re seeing more users."

Those shifts tailor the group’s get-togethers. After noticing an increase in the last year or so of VMware administrators joining the New York User Group, Hui offered up a talk on the history of VMware’s involvement with OpenStack.

Hui also speaks to the commitment of the user group members – whether they are completely new to OpenStack or have been in the OpenStack community for a while – in learning more about OpenStack. They meet nine-10 times a year – blizzards permitting, a few storms have shut them down – and he says that’s frequent enough for people to feel a part of the community.

As the pace of technology accelerates, so does the work of the OpenStack community.

“There are so many new technologies that are coming down the pipe every few months instead of every few years,” he says. “The [OpenStack] community as a whole needs to figure out how to help us navigate through those new technologies…and [make OpenStack] an integration engine for these new technologies.”

Hui also coordinates the Philadelphia OpenStack User Group which will celebrate OpenStack’s 6th birthday on July 28 by making custom tees.

Don’t see a local user group or birthday celebration? Get involved and learn how to start one in your local community.

Cover Photo CC/NC

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