 So, let's start with where babies come from. Now, I just like to start with something kind of fun and casual. Okay, who has not heard of Calvin and Hobbes? I was going to say this is probably one of those universally known things. But, you know, that's why we come and learn. And now you can learn about Calvin and Hobbes. It's a really great comic strip. You should really, if you have a chance. And this is one of my favorites because at the end of it, Hobbes finds out that Calvin is from Taiwan. And I am made in Taiwan. So that's when I was born. But between then and now, I've lived in three different continents. So first from Taiwan, I moved to Singapore when I was very young. And then after spending most of my kind of formative years in Singapore, I moved to US for my college to study in a university. And then I started working for Nokia over there and got transferred to Finland. So that's where I'm based currently in Finland. And I've actually lived more than a decade each in these three countries. So I won't give any more numbers. You can roughly know how I'm not young anymore, but anyway. So I've worked for these few companies. Well, I mean, I've done, you know, kind of internship in the university and in some smaller companies, but these are the major ones I worked for. And I started off as a software engineer and I've done, you know, everything from the technical side to the business side to kind of process operations. So and if you want to find me on Twitter, Facebook, diaspora, Macedon, I'm Saibat, you can search for that. So that's something, just a brief intro about me. So, okay, given that, I'm not saying like I'm fully qualified to talk about true cultural diversity, but I think with some of my experiences in the different, quite different cultural backgrounds, perhaps I can give some kind of insights or, you know, reasoning of why you might see certain things or how, why is that person thinking that way and, you know, maybe provide more understanding that way. So let's look at some meanings, definitions to kind of frame what I'm talking about here. This was actually last year at Red Hat Summit. I was looking through the different talks, abstracts to find out what are interesting and I picked out these two sessions on gender diversity, both talking about women in open source. And what struck me was like, they both seem to be quoting quite similar statistics about how many, you know, how was the percentage of women participating in open source. But actually quite different numbers. One says 11% are women participating in open source and then the one says only 3%. So I think, not saying that each one is right or wrong, but I wish I had a chance to go to these talks. I'm sure they will have quoted the source of where they got this information from, but I was also having a booth to look after so I wasn't able to attend all the talks. However, I just want to bring to the point that the source, the context and the definitions are usually important when you talk about numbers, data, metrics and things like that. For example, what do you mean by participants? Is it someone who, say, come to conferences like this? Is it someone who writes code? Is it someone who design logos and graphics? Are they all considered participants or not? So again, like these studies and surveys, how do they define these things is very important. So since we're talking about openness, so I went to find some definitions about openness. So this is what I found in a dictionary, which is like a weak key version of dictionary. And the first one is, says, accommodating attitude. So as in being receptive to new ideas, behaviors, cultures and so on. So this is like having an open mind. And then the second one is lack of secrecy, candor, transparency. So this is about sharing, sharing ideas, sharing, not keeping secrets. And then the third one is probably something we're more familiar with. Accessible viewing code, modifying computer code, so open source code. So all these are slightly different definitions, and they are all available in the wiki page, dictionary page, which is open to modification if you're interested. So another definition of openness. And before I start this time travel through my experiences, I just want to kind of make a disclaimer. I'm not in any way saying all Singaporeans behave this way or Americans or even all Finns that I've interacted with are like that, but as with any kind of culture, there are reasons or what people are used to that might affect the way they behave, the way they think, the way they interact. So just based on my experiences, and maybe you can find something interesting and learn something from it. Okay, I always lose where my notes are. So a long time ago. A long, long time ago. This is actually my high school. Yes, we wear uniforms over there. And this is a computer science class. So you can see very few girls, actually the two in the middle are teachers, they're not students. One was a math teacher, one was a physics teacher, I think. But anyway, so the rest of us in uniform are the students in this class. The teachers have heels, yeah. That's true. And I know we had rules about the trainers cannot be fancy colored. It has to be a certain height. So that's kind of the environment where I grew up in. And I mean, you know, this is quite a while ago. I'm sure things might have changed. And definitely, you know, this is from Singapore, things could be different in many other Asian countries. So but what my experience is, as always, we try to be good students. And when I say this, sometimes I get like a reaction is, we call PD Justice Homework a lot. So I know I'm not saying that the teachers or anyone officially encouraged it. But in back in that time and where I was studying homework or assignments, make up a large percentage of the final grade could be like up to 30% or something. So it's not just you knowing the material and passing the final exams. It's, you know, they want to make sure that you are doing a lot of work to get that. And we actually thought, you know, some of us are, some people are stronger in math, some people are stronger in physics or whatever, and we can kind of share homework. We can, somebody will do, you know, whatever they're good in and then let the other person copy off of it. And we do think of it as a bad thing so much because there are still the final exams or midterms or whatever, different kinds of tests and quizzes and exams. And even if you copy it without understanding, you won't do well in the exams. So, you know, it's still up to you to kind of understand the work and make sure you, you know, you're not just copying blindly. And also at that time it's not as easy to control A, control C, control V to, you know, copy your homework. It's really about, you know, writing and copying pages of stuff. So through that you probably will also learn something. So all these like, we just really felt like it was more of a social, mutual, encouraging thing rather than a bad thing. And there was also things like, a class is like a literature class where we study things like Shakespeare and rap poems. And at that time we're given, I was given an impression at least that there's only like one or two acceptable answers. It's not really about what you think about a certain piece of work or how you interpret it. It's like either the teacher or some, there's some kind of a model answer that you should kind of remember and just kind of reproduce that during the exams. So it's a lot of kind of just having that knowledge and reproducing that during the exams. So good or bad, I don't know this, you know, arguable. But another thing that kind of looking back now, I found it quite surprising was during one of the computer science tests, I had something pretty close to a full grade like maybe 98% out of 100. And then when the teacher gave out like the sample solution, he actually just took my exam paper and then made a copy and gave it out to everyone. Now thinking back, I'm like, he didn't even ask for my permission. But at that time it was like, wow, he did that because when we were at that environment it's like you're usually copied things from people you respect because they have the knowledge, they have the understanding, they are the expert in the area. So again, I'm not trying to make excuses for my copying stuff, but that was how we kind of understood things. That was how our world growing up in that school environment. All right. And then that moved to the US for my undergraduate studies in computer science. And besides the computer science classes I had to attend, you know, like Texas History, I was in Dallas, Texas by the way, and government and things like that, things that was like totally new to me and I was really scared. But you know, like back in Singapore it's like if I just went home and studied the material and did my exams, I will get a good grade in past. But in the US I was like looking at the kind of course syllabus and it said 20% of the grade class participation. It's like, oh my goodness. Like what? And that's not even the most shocking thing. The next thing was like in class, people just kind of are encouraged to voice their opinions very loudly, sometimes interrupting the teacher and disagreeing with the teacher. I'm like, oh my God, mind blown. This actually is possible. You know, like there was a huge culture shock to me in the first couple of years when I was studying the US. And so, yeah, I was thinking to myself, these people are really rude, but now I come to understand this is how they were kind of brought up in their education system to be outspoken, to voice their own opinion. It doesn't have to be, and usually they are encouraged not to have same opinion. It's like, you know, it's quite different. So there was just some meetup in the San Francisco area and it's very common to just have people kind of gathering together and sharing ideas and things like that. And then I compared to, well, this is of course fictional, but it's like, we need more people who are eager to participate, but we don't, I mean, do we have to have people to ask permission? I guess it depends on what kind of permission you are looking for. But that was kind of my idea of how participation was like growing up. I have to raise my hand, get, okay, you can answer now and then speak my mind. And usually try to not antagonize the teacher or something. So quite a different mindset at least. And then I moved to Finland after somehow graduating with my computer science degree. So by the way, I did badly for all those general courses. I only excelled in my technical math and computer science classes because those are the things I understand and it fits my mode of thinking. And then I moved to a place where nobody talked. Well, that's not true, but it takes a while for things to warm up. But I noticed that it doesn't mean that they are not social or they don't come together and help each other out. So there's this thing called Daogot, which in Finland it means kind of people coming together with a common cause, with a common go in mind and just kind of help each other out. Okay, and yeah, that's what I was looking for. Communal work, like coming together, do something for the greater good of the community or of the society or city or whatever. They may not talk much, but they share in the effort. And so like I was trying to update the slides because I've given a similar talk before. So this is a picture from just earlier this week. So this is kind of one of my understanding of why people don't talk so much. You spend too much energy trying to keep warm. You don't waste your energy on small talk. I mean, even the ducks, I don't know why they are all on the snow because I think the water is probably warmer at this point. But maybe they are sharing body heat or something. I don't know. Sound is huge in Finland. It's really about that. And even talk much, you can still kind of share that moment together. So yeah, another one which I saw an article recently which later I found out is actually two years ago but it talked about the friendly countries. I think they ranked about 60 countries. And the first is Costa Rica. And Finland is like, I don't know, 59 or something. And even Czech Republic is like 40, 45 I think. But the thing is, I went to Costa Rica for a vacation a couple of weeks. People were friendly. They made me feel welcome and everything. People were nice to talk to. But I didn't get, nobody got my contact to stay in touch or anything. So I can't say I have a friend from Costa Rica. But I have a lot of friends in Finland and in Czech Republic. So a thing about statistics and information, things like that, it can be taken as like a kind of broad view of things but definitely not the definition of what people are like from each of these countries. And I definitely encourage people to, I say WTF, welcome to Finland and learn about the people in the culture who is really, really lovely. And I'm happy to be their ambassador. If they are not willing to talk, I'll talk for them. So all right, I got lost. Where are my Finnish ducks? And also this map is really bad. I grew up in Singapore, which is like what here? And that's like, it's supposed to be above the equator, but that's like two thirds of the way down. So totally inaccurate. Ignore this. I just wanted to update my slides. Okay, so like my first third of my life, I was like open sourcing my homework. The second part of my life, we open source opinions and ideas and things like that. And the third part, kind of in Finland, open sourcing, I guess, effort and kind of working together, body heat, whatever. So not saying that that's the only thing people share and be open about in those areas, kind of the emphasis. So I actually kind of saw all this coming together for me when I was more involved in open source projects, which is really cool because, well, first of all, all these, a lot of these huge events are, if not entirely, very much majority volunteer driven. So here you have the coming together of, you know, doing work together, sharing effort. So that was from my first foster in 2013. I'll be going for my sixth or seventh next week. I hope to see some of you there. Fast Asia, also really huge event. I went first time two years ago. I'm going again this year. And of course that's called my third one and really enjoying it. So, you know, so there's this whole effort coming together. There is also definitely a sharing of so-called homework, which means like, for example, we share things like the process of, if somebody has experience in organizing an event, I always, you know, can refer to get information from the person, how do you do it? And you know, sharing like the code of conduct and of course with the proper creative comments or licensing plays, you can, you know, make use of that. And also there's also the sharing of opinions because we all know open source community is very opinionated. We have a lot of strong opinions, good opinions. And I think we are not afraid to have the different opinions but still kind of work together to either resolve it or come to kind of some kind of a conclusion. I think it's one of the reasons why we have, say, different distros or different kind of versions of software doing similar tasks. But that's not necessarily a bad thing because with open source we can do that. You know, we are not restricted by proprietary or private or any other kind of restrictive processes and licenses to, you know, have that openness to be able to do that. So, all right, I think I have only a few minutes left. Talking about communication and culture, a lot of times, especially in such a diverse conferences or communities, English may not be the first language for a lot of people. Actually, for me, I would like to say that music is my first language. I've played in orchestras and bands since I was, before I was able to speak, I think. So, like, I'm in Finland, I play in an orchestra, I don't speak much Finnish, but I can still kind of make music with the people because that's the common kind of understanding. So, and things like languages evolve through time as well. Like, this tweet said, you know, somebody saw the chateau in F hashtag because they thought the sharp sign is hashtag. So, you know, like, I think the key is to just kind of share and explain. You know, instant hashtag is something else, but, you know, if you don't explain it, people might have the misunderstanding. So, as we talk about communication tools, a lot of times I find communities having a hard time deciding, you know, which tool is the best. Should we stick to RRC? Should we use Slack? Because everyone else is using Slack now. I mean, of course, you want to find the best fit tool for your community. Is it where most people are at? That's important. But I would say, like, don't sweat it too much. I mean, each tool has pros and cons. I'm sure that there's one that kind of majority people like it. And then what is good, is important also is to provide some alternatives because there are people who, you know, just can't, not used to RRC. And that's fine. You know, it doesn't... I've used it forever, so I'm comfortable with it, but I understand not everyone is. So, you know, provide alternatives, other means of reaching out. Events and face-to-face is always a great way to do that. So, focus on the communication. There's this two-way thing, you know, we talk about sharing, we talk about being receptive to open ideas. So it's definitely not just one or the other. It's, you know, listen. So receiving, speak, sharing, and repeat. And I say use broken English with pride because I believe that broken English is the most broken English, type of English in the world. And I don't have a source for that, but it's just based on my observation. So... So, and to just conclude, there's really no secret to understanding different cultures. There's really just being aware and talk to people, understand, you know, why do you think that way or what makes, influence your decision and things like that. And so be kind of, be open to sharing your views as well and be receptive to other people. And I conclude with a little tidbit from my dad. I talk with him a lot about what I do at work and I was doing this presentation last year and he just kind of thought a bit and said, openness enables connectivity for cultural diversity. Which is so true, true, because I mean, he's, I'm already not young and he's a lot older. Sorry dad, but he's true. And also for him to see, I think initially he'd understand like, why are we, you know, sharing our whole lives on social media and blogs and whatever. But now he was open to the idea that, you know, this is kind of how people change with the times and he discovers that, you know, because also we live in different countries that me sharing stuff means he has access to what I'm doing day to day in my life and things like that. And he's learned to appreciate that. So, you know, openness in the best sense is really very enabling and powerful for not just open source communities but our lives as a whole. And I think my time is up, so thank you for that. And I put the mascot for Managed IQ here whose name is George. I have a Managed IQ booth which is between the pulp and the video booths in the area. And welcome to, because I think we're short on time so welcome to talk to me there ask your questions and get some stickers, some swag. So, thank you.