Building and recognizing a more active user community

Upstream code is the building block for open source projects, but it requires more contributions and collaboration to truly make a community successful. Whether you’re a Nova developer submitting patches for the upcoming release or an operator running OpenStack in production who takes the time to share your feedback to improve the project, your contributions to the community are vital for community growth and health.

For several years, the OpenStack Technical Committee (TC) has been recognizing the developers who contributed upstream with the Active Technical Contributor (ATC) criteria that guaranteed discounted Summit registration as a way to recognize those contributions to the community. Two years ago, the Active User Contributor recognition process was introduced by the OpenStack User Committee (UC). In December 2016, criteria were finalized to acknowledge the contributions that operators and users make to the OpenStack project.

What are the AUC Criteria?

At the Dublin PTG in February, the UC met to discuss the AUC program and determined that the existing list needed to be updated in order to more accurately capture the ways that operators were contributing. Recently, the UC voted and expanded the list of contributors recognized as AUCs up from the previous eight.

Organizers of Official OpenStack User Groups
Active members and contributors to functional teams and/or working groups (currently also manually calculated for WGs not using IRC)
Moderators of any of the operators official meet-up sessions
Contributors to any repository under the UC governance
Track chairs for OpenStack Summits
Contributors to Superuser (articles, interviews, user stories, etc.)
Active moderators on ask.openstack.org
User survey participants who completed a deployment survey for the most recent cycle
OpenStack Days organizers
Special Interest Group (SIG) Members nominated by SIG leaders
Active Women of OpenStack participants
Active Diversity Working Group participants

What does being an AUC mean?

As an AUC, you can run for open UC positions and can vote in the elections. Nominations are currently open and there are two available seats, so if you qualify as an AUC and are interested in representing fellow operators, nominate yourself on the UC mailing list. Elections will be held August 20 – August 24 and AUCs will be eligible to vote for their elected officials.

AUCs also receive a discounted $300 USD ticket for the OpenStack Summit as well as the coveted AUC insignia on your badge.

If you’re unsure if you qualify as an AUC, reach out on the UC mailing list or join one of the weekly meetings on IRC. Check out the upcoming meeting schedule on the wiki.

Tags: Active User Contributor, OpenStack community, OpenStack User Committee