Today we launch our Aptira blog. I find any sort of public comment very difficult to write, so much so that often I write a post to a forum or similar and spend ages on it, then only to delete it at the last minute and become annoyed by how I could have spent the time doing something else. So I approach this first post with trepidation, feeling that without making some kind of a good opening, I’ll be reticent to continue to post if I feel this is lacklustre. Gotta start somewhere – here goes…
There’s 2 things I wanted to mention in this first post, firstly a retrospective on the fantastic trip Phil, Kat and I took to the OpenStack Conference a few weeks ago, and secondly a mention of the talented and interesting people we are meeting through the Australian OpenStack User Group.
Back in late April we jetted off to San Francisco to attend the OpenStack conference. It was by far the best conference I’ve attended in almost 25 years of IT work. Never before have I been to meet a group of people that were so inspiring, so passionate, and so welcoming. Phil and I had the opportunity to present early on the Friday on the topics of the Australian User Group, data sovereignty and cloud in Australia, and an idea Phil had come up with called Storage for Life. We didn’t get a huge attendance, but we must have had some impact because we had people coming to find us all that day, and beyond, to ask about it. Later that same morning I sat on a panel with Stefano Maffulli and some of our OpenStack User Group colleagues from around the world, which was a great opportunity for us to meet and start working together.
None of that was the best part. What was really amazing was to talk to everyone there, hang out with them and really recognise that we were kindred in our enthusiasm to make OpenStack succeed. The vibe was something I’d never encountered before, and I found myself really looking forward to seeing all these people again, so much so when we returned to Australia aside from jet lag there was certainly a somewhat deadening feeling of having left my new friends behind and far away. I am looking forward to the next conference already, and I hope that we can pull together an ASPAC “off season” conference in a few months with our new friends from Taiwan, China, Japan andKorea (and other ASPAC UGs!).
I, and all of us here at Aptira, are very proud and pleased to be involved with these people who provide the life blood for the most exciting emerging project since Linux.
This brings me to the Australian OpenStack User Group (AOSUG). None of the above would have happened without them. The AOSUG community is an inspiring and talented bunch, and it was seeing how these people we have met at the events have interacted and thrived on the coming together to get behind this project, that very quickly convinced us at Aptira to get very involved with OpenStack, and to very solidly commit ourselves to making the project a success.
I thank you all at AOSUG, and I look forward to seeing you all again and again to see how OpenStack continues to inspire you.
Cheers
Tristan Goode
Chief Executive Officer
Aptira
