Since I joined Rackspace a year ago, intrigued by the disruptive power of cloud computing, I’ve been amazed at just how wild and wooly this industry is. From the characters you meet to the ever changing alliances and consolidation, it truly has been one wild ride. And Rackspace, improbably, has been right at the center of the action. Out gunned by competitors that could seemingly squash us like a bug, we’ve managed to claw our way to be the #2 cloud, with some decent mindshare to boot. One of the keys is our ecosystem of developers, who’ve built amazing things on our API. Having a hand in building that community has been a real pleasure. You can see the state of things at Cloud Tools. But that’s small beer compared to what we’re doing today.

One of the first things Jim Curry asked me to think about when I joined was whether or not we should open up some piece of our code, such as our Control Panel. My immediate reaction was “hell yes!” but I also gave it some more thought, and the more I pulled on the string the more convinced I became it was the right answer for our entire development model. This was crystalized for me last June during a panel at GIGAOM’s Structure 2009, where Matt Mullenweg (founder of Wordpess, and someone I’ve always admired) said something to the effect that “if you find yourself competing with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google for the first time, realize who you’re competing with: Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The only way you’ll get leverage is Open Source.” That was it. I was convinced.

Having spent 7 years at Dell and 5 years at Yahoo! with a startup in there somewhere, I think it’s fair to say that 12 years of my career have been spent trying to change big companies without much to show for it. Yeah I’ve hit a few doubles, learned a lot and made great friends, but changing a company of any size is just really, really hard. But I’m way too stubborn to stop trying. Now if it sounds like all of this is a set up to declare that I single handedly changed Rackspace, it’s not. But I am very proud to have been a part of what I believe is a “bet the company” move for Rackspace. A move that is all about knowing your comparative advantage, and above all, understanding 3 things I am pretty passionate about: The power of Freedom (my libertarian side), The Leverage of Community (my ‘everyone bring a side and I’ll fire up the smoker for some BBQ’ side), and how to align interests (Biz Dev).

So I pushed from time to time on the idea internally, and got a few head nods but mostly we were all just so busy hanging on in the midst of cloud mania that there wasn’t much traction (or action) on the idea. This all changed in a fateful meeting just before Christmas (December 2009) when Jason Seats (founder of Slicehost, and another person I admire greatly!) made a presentation to the cloud leadership team proposing the radical notion that we open source our entire cloud. Every last bit. Our junk hanging out, for the world to see. I am going to post that deck for posterity, as soon as I check with Jason I’m not sure the slides alone will do it justice without his delivery style, but suffice it to say he had the room buzzing with the possibilities, with plenty of naysayers and questions as you’d expect. Without his championing of the idea, I don’t think I ever would have gotten the green light (a few weeks later) from Lew to actually start pulling a formal plan together for the CEO and Board to approve.

This quickly became a team effort, with Jim Curry focused on the internal issues (which were many, and daunting), such as organizational impacts, approvals, etc. Before Jim starts yelling about the way I’ve characterized him as the paperwork guy on this, let me make this 100% clear: I think the reason I’ve never really been able to change a company before is that I just did not have the will to keep fighting the internal fight. Jim has as strong of a will as anyone I’ve worked for so I knew I had the right partner in crime. The third amigo was Bret Piatt, who was locked in a conference room in Austin with us for days trying to build powerpoints and business cases that could possibly explain in a compelling way to management why in the hell we want to give away the millions of dollars worth of IP they’ve spent building a cloud — to our competitors!

The biggest key to the argument in my mind was always LEVERAGE. The competitors have an ARMY of developers. More developers than we have employees! We’ve got to build our own army, out of all of the people out there who have an interest in seeing an open cloud emerge (there are a lot of us!). But I’m not sure that’s what convinced most people. I think it was really two things: 1) Rackspace is about Fanatical Support. If you follow the company at all, you’ll know we beat this drum day in and day out. But it’s really true. The company gets paid because we care. We don’t care because we’re paid. I know this sounds impossible to the average cynic (myself included), but it really runs through the company. And this move is the ULTIMATE bet on fanatical support. level the playing field, focus on customers. 2) Leadership. This move puts in the spotlight, but in the role of community builder not technology hoarder. This is software development done the Rackspace way (see #1). I do think the Android analogy has convinced a few people, which is a real world example of community leverage at work to compete against a more proprietary (yet dominant) player.

In between the pitches to management and today, about 5,000 other things happened including the formation of dedicated teams and people pitching in from across the company as this thing snowballed to today’s launch. Since this post is already too long I’ll just hat tip Rick Clark, who has been our secret weapon in all this, bringing his incredible experience working at open source leader Canonical, and note that a hundred other Rackers also pitched in. Maybe they can add their perspective in the comments or their own blogs.

How’s it going on the leverage front… can we deliver the community I promised management? Well, let’s just say we are now working with NASA. Freaking NASA! RIght now, images from outer space are being recorded to hard drives in an undisclosed location running Rackspace software, which just gained it’s freedom from our datacenter. And the amazing breakthroughs NASA has made operating cloud computing at scale are being incorporated into the future of the Rackspace Cloud. Just to put this in perspective: NASA is the largest collector of data in human history. If they lose data, they have to fire off a rocket. People’s lives are on the line. Clearly my blog needs this kind of technology behind it (for my annual post.)

But of course we couldn’t stop with a community of two, so we set out to bring thought leaders from across the globe together to comb over the designs in the heads of the architects, validate assumptions, and start hacking on REAL code as a TEAM. Over 25 companies participated, just last week. Since I was asked to corral all of the geeks, naturally I planned the “Design Summit” in Austin, TX. We just wrapped that up, and now here we are making the announcement today. Special thanks to my secret weapon, my wife Dianna who has had to play the single parent role with our headstrong 4 and 6 year old daughters (no idea where they get that from) while I’ve been immersed in all things OpenStack the past week weeks and months.

So what’s next? What crazy promise am I going to make to the Rackspace and the rest of the OpenStack community? Easy: the first partnership with an alien race. WIth a little help from my friends at NASA.

Cloud Freedom starts today! It’s never too late to start doing the right thing, Amazon If you love your code, set it free. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you (in python).

OpenStack: Free, as in Beer, Speech, And Love.

You can learn a lot more about it at openstack.org and of course by following @openstack on twitter. Also, don’t hesitate to become a fan of OpenStack on Facebook if you have one more Like button click left in you today.

@sparkycollier

But first… it’s true that when I joined the Yahoo! Music team in 2004 I had never seen a more talented collection of people anywhere in the world. Yeah, we made about a million mistakes, but I gained a ton of experience and life long friends out of it. Looking at you SteveO, Big Mike, Spiegs, Roberto, JT, Walker, strauss, Howie, Albert, Traci, Shannon, even my token Laker fan friend Matt New… that’s about 5% of the amazing folks (to the rest: don’t hate, and visit me in Austin .

I lost track of the number of once in a life time experiences but a few come to mind like going to the Grammy’s (for the record, I hate the grammy’s but WTF it was cool), watching Karin Gilford eat 3X her weight in BBQ at Salt Lick (still not sure how), two trips to london with spiegs and traci, seeing the look on ventura’s face when we showed up for our 8am train to Paris still out with Traci from the night before [redacted], staying in a castle with Albert & Spiegs for the music festival in Bourges, France… Cannes for MIDEM with Walker during the Obama inauguration (despite deathly food poisoning thanks to one shellfish below)… It’s all rather ridiculous, really… I’m a very lucky S.O.B. I know it.

Cannes, France. Which one of you made me ill?

Lest you think it was all cristal and rock stars, I actually put out some work product like signing our largest distribution deal for the Yahoo! Music Engine (Dell), and successfully executing a (somewhat) graceful exit from the client software business and into the social app/widget distribution game with deals with folks like RockYou, Bebo, Piczo, and Skyrock (they are based in Paris — see it was all for business I tell you!). But I will definitely remember the people, events, and places the most.

So, after 5 years at Yahoo!, including a magical 3 weeks and 1 day at Musicmatch before we were acquired, I have decided to move to the other end of the web where I can let my inner geek sing playing with cloud computing all day: Rackspace.

Rackspace is best known as the biggest “managed web hosting” company around, helping thousands of businesses focus on what they do best without worrying about buying servers and managing them day to day to keep their business running on the web.

But what really interested me was a new type of business infrastructure that has gotten a fair amount of press (creating some confusion in the process) called “cloud computing”. Everyone has a different definition, but at the core it’s still about making it easy to run your business on the web without worrying about how it happens behind the scenes.

If “managed web hosting” was about picking up the phone to have someone else set up your server in a matter of days (or hours) instead of doing it yourself, the promise of the cloud is radically simpler: clicking a button in a control panel and having a server up in running in seconds. Even better, having new servers brought online automatically the moment Oprah pimps out your new thing and millions of people rush to buy it. *having enough chicken is up to you.

If that sounds like a commercial, you’ll have to excuse the enthusiasm, as I’ve recently binged on the corporate kool aid. Rackspace talks a lot about the culture, and in case you think this is just like every other company, consider this: “Rookie Orientation” is a week long! I’m about as cynical as they come, but even I left impressed. Ask me about Sugarbear.

All I can say is that somewhere along the way I fell out of love (just a tiny bit) with what technology could do in theory, and started to value what you can actually do with it in practice. No new development in the tech world has the potential to have a bigger impact across almost every business than this crazy thing called “the cloud.” Because as much as I may be fascinated by technology as a life long geek, I’m acutely aware that most of the time technology sucks.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.

On an unrelated note, I just switched to MAC.

So… When given the opportunity to become a “Racker” as VP of Business Development, helping build bridges between companies to make this new cloud technology suck less and do more, all I could tell Lew was: Hell yeah.

In addition to doing BD work building partnerships, which I really loved doing at Yahoo!, I am also excited to do some Corporate Development (M&A).

The rest of the particulars are on linked in so just click here.
And remember that curtis said you should follow me on twitter here.

To that end, spend the evening of August 9th with some of the coolest cats in Austin enjoying the amazing food of EL SOL Y LA LUNA and, naturally, the music of from David Garza and Suzanna Choffel. I’ve included the event details below along with a few of their songs. Tickets are $35 with all proceeds benefiting Austin Music Foundation’s educational programs, and can be purchased here.

Austin 360 has a blurb on the event here.

Hope to see you there!
@sparkycollier

[ORIGINAL POST BELOW]:

Dear Wellsfargo,

I have been a loyal customer for over 10 years – closer to 20 in fact. After I refinanced my mortgage in January of 2009 via a mortgage broker (capstar lending), I was actually delighted to learn that wellsfargo had purchased the loan. After all, I have been happy with your service for years. However, you really screwed up this time. Despite your assurances to the contrary, your screw up has now impacted my credit, and you need to fix it. now.

Here’s the deal:

I have never received a single statement, bill, payment coupon book, or anything that might facilitate making payments. Ever — to this day in June 2009! The first correspondence I received from you stated that I was 3 months past due with a handy pamphlet on how to avoid foreclosure. FORECLOSURE! Are you effing kidding me?

I immediately called (4 times in fact) and cleared up the issue (so I thought). I was told that in your records I was set up to receive electronic statements. However, 1) I was never sent any electronic communication from Wellsfargo regarding my mortgage (I checked again, including SPAM folders) 2) I never elected this option and 3) I was told by the 4th person I talked to that it was impossible for me to get my first statement electronically for a new refinance, as a matter of wellsfargo policy.

My guess is that the error in your system is rooted in the fact that I am also a wellsfargo checking (and saving) account customer, where I DO have online statements set up. When you bought my loan, it appears you linked the accounts (without my knowledge), which inherited the “online statements” setting, but that was impossible since the first bill (according to the 4th wellsfargo representative) must be a mailed, paper bill according to your own policy. After talking to you 4 times I logged in (to my old checking account) and attempted to view the online statement you claimed were beint “sent” to me, and was given the following error message: “This account is not currently eligible for online statements”. To document the absurdity of the situation I captured a screen shot and am hosting it here (account info masked for security):

Wellsfargo you screwed up, now fix it.

Mind you — this is 3 or 4 MONTHS after I was supposedly receiving electronic statements in lieu of paper statements. This error confirmed positively that I had never received any statements electronically – and as I have stated I never have (even to this day) received anything via u.s. mail.

After settling up on the 3 months of past due bills I was assured 1) I would receive a bill for the next month (due June 1st) after paying the 3 months past due — that never happened (I STILL have NEVER received a bill) and 2) that this incident — entirely Wellsfargo’s fault — would NOT be filed as a negative incident on my credit report. Obviously both of these statements by welslfargo have turned out to be false. At this point I have still not received a bill, though my account is now current (You are finally allowing me to access the site electronically and I am making electronic payments now).

Bottom line: The account would have never been past due if you had billed me a single time, ever, and as documented above I also did not have access to electronic statements. You also informed me that you didn’t have my phone number, which you obviously should have gotten from the company you purchased the loan from, as I never contracted directly with Wellsfargo for this home loan refinance (again, I used Capstar – a broker).

In summary, I request that Wellsfargo remove this negative credit reference from my file, and if you value my business as a customer of over 10 years with 4 accounts, issue an apology for wasting my valuable time with this nonsense.

Mark Collier

P.S. I am forced to document this here because the experian dispute path only allows 120 characters. Even Twitter gives you 140!!

So, I just winged it which actually worked out just fine. I was really happy to meet some of the most interesting and creative folks in Austin and to do my part to help the Austin Music Foundation achieve it’s mission. If you search for AMFtwitter you’ll find many of the attendees and I’d encourage you to follow them and watch them kick ass for Austin Music!

I’ve embedded the slides below, as you can see these were really just my speaker notes and nothing special as far as fancy powerpoint goes. (read: they are damn ugly.) I’ve received a lot of requests for them, though, so I am adding them here as a reference. The talk was geared for people who had never used Twitter or were just getting started with it, to clear up a lot the confusion (RT@#WTF) that is leading a lot of people to give up before realizing the benefits.

I also am adding this video which I think gives a nice overview as well:

Please remember that the Austin Music Foundation really needs the support of the community to keep on truckin, so become a member or contact me about sponsorship opportunities anytime. And follow AMF on twitter! www.twitter.com/austinmusic

If you’d like to receive a beta invite to test out the AWE.SM URL shortening & analytic service I mentioned, just DM me (or send an @sparkycollier and I should get it). You can reach me at www.twitter.com/sparkycollier

Cheers,
Mark “Sparky” Collier

Since I had some experience doing social media deals for Yahoo! Music (and Musicmatch before that), naturally the first thing I did was get AMF on Twitter, so follow them now at www.twitter.com/austinmusic

Now they want me to actually do stuff, starting with leading this session on connecting with fans on Twitter in 140 characters or less. The session is at the Hilton Garden Inn on June 1st at 7pm in downtown Austin. That’s in two weeks. Yikes.

Ok, after pondering the assignment with some trepidation I came to two important conclusions:
1) I’m completely qualified to lead this session for one reason: I play myself on Twitter, just like Ben Kweller. Class dismissed. Seriously, though, check out Ben’s twitter stream.

2) I’ve got an amazing network of friends that can help me gather some stories and stats to share, like my friend Ian Roger’s recent blog post I will faithfully rip off. READ IT.

So, if you’re an artist or manager that has a story to share about how twitter has helped you connect with fans, please leave a comment below or drop me a line at AMF at sparkycollier.otherinbox.com and help me create this pitch. Please. (Otherinbox is a cool Austin startup FYI). In the fine tradition of Fred Wilson I’m hoping to crowd source this pitch…

If you’re planning to attend please leave me a comment as well (including your twitter name — you ARE on twitter, right??) and what you’d like to get out of the session. If we can get a critical mass of participants I can get out of the way and let y’all help each other, which is exactly what twitter is all about!

Last, but not least, please read up on AMF and consider supporting our important mission! I’m also the chair of the sponsorship committee, so if your business would like to get involved hit me up!

Mark
P.S. I am no longer with Yahoo!, but that is for another blog post

After: Ready for the ACL 90’s reunion.

What’s next?

Update: Fu man chu is now in full effect.

ya hear?

Steven mentioned that he had been working on turning the old film home movies my Grammy (Schlosser) used to show when I was a kind into digital form. We discussed the difficulty of getting everything on line, with the limitations youtube has and the high cost of other options, given the large file sizes.

I offered to find a solution, and though it took me quite a while I finally found it: wordpress.com Matt has done it again, contributing an amazing resource to the web for next to nothing. I was able to get 15GB of storage for only $50/year. I actually stumbled onto this solution based on a comment Matt made on his blog. It took me about a week to get everything uploaded, now without further ado…

I’m also testing out the “suggest to Techmeme” code my friend Jonathan Strauss just released.

UPDATE: New Album courtesy of LALA. I still haven’t received my pre-order and pleas for a miracle MP3 have gone unanswered. Even the bay full of pirates is empty. Drat.

Suggest to ^?