OpenStack 101 and celebrating the 3rd birthday of the project

We're going to discuss what OpenStack is, why it's useful for many different types of organizations from those with just 2 or 3 tech people to large enterprises, and how you can use it to further your career.

We're also going to celebrate the 3rd birthday of the project with some cake :-)

Help us share the celebration by:

• Tweeting about the event using the hashtag #OpenStack3Bday - remember to include party pictures in your Tweets!

• Take pictures at the event post them on the OpenStack Flickr group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/1574695@N22) taged #OpenStack3Bday with the name of your user group in the caption

• Post Video on YouTube with the tag #OpenStack3Bdaymembers saying "Happy Birthday OpenStack" sharing their birthday wishes for OpenStack

We look forward to seeing your Tweets and party pictures and plan to share your content at the party hosted by the OpenStack Foundation on July 24 during the OSCON conference in Portland, Oregon, USA - where OpenStack was launched in 2010.

Here's more info from the OpenStack (http://www.openstack.org) site:

OpenStack OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement, massively scalable, and feature rich. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects (http://www.openstack.org/projects/) delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.

Who's behind OpenStack? Founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA, OpenStack has grown to be a global software community (http://www.openstack.org/community/) of developers collaborating on a standard and massively scalable open source cloud operating system. Our mission is to enable any organization to create and offer cloud computing services running on standard hardware.

Who uses OpenStack? Corporations, service providers, VARS, SMBs, researchers, and global data centers looking to deploy large-scale cloud deployments for private or public clouds leveraging the support and resulting technology of a global open source community.

Why open matters: All of the code for OpenStack is freely available under the Apache 2.0 license. Anyone can run it, build on it, or submit changes back to the project. We strongly believe that an open development model is the only way to foster badly-needed cloud standards, remove the fear of proprietary lock-in for cloud customers, and create a large ecosystem that spans cloud providers.

For more information, visit the OpenStack Community Q&A (http://www.openstack.org/projects/openstack-faq/).