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My first day at Red Hat!

Today is my first day at Red Hat! I am so excited to be joining this terrific open source software company, its communities and all the great people that work here. In some part, I feel like I’m coming home as many of the people I’ve worked with and admired in open source over the years will now be my colleagues at Red Hat. I met many of them while I was setting up the Open Source Program Office at Hewlett-Packard, had great community manager conversations with them and got good advice as I set up OpenLogic’s Expert Community, worked closely with them as Executive Director of GNOME and saw them often at events while at Mozilla and the Cloud Foundry Foundation – even getting to speak at the Red Hat Summit Women’s Leadership event last year. I’m looking forward to working more closely with friends and colleagues and meeting the Red Hat community!

What will I be doing at Red Hat?

I’ll be joining The Red Hat Open Source and Standards (OSAS) team leading the team of community managers. My job will be to guide community growth and success in upstream projects that Red Hat works with. I’ll be managing (i.e. supporting and enabling!) the team of community leads, as well as those that are embedded in projects, who work directly with upstream projects and coordinate with other stakeholders within Red Hat.

In the first few weeks, I’ll be working on understanding the open source software projects, their goals and communities, Red Hat’s goals, how communication happens between upstream projects and Red Hat teams, how teams communicate, grow and learn, what’s working well for them and what they could use more help on. Learning. I’ll be spending my first couple of weeks learning!

If you are working closely with one of the open source software projects that Red Hat works with and have insights or input for me, please reach out to me!

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Changing roles …

As the world transitions to cloud native, Cloud Foundry is an important part of a new open source software ecosystem. Because of the open source Cloud Foundry project, companies and governments large and small are able to change the way they work, build on the knowledge of others and use technology to vastly improve the solutions they offer. Who would have thought we’d have open source software running on big windmills or as a fundamental part of the IT system at large insurance companies or as part of the new digital transformation of US, Australian and UK governments? Or that automotive, insurance, and finance companies would all collaborate on software?

I’ve enjoyed helping to make this new open source cloud world a reality by leading developer relations at the Cloud Foundry Foundation. As the next step in my journey, I will be transitioning from a paid staff role at the Cloud Foundry Foundation to a volunteer community role.

We have been putting community and processes in place at the Cloud Foundry Foundation to enable self-governing programs. Using my experience at Mozilla running and expanding the Mozilla Developer Network, as well as my experience setting up the OpenLogic Expert Community, I set up processes that will enable the Cloud Foundry community to continue to grow as the project and its large community of corporate sponsors continues to grow. For example, we created the Cloud Foundry Ambassadors, a self-sustaining program of volunteers to welcome and grow the community that is now growing organically. Cloud Foundry has grown by leaps and bounds and we now have contributors and product managers from our member companies creating and running self-governing programs for outreach and technology. I am proud of the programs we’ve created together for the Community to own and run.

The Cloud Foundry project is a vital part of our open source ecosystem and I will continue to be an active member in it, as I have with all my favorite open source software projects!

More news coming soon on what’s next for me!

P.S. Come learn about Cloud Foundry Dojos in my talk next week at All Things Open.

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Would you be friends with a racist?

Photo by mad artichoke.

The election period is putting many friendships to test. If you are going to vote, you have to pick one of the candidates and neither candidate is perfect. Most people, especially in this election, believe strongly that the other candidate is terrible. And since they believe one candidate is terrible, they feel compelled to campaign for their candidate.

And this campaigning has led to many discussions and arguments. On Facebook, I’ve seen many of my friends saying they are unfriending people who support the other candidate, whomever that other may be.

Which led me to the question … could you be friends with someone who held at least one belief you felt was wrong? Could you be friends with a racist? Could you be friends with someone who is pro-life if you are pro-choice? Or pro-choice if you are pro-life? Could you be friends with someone who owns guns if you are anti-guns? Could you be friends with a hunter if you are a vegan? Could you be friends with someone you found out carried a gun in their jacket at all times? Could you be friends with someone who thinks all guns in hands of civilians is wrong? Could you be friends with someone who believes in a god if you are an atheist? Could you be friends with an atheist if you believe in God?

Some of my friends are adamant that the answer is no. If they can’t respect someone’s entire belief system, they can’t be friends. They often defend that view point by saying they are defending their personal freedom or the rights of others. To me, that feels like I’d be insisting I’m right about everything and missing out on lots of great people who’ve had different experiences that have led them to different viewpoints. By having diversity in my friendships, I’m more likely to be able to help us come up with solutions to some of the very difficult problems our world is facing.

Where do you draw the line?

Originally published on Medium.

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8 ways companies have influenced open source software

A decade ago, I researched and gave a talk called Would you do it again for free? If you worked on an open source software project for free, and a company started paying you to work on it, if they stopped paying you, would you stop working on it? At the time it was a valid question as many of my friends were starting to get paid positions doing their dream job. In case you are curious, the answer is “it depends”. Most people will stop working on that particular project but most will go on to work on other open source software projects. You can watch versions of the talks and see links to the research studies I found.

My new question is how have c0mpanies influenced open source software over the past decade? They’ve influenced open source software in many ways from career opportunities to support to licensing to barriers to entry. Let’s take a look at 8 ways companies have changed open source software.

Careers

They have provided paid positions and enabled people to pursue their passions for 40+ hours/week. While most open source software advocates believe that full time jobs working on open source software is awesome, many also worry that company’s priorities now greatly influence projects through the maintainers they pay.

Making it possible for open community participation to be part of a job, rather than necessarily being a personal lifestyle choice — Nick Coghlan ‏@ncoghlan_dev

It’s worth noting that, in addition to salaries, companies also provide much better research into what paying users want as well as roles such as UX and product marketing — they provide a complete software ecosystem as we discuss below.

While many open source software developers make a living working on open source software, most projects could still use many additional paid staff. Nadia Eghbal in her research funded by the Ford Foundation argues that we do not pay enough of the open source software maintainers.

Barrier to entry

Companies have changed the barriers to entry. In some cases it’s harder — for example, committers, especially product owners, are expected to work full time on projects.

an increase in # of new open source devs with no community experience, an acceptance of a high bar to get started… — Dave Neary ‏@nearyd

Without a paid position, it is hard to keep up with expectations and grow and support a community. In other cases, companies have made it easier for a more diverse group of people to join open source software projects by hiring people unfamiliar with the project and giving them time and training to get started.

Increased diversity

When companies hire people to work on open source software, they often hire from the greater pool of software developers and provide training and support for them. While the worldwide pool of software developers is not representative of our world’s diverse population, this paid training and assignment has increased the diversity of open source software projects. Anecdotally, I know many woman who were first introduced to open source software through a paid position.

Working styles

Companies bring new working styles to the projects that they get involved with. Some of these styles are probably more positively accepted than others. For example, when companies become involved with open source software projects, meetings and phone conferences become more prevalent. Conferences transition from weekends to work weeks.

Conferences happen midweek instead of on weekends, the assumption that leaders have 40h to spend on project… — Dave Neary ‏@nearyd

I also believe companies introduced concepts like agile, pair programming and six week training “dojos” such as the ones Cloud Foundry has. In order to become a committer, a Cloud Foundry contributor attends a 6 week dojo in person where they are partnered with experienced committers. Cloud Foundry does all of its coding in pairs. Work is assigned to pairs by a project manager.

Rights

Companies have shifted the predominate licensing methods from copyleft to more permissive licensing. And while they’ve cleaned up much of the copyright assignments, they’ve also often introduced controversial committer licensing agreements, CLA’s.

it has widened the governance models, with mixed results, CAs held by corporations is a controversial development — Alberto Ruiz ‏@acruiz

Complete software ecosystem

Companies have brought new knowledge and skill sets to open source software such as UX designers, product managers, market research and product marketing. Open source software on its own has not attracted many volunteer into these roles.

Loss of a unifying enemy

Much of the energy behind some of the early open source software projects seemed to center around an anti-corporate sentiment and in particular, an anti-Microsoft sentiment.

Loss of sw corporations as a enemies of freedom has led to loss of cohesiveness as a group. — Alberto Ruiz ‏@acruiz

As more open source software contributors receive paychecks from these corporations, and as more corporations support open source software, this anti-corporate sentiment is fading.

Support

As Nadia Eghbal describes in her research for the Ford Foundation, many open source software projects are not able to provide support for their projects. Often well established projects are maintained by a few individuals who are not full time on the project. Heartbleed is one of the most famous, recent examples of how this can be an issue. Heartbleed was a bug discovered in the OpenSSL project. A project used by most of the world and at that time supported by one paid staff member. The Linux Foundation stepped in and raised money from companies and used their existing infrastructure to provide support to four paid committers.

Apache, Eclipse, Linux: Companies giving up control to #FOSS #Foundations and allowing open governance to work. — Shane Curcuru ‏@shanecurcuru

Support for open source software projects varies from, a company paying the salary of a maintainer or two to a non-profit organization dedicated to the project to non-profit organization that collect funding from multiple sources to support multiple projects.

For better or worse, I would say community vs. commercial versions. Also paid support as desired by corp/govt users. — Tony Wasserman ‏@twasserman

Summary

Open source software has become a predominate software methodology and companies have become more and more involved in open source software projects. They have supported and changed the way those projects work. They provide salaries to committers, support to users, change software methodology styles, complete the ecosystem with market research and UX designers, change barriers to entry and increase diversity.

How else have you seen companies influencing open source software projects?

Originally published on Medium.

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“Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.”

While I don’t agree with everything Sebastian Junger writes in Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, I love the way he manages to articulate some things that I’ve noticed but never been able to describe.

Just last weekend I was camping, and we had this torrential rain storm. People rushing to get their boats off the water were hurrying so much that they lost their boats off the trailers. Rain came down so hard and quick, it broke tent poles and tents literally floated away. People had to dig trenches to get water out of their campsites. And it was fun. Granted, my sleeping spot was completely dry, so I speak from a position of privilege. But everybody getting together to help make sure people were ok, finding ways to keep important things dry, finding dry places for people to sleep and ways to feed everyone, that was fun. There was a real feel of community. Of adventure. Of responsibility.

When I tell people it was fun, they give me this look and then I end up back peddling, trying to describe what I mean. Sebastian Junger describes it well. He talks about how social bonds are reinforced during disasters and “that people overwhelmingly devoted their energies toward the good of the community rather than just themselves”. Social differences and economic inequalities are temporarily irrelevant, at least until outside aid comes in.

Communities that have been devastated by natural or man-made disasters almost never lapse into chaos and disorder; if anything, they become more just, more egalitarian, and more deliberately fair to individuals. — Sebastian Junger

The same thing happens to our veterans. They join a community that’s closely knit, that trains, sleeps and eats together. They are placed in high stress combat situations where they work together regardless of background or previous social differences. Where they all have a job, they are all needed and they all work together. Ask a veteran you know about their “team”, about the people that served with them. Most of them have told me they’ll never be that close to any other group of people in their lives.

Then we bring them home. To this super loose knit society. One where not many of us are needed beyond our immediate family. One where our purpose in life, our job, is not often clear. Or doesn’t feel like our job fits into a higher purpose. As Junger says, “part of the trauma of war seems to be giving it up.”

We all need to feel like we are part of a tribe. We need to feel connected to other people and we need to feel like our work is meaningful, that it helps others.

Just yesterday I read an article in the New York Times that theorizes that we can get teenagers to eat healthier by getting them to contribute to a cause as a community: “as students work together towards a shared purpose, the impulse to resist authority fades.”

So is modern society broken? Does it make people feel unnecessary? What tribes do you belong to? During what moments do you feel most useful and connected? What moments make you feel like your life has the most purpose?

I am also doing a series of 22 pushups for 22 days to raise awareness for veteran suicides.

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Our World Depends on Unseen Labor: Open Source Software

Our digital infrastructure is all open source. It’s built and maintained by a relatively small community of open source software developers. Right now the open source software work is funded by a variety of methods: volunteer time, nonprofit corporations and donations of time and money by a few corporations. Is that sustainable? Or should we be looking for ways to fund our digital infrastructure much like we do our roads and bridges through government or community efforts? This is the question that Nadia Eghbal poses in her very comprehensive paper covering her research funded by the Ford Foundation.

About a year ago, at the recommendation of a friend, I met with Nadia Eghbal. Diane Tate introduced her as someone “who recently left her role in venture capital to explore ways to support developers working on early infrastructure projects.” We had a fascinating conversation. Nadia was trying to expand the venture capital world and when she went looking for projects that venture capital doesn’t fund but that really need funding, she found the world of open source. In particular, she found that the infrastructure behind most of our current technology is based on open source software maintained by a small community of developers. Some of them work for nonprofits that pay their salary (like the Linux Foundation now sponsors OpenSSL), others have corporate patrons who pay the salary of maintainers who work on projects they use (like HPE and Google) and others are completely volunteer based.

Nadia believes that our policy makers, grantmakers and activists are unaware of the role that open source software plays and, when they have heard of it, they erroneously believe that it’s well funded. As an example, the IRS is no longer granting 501(c)(3) status to organizations that primarily produce open source software with the argument that software is not a public good and they can’t guarantee that people won’t profit from it.

Nadia’s report, funded by the Ford Foundation, is a great read. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about open source software, how it works and how it’s funded. Warning: it is very long! Think about it more as a short book than a blog post!

Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure

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Don’t let the medical industry own your death

When my grandmother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, we were all told to come visit immediately. By the time I got there, they had already given her a dose of chemotherapy. I was furious. Why do you give a dying 80 year old person a dose of chemotherapy? She never got out of bed again.

I could not understand why the doctors had given her the option of chemotherapy. She wasn’t expected to live more than a few weeks with or without it.

My family explained that this was my grandmother’s choice. She wanted the chemo. She wanted any chance she had to live longer. I was delighted she wanted to fight. And I selfishly wanted to be able to hang out with her during her final days.

What I didn’t understand at the time was that doctors have as hard a time as the rest of us talking about death. They probably have an even harder time “giving up” and accepting that there’s not really anything medicine can do to cure someone. Informative doctors want to give you all the choices and explaining the reality of your situation is hard. Maybe they did explain to my grandmother that the chemo wouldn’t prolong her life much, maybe they explained her quality of life would decrease and maybe she wan’t able to hear them because she wasn’t ready to give up on any chance no matter how small.

Reading Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal gave me a lot more insight and understanding into both our society’s way of handling death. He said we’ve given our end of life process to medicine. And doctors are not trained to understand what a patient most wants (like the ability to continue to eat chocolate or talk to your grandkids) but rather to either try to extend their life or to give them all the medical options without helping them weigh what those options mean within their choices. We are letting the medical field decide how we will live our last days. They may be able to help, but they are not in the business of figuring out how you want to live and then facilitating that. Instead they tell you what medical options you have and try to do the most they can to prolong your life even at the expense of comfort or quality of life. And there’s rarely a time when doctors can’t do something more. They can insert feeding tubes, try experimental drugs, remove parts of tumors, but those things might not always help you live the life you want.

Atul Gawande’s message really resonated with me when — while reading his book! — I called an ambulance for someone who didn’t want one. They clearly said they did not want an ambulance and did not want to go to the emergency room. I could not in good conscious not call an ambulance. They weren’t in a position to stop me from calling one, so I called for one but it weighed on me. I was reading a book about how we should be able to choose the medical care we want and I clearly went against someone’s wishes. Atul Gawande says this is a natural conflict, “We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love.” (In my defense, I did not think they were capable in that moment to evaluate whether they needed an ambulance or not. One of my friends suggested just waiting until the person passes out and then its complied consent. I figured that was even worse. Looking forward, if someone you know is likely to be in that position, ask them their wishes ahead of time. Unfortunately, we don’t usually have that option until someone is clearly ill.)

“We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love.” — Atul Gawande

He recommended this set of questions for helping people decide on treatment options:

What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes?
What are your fears and what are your hopes?
What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make?
And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?

An example of a trade-off might be, are you willing to risk being in a wheel chair in order to get rid of some of the pain? Are you willing to lose your sense of taste to see if this chemotherapy will work?

In particular, I thought his trick of asking “what’s the longest anyone has lived with this treatment” instead of “how long do you expect me to live” was a very good one. He said “Sixty-three percent of doctors overestimated their patient’s survival time. Just 17 percent underestimated it. The average estimate was 530 percent too high. And the better the doctors knew their patients, the more likely they were to err.”

Throughout the book, Atul Gawande used very personal examples of family members and friends who were faced with difficult end of life decisions. He described cases where he thought he could have done better and cases where he helped people make the right decisions. The best, most difficult ones seemed to be the ones that didn’t pursue every chance medicine could offer.

As for my grandmother, we brought her home and worked with hospice. She died in her own bedroom surrounded by all her children and grandchildren. While I’m sure she was not ready to go, I’m sure that’s how she would have chosen to go.

I recommend reading Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.

Originally published on Medium.

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The Culture of Poverty

I am not an expert in poverty nor in economic culture. If there are any mistakes in this post, I likely understood it incorrectly. I hope that this post inspires you to go learn more about the social groups in our society and how we can all work more effectively together.

bridgesoutofpoverty

Bridges out of Poverty taught by Jodi Pfarr was a fascinating class about how the cultures of individuals living in the middle class is different than individuals living in poverty.

For individuals in poverty, values are centered around relationships. Titles are not important. Relationships you have with people are where you place your trust.  Life is focused on the present and problems are all interlocking. Individuals in poverty spend time worrying about things like child care, housing, agencies and transportation.

An example Jodi gave of relationship based values was to take the situation where a little girl is starting school. Her older brother takes her around and introduces her to people. When he gets to the janitor, he says the janitor is good people. His sister listens and understands that the janitor is someone to be trusted. If that little girl is having trouble in school, who do you think will have more influence on getting her to do her homework, the principal or the janitor? The janitor, according to Jodi, because she’s trusted.

For individuals in the middle class, values are centered around achievement. Trust is placed with those with titles – they trust the principal, they trust the judge, they trust the police officer based on their position, not because they know them. Individuals in the middle class trust or at least respect and listen to people with the appropriate titles. Those are the people they go to for help. Life is achievement based, future focused and problems are contained. Their sister’s kid getting sick will not keep them from going to work. Middle class individuals spend time thinking about cost of childcare and education, retirement, credit card debt and careers.

Jodi also touched briefly on individuals living in wealth. Their values are centered around connections: political, financial and social. They are generational focused and problems are controlled. They spend time thinking about things like associations, travel, events and politics.

Understanding that people in different wealth brackets have different cultures, not just different problems, you can develop better systems that realize that these are systematic issues not individual choice. Jodi gave examples of how this understanding had greatly improved services for individuals in poverty. For example, a set of judges decided to try doing a first come, first serve system on Fridays. They reduced warrants by 70%! The theory was that individuals in poverty have difficulty with transportation and often have to adjust their schedule to help out others (or their own ride disappears). It’s easier for them to pick a day and show up when they can and wait as long as needed than it is for them to make it at 8:15 on a particular Wednesday. People in the middle class find that extremely inconvenient and often fail to understand why it works better for people in poverty. If we include representatives from all groups as we make policies and seek to understand and not judge, we can make systems that are much more effective.

The class was taught by Jodi Pfarr who did an excellent job of explaining both the culture and values of middle class versus poverty. The class was aimed at people who provide services for those in poverty, mostly non-profits and government agencies, and almost all middle class people. In Fort Collins, Colorado, this class is occasionally offered for free to the public by the Bohemian Foundation.

Additional Reading:

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10 thoughts inspired by Always Hungry?

First published on Medium.

Always Hungry? by David Ludwig is yet another diet book but one written by a respected doctor specializing in obesity in children. I really enjoyed several articles about Dr Ludwig and his ideas, so I was expecting something more from the book but all I got additional was lots of recipes.

  1. Dr Ludwig, like many others, blames sugar and refined grains for many of our health problems. I like how he explained it and provided supporting science and studies, but if this is why you are reading the book, I recommend Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. Dr Ludwig does do a good job of explaining inflammation, blood sugar and fat storage in a way that people without medical backgrounds might understand.
  2. I love his point that the process of getting fat makes you eat more, not the other way around.
  3. I hate reading cook books on the Kindle. Actually, I just hate reading cook books. I think you should search for recipes or ideas for recipes, not read them.
  4. The advice for how to eat healthy seems pretty consistent these days — avoid processed foods, refined grains and sugar — and just as hard to follow.
  5. He focused more on waist size than weight and only recommended weighing yourself once a week as opposed to most people’s recommendation to weigh yourself daily.
  6. His supporting quotes and stories were all about people who had lost 5–20 pounds instead of the tons of weight most diet books claim.
  7. New studies seem to be consistently saying that exercise is good but exercise makes you eat more, not less. I really wonder what we’ll be saying a decade from now.
  8. He doesn’t really talk about overweight kids at all in spite of his background.
  9. If I could not eat carbs, I’m sure I would lose weight. I would also be really sick of eggs and chicken and meat. And while I like vegetables and fruit, I just can’t imagine them replacing pasta.
  10. Unlike Atkins, Dr. Ludwig recommends lots of fruits and vegetables and eventually some grains and carbs.

What did you end up thinking about as you read the book or these points?

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How companies like Uber and Airbnb are gamifying work

First published on Medium.

Companies with the newer “sharing economy” business models are gamifying work. They are making people work hard in ways that resemble how they play video games.

To better understand this, I compare their models to the components of a game as given by Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal:

  1. Goal: A game has a very specific outcome, a sense of purpose. Where as at work you might wonder what the purpose is, in a game it’s usually very clear what you are trying to do.
  2. Rules: In a game there are clear limitations on how you are supposed to accomplish the goal. These limitations make it really clear where people can experiment encouraging creativity and strategy. At work, the limitations are often not clear. Maybe you can ask for more budget, maybe another department will help you, maybe …
  3. Feedback system: all games have a scoring system or a way of knowing how close you are to the goal. I think this is often the most missing thing at work, especially if you don’t have a clear goal (besides making money).
  4. Voluntary participation: everyone who is playing the game knows and accepts the goal, rules and feedback. This allows people to play together and makes it safe and fun as you always have the freedom to leave.

Companies like Airbnb and Uber have all these components, and people have fun trying to see if they can gain new levels and statuses. I recently talked to an Airbnb host who is obsessed with making “Super Host” status.

Here’s how these new sharing economy models compare to games.

  1. A goal. With the sharing economy businesses, your goal is very clear. With Uber you want lots of rides, or maybe money from rides. With Airbnb you want lots of guests. The goal, what the business and the app are all about, are obvious.
  2. Rules. With the sharing economy businesses, the apps make it very clear what the rules are. They make it clear what you are supposed to do. For example, pick up a client at this address and take them to this address.
  3. Feedback. Both of these systems, and many like them, excel at feedback. Uber has every driver and every rider rate each other before they are allowed to do anything else. Airbnb works hard to get people to rate each other and gives Super Host status to those that maintain high ratings. At Grace Hopper, I went to a talk by an Airbnb data scientist where she talked about the ways they try to make feedback more honest. They’ve made lots of changes (like not letting hosts and guests see each others’ reviews until after they both have left one) to encourage more and more honest reviews.
  4. Voluntary participation. As long as people participating in Airbnb and Uber are doing it as supplemental income or as long as there are alternatives like HomeAway.com and Lyft, people can leave whenever they want. I tried driving Uber one afternoon and decided it wasn’t for me. The “game” is fun because the people playing it got to choose to leave if they didn’t like it.

What do you think? Do you think the new “sharing economy” businesses are gamifying work? Is that making the world a better place? Should traditional businesses try to gamify work as well?