My Open Source Experience Podcast

Accessibility sometimes comes with a stigma, since it becomes a discussion topic when someone has a disability that prevents them to do something that they would like to, like accessing an admin interface because they're blind.In this episode of the My Open Source Experience podcast Mike Gifford talks about how he put accessibility on the map in the Drupal community, and through that for the internet.Learn more about Mike's journey here: Learn more about:- Joining a global community- Moving faster in your business with OSS- What is accessibility- Types of disabilities- Accessibility focus area in Drupal- How to increase accessibility in your web resources#opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast

We often have well-baked ideas about how we would like things to tunr out, which gets combined with beliefs that are being shaped by the environment we're in. Despite of human nature, we need to follow our intuition and revisit whether or not what we had learned in the past has reached the point where we would benefit from re-evaluating it.In this episode of the My Open Source Experience podcast Rick Sanders talks about how his law career has evolved over time, along with his perception of open source and the GNU General Public License (GPL). GPL is a very controversial open source license, which created some fear and confusion that the tech industry and lawyers in this space have had to overcome.Learn more about:- How your social network affects your career- GNU GPL license- Using copyright against copyright#opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast

You've probably seen the meme with the tny project maintained by one person that holds up half the pyramid of all software products and services we use and connect to the world wide web. Curl is a project that is not much bigger than that, but has the same or even bigger impact. Used by billions of people and devices, but maintained by a small community.In this My Open Source Experience podcast episode Daniel Stenberg talks about the Curl project and community, which he's been maintaining for 30 years now, and counting.Learn more about:- What the Curl project is- The origin story of Curl- What inspired Daniel to become a lead and maintainer for an open source project- The license mistake you shouldn't make- The truth about the size of open source projects' maintainer teams#opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast

How much people crave being part of communities that they can realte to is often underrated, which is probably one of the reasons why people and companies don't invest time and resources into building a community around the code they open source.In this episode of the My Open Source Experience Podcast, a group of open source experts share their experiences and opinions on topics that affect the growth and sustainability of communities over time.Learn more from:- Ariel Jolo on the power of craving community- Brad Chamberlain on community building and trust in the Chapel open source project- Enging Kayraklioglu on navigating upstream processes- Michael Dexter on onboarding users into your community- Shuah Khan on diversity and inclusivity in mentorship programsbhyve - https://bhyve.org#opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast

For many people it's very challenging to jump the bar from being a silent user of open source software to reaching out to the community, even just to ask a question. And some, or maybe rather many, of these people will never get there to take that step, which could change their lives.In this episode of the My Open Source Experience podcast Engin Kayraklioglu talks about his first experience with the Chapel open source programming language project, and community. He was part of an internship program which helped him get over his fear of reaching out to people he only saw talking on chat platforms, in emails and in code reviews. He didn't just become a project maintainer later, but also started to mentor newcomers himself.Learn more about:- The invisible barriers stopping people from getting out of being only a silent user- The impact of seeing people and hearing them talk about the open source project they maintain- The Chapel project and internship program- Becoming an open source mentor, and the Google Summer of Code program- How being a mentor shapes how a person approches the OSS project they maintain, along with newcomersUpdate: Since the recording of this podcast Engin has moved on from HPE to explore new endeavors.#opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast

Organizing events is not rocket science, but putting on successful events that are also sustainable is much harder than it seems. Some key practices apply to all types of events, but you also need to keep in mind what kind of conference you're organizing. Business events and community-focused conferences are more different than you might think.I recently talked to Rick Turoczy and learned that he's an introvert like I am. While neither of us really likes going to conferences, we both find tremendous amount of value in attending them regardless. On the latest My Open Source Experience podcast episode, Rick told me that he's not just attending events, but is also organizing them both professionally and as a volunteer.I learned these 4 things:- Even if you're an introvert, attending events is to your benefit- If you're only focusing on attendance numbers, you probably haven't fully thought it through what the value of your event really is- Optimize for over communicating- An event isn't just the dates it's scheduled for#opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast