Have you been to the OpenStack Summit lately? If you haven't, I'll let you in on a not-at-all-closely-guarded secret: It's not just about OpenStack anymore. Shoot, you can probably argue that it's not even primarilyabout OpenStack anymore. It's about containers and automation, about NFV and APIs, about machine learning and security. Sure, there's still plenty of OpenStack discussion, but the show has evolved so that at this point, it's about all the things that are key to building, deploying, using, and managing cloud environments effectively.

With that in mind, here's a heads-up to let you know that voting for speaker sessions at OpenStack Berlin is OPEN. So if you're considering heading to the Summit (November 13-15), this is your chance to take control of the agenda. To bend it to your will, customize it to your particular interests, and otherwise exert influence upon it in a way that you really can't with most other conferences (even those of the cool open source variety).

If that kind of thing appeals to you, I encourage you to pop on over to the Summit voting page and take a look at the wide variety of sessions that are offered this year. Cisco, as usual, has submitted a couple dozen of those proposed talks, and I, as usual, have listed them below so that you are aware of them and can vote for them if they speak to you and your interests.

Please note that voting closesThursday the 26th at midnight. So if you're going to do this, you'll want to get your hustle on and do it now.

Thank you for taking a look. Hope to see you at the Summit!

Open Source Community

Simplify Your Releases, Work Fast, and Support Many Versions of OpenStack, Sam Betts, Brad Jones

Extending the Reach of OpenStack Through Standards, Charles Eckel

Combining Open Source with Open Standards, Charles Eckel

Container Infrastructure

A Gentle Introduction to Istio Mesh Networking, Steven Dake, John Joyce

OpenStack Hosting K8s, IPv6, and Dual Stack Edge, Robert Li, Tim Swanson, John Joyce, Dane Leblanc

Istio Mesh Expansion++: Seamless Integration of Existing VM Workloads, Robert Li, Tim Swanson, Arvind Somya

Tenant-Driven VPN for Multicloud Multi-Cluster Kubernetes on OpenStack, Tim Swanson, Sridar Kandaswany, Bob Melander

Orchestrating and Managing Cloud Environments with Ansible, Sachin Joshi, Aman Sinha, Sreekrishna Senthilkumar

Public Cloud

OpenStack Statictics via AppDynamics, Bob Melander, Shweeta Padubidri, Zoran Duvnjak

Edge Computing

Multicloud Serverlessand Edge Application Support, Shweeta Padubidri, Sridar Kandaswamy, Arvind Tiwari

Beyond the Hype: Edge Computing Working Group Update, Ian Wells, Beth Cohen (Verizon), Ildiko Vancsa (OpenStack Foundation), Chris Price (Ericsson), David Patterson (Dell)

VNF Migration/Re-instantiation in NFV Platforms -Deep Dive (Contstraints and Techniques), Sachin Joshi, Aman Sinha, Meenakshi Sundaram Lakshmanan

Telecom -NFV 

ngena -Global Telco Multi-DC Cloud Using OpenStack, Sridar Kandaswamy, Chandresh Patel, Dietmar Geilar

Network Service Mesh: Open Source Cloud Native NFV, Ian Wells, Kyle Mestery

Securing NFV, Jerome Tollet, Jean Bernard Beuque

Deploying Packet Core Services with OpenStack, Flavio Bessa, Manuel Rocha Queda

Private and Hybrid Cloud 

Our Journey from TripleO Extra Config Integration to the New "Composable Roles" Model, Sandhya Dasu, Steven Hardy, Emilien Macchi

Are Your Secrets Secure?, Dave McCowan, Ade Lee (Red Hat)

A Reliable ectd-based Messaging Architecture for OpenStack, Ian Wells, Naveen Joy, Jerome Tollet

Deploying Neutron HA Routers in VPP Using etcd and keepalived, Naveen Joy, Jerome Tollet

Convert from non-Kolla to Kolla in Existing Production Environment, Rain Sun, Liping Mao, Ian Zhang

Capacity Management for OpenStack Private Cloud, Leehom Li, Liping Mao, Ian Zhang

Hands-on Workshop

Encryption Workshop: Using Encryption to Secure Your Cloud, Dave McCowan, Ade Lee (Red Hat)

Network Configuration is Code: Applying CI/CD to Manage the Data Center Network Below the Cloud, Britt Houser, Chris Ricker

Using OpenStack APIs to Automate Interaction with Your Cloud, Charles Eckel

HPC/GPU/AI

Artificial Intelligence-based Container Monitoring, Healing and Optimizing, Sachin Joshi, Aman Sinha, Sreekrishna Senthilkumar