OpenStack Meetup: From upstream to the customer: continuous delivery chain

Hello all - we have a compelling session this month - and NOTE the day change to Monday Oct. 10.Red Hat and RackSpace are co-sponsoring this month.

One of the ongoing challenges with any open source project, including OpenStack, is taking the project and making it an enterprise ready solution. In our session this month we will explore how Rackspace and Red Hat are collaborating to deliver a productized OpenStack Platform within a couple months of upstream GA without sacrificing testing while also ensuring a smooth in-place upgrade process. We will discuss lessons learned from upstream, to RDO, to Red Hat to Rackspace, and how continuous integration testing that goes beyond the border of any one project is the key to help ensure that we are catching and fixing the problems as early as possible after changes have been made in any projects.

Our session will be led by Nick Barcet and Daniel Sheppard. Nick is currently Director of Product Management for OpenStack at Red Hat. Nick joined Red Hat in June 2014, as part of the acquisition of eNovance, where he was VP of Products. Prior to that role, Nick was Ubuntu Server and Cloud Product manager at Canonical, where he participated in the definition and success of Ubuntu as a platform above and under the cloud.

Nick joined the OpenStack project since its first summit in Austin and founded the Ceilometer project, now known as OpenStack Telemetry, at the Folsom summit in April 2012, to handle centralised metering on OpenStack. Nick was also a Director of the Board of the OpenStack Foundation in 2013. Nick has been involved in Free Software since 2000 working with Novell and Intel in various technical and management roles.

Daniel Sheppard is a seasoned product manager with a background in infrastructure and software. Daniel has worked with companies ranging from Fortune 500 to early stage startup and is aware of the unique challenges each of these environments face with adoption and operation of technology. He brings that background to his current role as a product manager for Rackspace's OpenStack Cloud team where he is responsible for the Private Cloud powered by Red Hat offer and has spent the past year working to understand the virtualization needs of enterprises. Daniel holds multiple certifications in project management and has his MBA from W.P. Carey School of Business.

Reminders:

• LOCATION - Rackspace Austin - 9001 North IH35 (east side frontage road) #150, Austin, TX 78753

• NOTE: Rackspace security requires you provide a government issued ID in order to gain access to the facility. we recommend you arrive ~ 6:00 - 6:15pm.

• There will be a light dinner and soft drinks provided courtesy of Red Hat @6:15pm - with networking time till about 6:45pm - we will kick off the speaking sessions ~ 6:45pm.