As part of the OpenStack ambassadors program, we are compiling user group data. To better track how we’re doing worldwide, I need to get a few details about how your OpenStack user group has been doing in the past half-year. We are getting this data from everyone around the world to make our first “Regional Activity Report”. Most of the information compiled will be available by the Juno summit.
Forward your responses to me or comment below.
- Your take on the ‘state’ of OpenStack in the region.
- Information about any notable activities or events that you’ve conducted, including any data you have on how many attendees you’re getting in your meetups. I use the past meetup history and meetup stats “Total and Active Members” graph. You may have another way of getting the information.
- Any good/recommended speakers that you’ve had. Speakers are in short supply around the world, so we want to start tracking them.
- Any notable deployments in your area, or information about what kind of deployments you’ve seen.
- Any consistent feedback you have about OpenStack. Even negative stuff. You can use the Operators Summit etherpad to jog your memory. https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/operators-feedback-mar14
Thanks!
Hi!
Here comes the input for the OpenStack User Group in Sweden; it’s also available on http://brainsrace.blogspot.se/ with all sorts of links to cited resources.
hope it helps!
‘State’ of OpenStack in the region
Unfortunately I don’t have any survey results at hand that would indicate the evolution in terms of number or size of deployments. One useful indicator of user interested towards the platform is the robust growth of the local OpenStack User Group from about 135 members in November 2013 to the current 228 members (as of March, 23rd).
To improve the metrics and have a clearer picture in the future, I will conduct surveys among the attendees of the meetups starting with the next one, on April 3rd.
Notable activities
Members of the OpenStack User Group met soon after the start of the year – on January, 15th for a meetup exclusively focused on Software defined networking (SDN) in general and networking in OpenStack in particular, with great speakers from Cisco Systems Sweden and Tail-f.
An important ingredient for the success of the event was it’s narrow focus on networking – which attracted members with similar interests and expertise and resulted in abundant discussions during the breaks. Attendance was great, with all of the 55 available seats (limitation imposed by the size of the location) taken.
The are some upcoming events scheduled or planned:
4th OpenStack User Group meetup on April, 3rd (85 attendees signed-up so far).
Seminar on “Securing Infrastructures, the Smart Grid and the Internet of Things” that will be held at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science on April, 8th.
5th OpenStack User Group meetup – planned for May, 29th.
Good/recommended speakers
Looking back at the only meetup held this year – on January, 15th – I can totally recommend the great speakers for the 3rd OpenStack User Group:
Bob Melander and Lars Ershammar from Cisco in Stockholm
Jan Lindblad from Tail-f.
Notable deployments
At this time I do not know of any official notable OpenStack deployments in the area. That’s what I hope the surveys will reveal.
Consistent Feedback about OpenStack
In this case as well, I do not have any aggregated feedback about OpenStack. That will be one of the questions in the surveys administered to the meetup attendees in the future.
That’s it for now. I hope that in the next review I will have more detailed and consistent information about the review
Excellent information. I will add it to the mix.
2 great speakers and plans to survey for OpenStack deployments.
Sounds like you have things well in hand.
Hi Sean,
I organize OpenStack Philly with Kenneth Hui and Sean Collins, here’s the link to the meetup: http://www.meetup.com/Philly-OpenStack-Meetup-Group/.
We’ve held 7 meetups and have grown to 119 users since we started in June of 2013.
There are about 50 active members and each meetup has anywhere from 20-30+, depending on the topics.
I don’t have any specifics on notable deployments of OpenStack, sorry.
Notable speakers/topics:
Dan Radez from Red Hat was our guest speaker in November, 2013. He led a hands on workshop where we deployed OpenStack using RDO. This was a really productive meetup since many of the attendees haven’t seen an OpenStack installation.
John Dickinson from Swiftstack presented on Swift and object storage. John’s presentation was super informative and very easy to follow.
Hope that helps.
Paul
Excellent feedback Paul, I will add it to the mix.
Hi Sean,
As a response to your request i can update you on the activities of our local user group at Athens, Greece (http://www.meetup.com/Athens-OpenStack-User-Group/).
In my understanding OpenStack is being seen as an emerging technology. In particular the corporate sector in Greece is watching pubic announcements and large vendors’ support, while people the academic sector are more actively involved on using the project’s outcomes.
Our community is formed by a relatively small amount of members, compared to other OpenStack user Groups, having being increased from 50 to 80 members during the last 6 months and maintaining 25 active members. We have gathered 5 times in this period and the people coming in the user group meetings are mostly entry-level or curious about the technology. We have even conducted 2 hands-on workshop deploying and using devstack to help our members’ on-boarding.
The deployments that i am aware of in this region are mostly used to support research and development activities in the academic area.
What i have been asked several times is to showcase more insights for possible OpenStack use cases from the ‘cloud owner’ point of view, as to say “what is the need I cover suing OpenStack in my organization”.
Hope this helps building the Activity Report. Greetings!
Thanassis
Good information. Thanks. Do you have any speakers in your area that could be considered a good spokesperson for your region?
Usually it is myself that takes the speaker role in our meetups.
Also, there is always an open call for speakers. Looking forward to have more people involved!
Good Information. if anyone want to more information about the cloud computing and openstack