Principia / DevOps / leadership and governance

[Dustin Kirkland]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Mark Shuttleworth <mark at ubuntu.com> wrote:
...
> I think the focus needed here is different to the leadership that the TB
> currently provides - this work will be very cloud and devops specific, and
> we'll want a team which reflects that. It will also be very day-to-day, this
> is a fast-moving area, and it needs more hands-on guidance than the TB can
> provide directly. I would be happy for this group to be accountable to the
> TB on technical matters, though I think this group should also be able to
> grant Ubuntu membership to contributors which is a function the CC
> delegates.

"Ubuntu Community membership"?  Or "Ensemble Community membership"?

I think I'd expect the latter, more than the former, from an Ensemble
Council.  I think I see the Ensemble Community as being separate, with
perhaps some overlapping members, rather than being a proper sub- or
superset of the Ubuntu Community...

> As a lead, I would nominate Clint Byrum, a member of the Server Team with a
> passion for devops who's taken to Ensemble like a duck to water. As other
> members of the Principia Council, I would nominate Yuan Negron and Marc
>
> Cluet, who work in Canonical helping large deployments of Ubuntu. Clint is
> an Ubuntu Member but I don't think either Yuan or Marc are, yet.
> Nevertheless, the field is so embryonic that I think it is appropriate to
> bootstrap in this fashion.

s/Yuan/Juan/g  :-)

> I would think they could build a team of core Principia contributors who in
> future could help confirm nominations to the Principia Council, but again,
> for bootstrapping purposes I think we need to JFDI this initial appointment.
>
> Thoughts?

Thanks for kicking this off.  I can definitely +1 Juan and Marc as
having your prototypical DevOps expertise -- they're stand-up guys
with exactly the experience we're looking for here.  Ensemble will be
essential our team's overall objectives over time, and having their
expertise on such a council would be beneficial.

Having never served on such a council myself, can you give some idea
as to what the approximate time commitments might be?  I'd assume
maybe a couple of hours (4-8?) per month spent attending IRC meetings
and actively following a mailing list?  Is that about right?  Can you
detail the typical responsibilities of such councils a bit more,
perhaps?

[[Humorously, when I think "Community Councils", I get this image of
Anakin getting grilled by Yoda, Mace Windu, and a bunch of other funny
looking CG characters on the Jedi Council in Coruscant... I find it
poignant that he, as Vader, would systematically hunt down and
eliminate each of them in the years after his Jedi Paduwan internship
application was denied.  Beware who you vote down, guys!  :-) ]]

Oh, and I wonder if perhaps Ahmed Kamal might be another candidate,
with experience from helping build the Ubuntu Server Community?

-- 
:-Dustin

Dustin Kirkland
Manager, Systems Integration
Corporate Services
Canonical, LTD