[Ofa_boardplus] Susan Coulter - profound thanks

[Coulter, Susan K]

You’re welcome.

My status and my email at LANL will stay active in "Guest Scientist” mode.
Therefore, I plan on staying subscribed to the ofa_boardplus mailing list.
It remains to be seen, however, how often I will actually check in and/or respond.  :)
But you may not have seen the last of me...


On Jun 21, 2018, at 12:44 PM, Paul Grun <grun at cray.com<mailto:grun at cray.com>> wrote:

It’s appropriate to take a moment and offer profound thanks to Susan Coulter for her service to the OFA over the past two years.  Susan stepped into the breach two years ago by accepting a nomination to serve as Board Chair, and suffered her subsequent election.

I think it’s fair to say that by the mid-2010’s the energy and direction surrounding the OFA had waned significantly, particularly with the transition of much of what used to be called OpenFabrics Software into non-OFA managed Github repos.  While all of us thought that such a transition was an incredibly positive step for the evolution of RDMA technologies in the marketplace, and represented a clear sign of the OFA’s past successes, it did leave the OFA in somewhat of a vacuum going forward.

Under Susan’s leadership, we as an organization undertook major efforts to redefine the Alliance and its role in the industry at large.  Some of those steps included:

  *   Detailed discussions with a significant number of major Alliance participants aimed at understanding the OFA’s role going forward,
  *   A pivotal TownHall discussion at the 2017 Workshop where those results were reviewed, and our path forward was openly discussed and critiqued,
  *   A lengthy and very detailed internal discussion building on those two events that led us to a crisp articulation of the OFA’s role, resulting in the adoption of a new Mission Statement,
  *   An on-going, and very detailed discussion of the policies and procedures we should use while in the process of ‘re-inventing’ the Alliance,
  *   All culminating in an on-going effort to codify the above in a new set of Bylaws.  As we all know, that process is now underway with a clear expectation of completion during calendar 2018.


In addition, Susan led us through the following key activities over the past two years:

  *   A difficult discussion about OFA leadership culminating in consensus on our approach to augmenting the leadership team with a new Executive Director,
  *   The introduction of a new Distro Testing program hosted at the NMC,
  *   A careful review of the policies and pricing structure guiding our existing Interop programs at the UNH-IOL,
  *   The installation of a new Marketing Working Group Chair, and the subsequent re-invigoration of our marketing activities, resulting in a clear and crisp path forward,
  *   The launch of a new program to establish collaborations with industry partners, strengthening the OFA’s position and visibility in the world,
  *   Significant efforts to repair and re-build our frayed relationships with the open source community. That relationship has been put back onto a path of growth and trust building.


That’s a TON of stuff to have happened in two short years!   And all accomplished on top of her normal day job!  Sometimes the enormity of a given task is only visible in hindsight, so I hope everybody will take a moment to reflect on just how gigantic this all has been.

I don’t want to minimize the contributions of the many others who pushed these initiatives by contributing ideas and energy to make them real, but it is safe to say that none of it would have occurred without Susan’s crucially important role as Chair and facilitator.  Her leadership created an environment where all this activity was encouraged, began to flourish, and is now bearing fruit.  Much of it is still a work in progress, naturally, but we should all be astonished at how much has been accomplished since Susan’s election in 2016.

My profound thanks to Susan for the service she’s given to our industry.

-Paul Grun

Advanced Technology Group
Cray, Inc.
Office  – (503) 620 – 8757
Mobile – (503) 703 - 5382

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Susan Coulter
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