Since it is important and a given that Operate First as a concept and an overarching methodology MUST be neutral on technologies and methods for it to be adopted by the ecosystem and have an effect ...
... how do we differentiate between that neutral concept and the specific technologies and methods we adopt in this community without diluting the meaning and brand of "Operate First"?

In other words, when we call anything/everything in this OpenShift and GitOps/GitHub-using community "Operate First", we are diluting our own brand. We are confusing the meaning of Operate First and making it harder for ourselves to have the ecosystem-wide effect.

Yet, we are doing all this hard work for the intended effect of showing and proving that the Operate First concept and methodology actually work in practice, in the real world, with real workloads in a real production environment. It is equally important we connect this community with the Operate First brand and not dilute that brand.

So the goals are:

1. Connect with but don't dilute the Operate First brand,
2. Don't make our lives harder (for no good reason), and
3. Widen the tent of those who want to and can operate first by giving them an "Operate First"-brand that can include them regardless of their relationship to our specific community technologies and methods.

As a slight-rough analogy, look at the Fedora Project and community, and their central output, Fedora Linux.

People use the word "Fedora" to mean any one of those, it's a common short hand. But when you think about it, the brand is "Fedora" and the brand being connected-with-but-not-diluted-by "Fedora" is the "Linux" brand.

In our situation, the "Operate First" brand is more analogous to "Linux" than it is to "Fedora". And until we can get the Operate First brand to have ecosystem reach the way the "upstream first" concept sort-of has, I believe we are looking for the fine line of "close but not too close" in branding for this community project.

The two just-close-enough ideas I've seen so far are:

1. "Op1st", spoken as "Op First"
2. "O1", spoken as "Oh One" (or "Oh First"?)

I wholeheartedly invite debate and other name ideas.

Two final thoughts;

• One of my mentors on branding @cdgrams (or was it Burney?) said, "A brand is a sponge." Since we get some say on the cellular structure of that sponge and first crack at filling the sponge, let's make it count.
• "Op1st" is a recursive pun, being the first operating community to run itself under the Operate First concept.