Turning community research into enterprise credibility

The OpenStack User Survey turned detailed community research into evidence that open-source cloud infrastructure was powering serious work at some of the world’s largest organizations.

Conducted every six months, it asked more than 70 deeply technical questions about adoption and usage, helping challenge the perception of OpenStack as an experimental project and establish its credibility alongside commercial alternatives such as Amazon Web Services.

I led respondent recruitment, increasing participation by 660% and securing responses from more than 2,000 community members. That required sustained outreach, including individually emailing hundreds of project leaders over several weeks to encourage them to contribute their experience.

I worked alongside our quantitative analyst to examine responses by use case and organization size, compare findings with previous surveys, and understand the context behind the numbers. Together with project leaders and foundation executives, I interpreted the findings in a narrative, including selected qualitative responses that brought users’ experiences into the story.

I shaped the research into an approximately 80-page paperback, combining analysis, long-form responses, charts, graphics, and photography from OpenStack events. I also led design and publication.

The result earned more media attention than our software releases, and I presented its findings internationally—from Poland and Melbourne to Tokyo and Austin—extending the research into conversations about OpenStack’s role in enterprise cloud infrastructure.