Sustain - Episodes Tagged with “Community”

Episode 47: People and Relationships with Matt Asay

SustainOSS — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 04:00:00 -0400

Hello and welcome to Sustain! On today's episode, we have special guest, Matt Asay, Cloud and open source executive with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Matt tells us how his office is different from the Open Source program office. We will learn all about his career and his HTML5 start-up Strobe that was acquired by Facebook. Also, Matt talks about some interesting things he's learned from interviewing project maintainers and it has to do with the importance of being nice, kind, and welcoming.

Download this episode now for some great inspiration and advice.

[00:00:58] Matt tells us the difference between the two offices and teams and also how he ended up in his role.

[00:05:09] With the focus on what your customers are doing, Justin asks Matt how does how does he address the controversies like the MongoDB API and all that other stuff and what is he doing to combat that?

[00:12:22] Here we will hear all about Matt's impressive career and his HTML5 start-up Strobe acquired by Facebook.

[00:16:59] Matt tells us about interviewing project maintainers and things that have stood out during the interview process after talking to them.

[00:25:00] Matt explains what the key to sustainability is and he goes into risk sustainability.

[00:28:10] Richard gives some really good feedback on Matt's answer on how he solves problems and Matt says he is going to steal one of his answers.

[00:32:39] Richard asks Matt what is he doing with his team, what do your partnerships look like with CouchDB and Confluent, and what are you doing to make sure that the work you have lasts beyond you?

[00:37:48] Matt tells us where we can find out more about him on the internet.

Spotlight:

[00:39:30] Justin's spotlight is arweave.org.
[00:39:56] Richard's spotlight is the IPFS stack.
[00:40:30] Matt's spotlight is an interview he did with Hugh "Jim" Bailey at OBS (Open Broadcaster Software).

Panelists:

Richard Littauer
Justin Dorfman

Guest:

Matt Asay

Quotes:

[00:06:00] "So I've always worked for those companies. It's always been an easy marketing sell for me to talk about that. But, with AWS it's different."

[00:06:46] "The whole open source definition is around distributing software, but we're not distributing software anymore. It's being consumed as a service over the internet."

[00:07:35] "I used to work at MongoDB. I love MongoDB. It's one of the best working experiences I've ever had."

[00:10:42] "I have a lot of respect for people, these virtuoso engineers who develop great software. But I have just as much respect for those who can operationalize and make that software easy so that customers don't have to worry about how they're going do maintenance on my SQL, as an example."

[00:16:16] "If you want to successful you've got to figure out how to work with people."

[00:17:54] "You reflect the kind of community that you will encourage. And so, if you're a jerk, then you're going to struggle."

[00:18:03] "This is their free time. They're volunteers. They don't have to show up and be abused by you."

[00:20:17] "In general, life's too short to be dealing with mean people all the time."

[00:20:32] "If you're rude to those volunteers they're going to go elsewhere, and in open source, those contributors are your most valuable asset."

[00:25:00] "So I think one of the keys to sustainability has to be community."

[00:27:44] "I think that's something we need to figure out because open source is only getting more and more significant with more and more dependencies on it."

*Links: *

Credits

Produced by Justin Dorfman
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound

Special Guest: Matt Asay.

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Episode 35: Why The Drupal Community Cares with Rachel Lawson

SustainOSS — Fri, 08 May 2020 04:00:00 -0400

Panelists

Justin Dorfman | Allen “Gunner” Gunn | Richard Littauer

Guest

Rachel Lawson
Drupal Association

Show Notes

In this episode, we have Rachel Lawson, from the U.K., who is the Community Liaison for Drupal Association. She is going to tell you all about the Drupal Association, what role she plays, and what she does. Since DrupalCon has been canceled due to COVID-19, there are some major things going on with sponsors that are still contributing money, the founder of Drupal making an unbelievable donation, as well as some other campaigns and match donations happening!

[00:01:08] Rachel explains about working with Drupal in the U.K. and also talks about how many people are using Drupal to power their websites.

[00:02:50] Justin has noticed that Drupal has a very big adoption within government, and he wonders why is that? Is it a security thing? Rachel answers this.

[00:04:14] Rachel tells us how Drupal gets paid as an open source product. She also talks about what’s been going on since DrupalCon has been canceled in May.

[00:10:37] There is a list of sponsors that are still contributing money to Drupal, despite the event being canceled, and a HUGE SHOUT OUT is necessary to them, so please see the list below! ☺

[00:012:01] The Founder of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, made an unbelievable donation and Rachel talks about what it was and how it affected everything. It is AMAZING!! There have been some other match donations mentioned as well.

[00:16:16] Governance is brought up by Gunner and he wants to know the civilian’s version of how governance at Drupal works and how the decision-making works that others could learn from and Rachel explains.

[00:23:00] Rachel explains her role with Drupal and what she does.

[00:25:00] How does someone join the Drupal open source community and how does Drupal capture all the contributors, not just the Devs? Rachel explains.

Spotlight

[00:33:01] Justin’s spotlight is The Ruby Blend Podcast-Episode 9. Listen to it!
[00:33:49] Gunner has two spotlights: Qubes OS and Subgraph OS and the Tails Project (tails.boum.org).
[00:34:39] Richard’s spotlight is the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation).
[00:35:33] Rachel has two spotlights: A pub in Leeds, Yorkshire where she was attending a Drupal event. It made her reflect back to being there before and how much it changed her life. Also, OS FEST in Lagos, Nigeria, that she recently attended. It was a huge experience for her and truly incredible.

Quotes

[00:20:54] “We’ve been going through a process at Drupal association about raising money and we have a campaign on at the moment called Drupal cares (#DrupalCares) and you will notice there is quite a lot going on with that.”

[00:23:33] “If just downloading Drupal or downloading any open source projects isn’t enough, you need the services around it, the support around it, regular security updates so where you can work on new code and have thousands and thousands of thousands of continuous integration tests run every time you say, “Hey, I propose that we do this new thing in Drupal!”

[00:25:18] “Do you want to give a shout out to those sponsors that have done that because that warmed my heart! You know, the sponsors that said, keep our money, we believe in the project, we know we won’t get any real value out of the event not being alive. Please, give them some props.” (They are listed below.) 👇

[00:40:41] “I said look, if you’re going to do this, call it a Community Liaison. It’s a liaison between the wider Drupal community and project and the Drupal Association. It was later on and I said all those things and I’m actually quite fond of the job now!”

[00:42:13] “The single most important thing we changed was that getting attribution for work doesn’t just apply to code. We celebrate, we recognize, and we attribute work for all different reasons. If there is one thing we have done that has transformed Drupal into a wider thing than just a piece of software, it’s that.”