Okay. Here’s the situation (and my apologies to those of you who now have DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince stuck in your head for the duration of Friday, HAH!):
The Marketing Team has been looking for awesome things going on in Fedora that we can produce marketing content for – stories, magazine articles, blog pieces, podcasts, you name it. (If you’ve got ideas, btw – not to distract from this particular blog post, of course – you can read one of my previous blogs on this topic, or catch up on this mailing list thread, to find out how to contribute to that cause.) Now, as I’m sure you know, we have no shortage of Cool Things going on in Fedora to write about, which is excellent. However, I keep hearing things along this line:
“Can we do something about Cloud?” “How about a marketing campaign about what Fedora is doing in the Cloud?” “Maybe we can do a piece on Fedora on Amazon?” In summary: I get it. We want to see a story on Cloud and what Fedora is doing in that space.
But here’s the catch: I don’t want to write a bunch of fluff (no pun intended, sorry) about our Cloud story. I want to have a solid, compelling Cloud story to write about. And part of that means this: We need to be more proactive in this space.
The Master Plan.
I’m just going to be blunt here: This is Fedora. This is a community of talented people who consistently churn out amazing, innovative things. From coding to infrastructure to marketing to design – and docs and translations and awesome packagers and testers and ambassadors and websites folks, and plowers and ponies, and everyone I’ve unintentionally left out but still love dearly – We, generally, Kick Ass. We are constantly at the leading edge of technology. We do new things – First. And we are completely, without a doubt capable of doing anything we put our minds to. And that includes having a solid plan in place for what we want to do in the Cloud space – and the ability to follow up on that plan by DELIVERING.
Despite being an incredibly nebulous term, I don’t think that anyone can disagree with the fact that Cloud is HOT right now. It’s buzzwordy and sexy and everywhere. This week’s Red Hat Summit has a whole Cloud track; the upcoming O’Reilly Open Source Convention (usually referred to as OSCON) also has a full-day track on Cloud “stuff,” not to mention lots of other sessions during other days of the conference. While this may be indicative of someone, somewhere, being really good at marketing, it more likely means that people are interested in doing Cloud stuff in FLOSS-land. People want to participate, contribute, try it out. We should want those people to be doing these things in Fedora. Whether they’re developing things that run in or manage the cloud, are system administrators who want to try Cloudy things out at home, or people who want to have an awesome OS image to load up in their cloud – Fedora should be the place they want to go when they want to scratch those Cloud itches. And I know, know, know, in my heart (yes, I have one – don’t believe the rumors!), that there are many of you, reading this RIGHT NOW, who fall into those categories I just listed.
And so, I call upon YOU. Many of you know that we’ve been trying to get things going on Amazon for some time now (you can check out David Nalley’s post from yesterday on this subject, as I’m sure his explanation is far better than mine could be about this topic). We need to see that through, and get it done. Beyond that – I think that there is no better time than NOW to start talking about long-term goals. The awesome thing here is this: Cloud SIG long-term planning is really undefined right now. This means there exists a plethora of opportunities for people who are interested in Cloud – both for people who want to contribute but aren’t sure how, and for people who have ideas about EXACTLY what they want to do. And those people include YOU, dear reader. Things like:
- Cloud SIG needs a freakin’ task list of what needs to happen.
- Participate in discussion about what packages would be advisable to have on an image.
- If those packages aren’t packaged – let’s get with the packaging. If we need to all get together and have Weekend Cloud Packaging FAD to knock it out, let’s do that. Better yet – start engaging with other cloud projects and encourage them to start packing their own stuff, get involved. etc.
- Documentation. WTB. Let’s start making a list of what to do.
- cloud.fedoraproject.org – Would be a great thing to have when we arrive at the “F13 is up on Amazon” goal.
- Images for private cloud deployment.
- Coordinating getting images going on other cloud provider’s infrastructure.
- Oh, yes, Marketing!
And yes: There is a Cloud SIG. And a mailing list. This week’s Cloud SIG meeting on IRC had an awesome uptick in participation – and I expect this to keep growing. The bottom line is this: Cloud SIG is going places – and you can be part of the plan. If you’re looking for something exciting and innovative to work on, this is a fabulous project to get involved in. So sign up for that mailing list, come to the weekly IRC meetings, and get involved. Let’s step up and show the world what Fedora can do.
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