 Okay, hi everyone. It's awesome that so many people were able to come out so early of the speaker for speaker today is Zahira Borat and she's going to be doing a talk on doing what you love every day. So I love what you do every day Thanks, Zoe Wow, well, I'm so glad so many of you have actually come today because I was expecting there would just be like three people after Was it delirium last night? Is that where everybody was hanging out? so Thanks for thanks for coming. We were just playing with the Monitors here to see we could get it projected larger, but I think we're just going to stick with this so we can Start moving. I've got a lot of information to share and So I'm going to go through this fairly rapidly. Hopefully we'll have time at the end. If not, I'll be around today Later today as well. So that's my Twitter handle and of course the FOS them Hashtag as well for any review that's on Twitter So I'm very excited to be here at foster. I've been coming here for many years I don't know how long has foster been actually going because I've been coming for like it feels like like almost 10 years and It's only been like a two-hour train ride from London So it's been, you know, one of the great sort of European open source events to kick off the year So it's it's exciting to be here and speaking here as well I was asked to share my journey in open source and What I've done so it's it's um, I guess it's not the norm. It's certainly not what I had planned and You know, I hope some of the tips and the stories that I share will help you kind of think about your careers and The direction your careers are going in and hopefully find some of the opportunities to do what you love so as many of you know last year was 20th year for the osi and so open source was coined the term was coined over 20 years ago and That's kind of how long my career has been Almost 20 years. It will be 20 years this year And I've been an active contributor in open source since then so, you know This is the career that happened unplanned and You know as you look through this I kind of started off with open office as my first open source project I also created the Co-created with some of my colleagues at google the google summer of code program we started that in 2015 and And we created the open document format With the open office project And more recently I was at the cabinet office some of you may know the policies that governments are adopting around open standards And how open standards also enables open source to be used by governments, particularly. I think the european governments are Very focused around open standards like the dutch government and the uk government So we got a policy through the uk government that all Government information that's editable should be in open document format and that was in 2014 so that was a policy that went through And currently i'm at aws. I'm not planning to go through my whole career here, but You know as I mentioned earlier. I started In 99 with open office And I guess how many of you are open office or liber office users? Awesome, I kind of expected most of the room to have the hands up. So that's very cool So I was leading the project responsible of the project and the community and It was seven half million lines of code code that was acquired through a german organization A star division and our job was to Work on internally on what is what is the code that we can actually release What's the party code and then after we release it? How do we do open source? Remember this was 1999 year 2000 most people were only familiar with building software That was Internally closed you kind of just talked to your colleague So it was quite a transition and quite a transformation As a project To not only come up to speed in this new area of working But also Embrace kind of a global community that eventually we we developed all around the world So it was pretty exciting times and Typically and many of you working on developer tools and so you don't actually touch end users necessarily with the Projects that you're working on but with something like open office and it was firefox as well at the time We found that We were able to talk to end users as well and Even now like last year. I was at the open source summit. I was speaking in Prague And I was in a taxi and the taxi driver said to me. Oh, what is this conference you're going to? You know I've been taking a lot of people to it and I said, oh, it's about open source And you know, how do you explain open source to the average person on the street? And You know luckily the driver said oh you mean like open office and I said yes And he said yes. I'm a user of open office. So It's kind of nice that we do have Open source software that touches end users You know I was speaking in parliament and I asked everybody in the room to take out their iPhones and go to the terms and conditions and in there if you look There's a whole list of all the open source software that's actually being used on the iphone So just getting people more and more aware that you know, it touches everybody's lives right now And it's a really big deal back then it wasn't but right now it covers it, you know a whole spectrum of technologies So You know One of the important thing was having mentors because how do you teach a whole Engineering team based in germany in hamburg That are that um how to do open source and brian bellendorf. I don't know if you're Familiar with brian. He was one of the early. He was one of the apache founders And he's now the executive director for the hyper ledger the blockchain foundation and brian was very instrumental in teaching us the apache way And teaching, you know, some of the early projects the apache way You know, we didn't have GitHub back then we just had source for job and and I'm I can't look in around the room I think some of you were there with us back then as well. So I'm just kind of telling you the story to just place it in context and Yeah, we so brian's company was providing the services that Open office and a lot of the sun micro systems projects were being hosted on So we have to have hosted services to be able to host our our large projects And then at google, you know as part of this Two-person team we created this program office For open source and it was the first time there was an open source program office that really focused on Contributions and especially code contributions And we created google summer of code because We wanted to engage more new people into the community and more interns into the community and also You know Contributing and collaborate with the projects in increasing the open source code out there. So Um Right now there's about 2000 mentors on google summer of code and About 300 lines million lines of code that have been contributed. I don't know how many of you are Have were former interns or interns or mentors on gsoc. Can I see a hands show of hands? Okay, that's that's really oh one That's very surprising for the foster m crew. So if you're working on a project, I would absolutely recommend that you go check out this program and Participate as a mentor if you have a project or submit your project for Engagement and I'll talk a little bit about One of the projects that I work with and what they're doing as well, but this is you know Um As an intern you would get four and a half thousand dollars For for contributing to an open source project during the summer months for the three months and As a mentor you would have a student for that time pretty much dedicated to completing a project that you've specified so, uh, this is this is a really, uh Powerful kind of program for any open source projects. Um, actually before I go further Can I also get a show of hands of how many people are relatively new to open source? Okay. All right. That's that's cool. That's good to know. Maybe like, um, maybe like a third of the room. So So greg stein was a mentor at google and um, he also was one of the early apache members and um, You know, he helped us really build out the organization and our programs um I'm not going to go through a lot of these but pro projects, but um, one of the things I got to do was um Throughout my journey. I got to work with really inspirational people like the founders of technologies and People that were involved in the early days of open source So for example, I'm james guzzling father of java. So when I worked on net beans um, we released a version in china and um, I had an opportunity to go work in china And travel with james and one of the things we did was walk along the great wall of china. So um, of course, um, many of you are familiar with james and he currently works for amazon web services Um, the other person was vent surf While I was at google, um, he and I traveled around europe I grabbed the opportunity to learn more about what universities were doing in europe What they were teaching in terms of open source because our goal was to try and engage with the students to help include open source in some of the curriculum in universities and so I I got to travel with vint, but also, um, you know engage vint in more in kind of Open source and then open standards. So I ended up working for vint and building an open standards office at google And then another person you may be familiar with is mark shuttle earth from canonical ubuntu And as part of the work I did I got invited to kenya to speak And and mark and I spoke at the same event and we were both working on helping with education in places like kenya and The african countries as you know, he's south african and um You know one of his goals is engaging more with the african countries around technology as well and just collaborating on making a difference And you know through through our work and Working with interesting projects early stage projects as well. Um on the right On my right. Yeah is um Jim zehmelin And he's the executive director of linux foundation, but back then the linux foundation was maybe just him So it was kind of very very early days And then last but not least, you know, my first community. This is the open open office community um Over the years you're not only kind of like um work together debate issues You know build and create, you know code and content for your project But you also develop kind of a friendship and get to know each other and And some and a lot of the communities Still is in touch with each other and two of the colleagues are working for government So the dutch government and french government and you know, this may be an area that you know You may be interested in following up in but certainly a lot of government policies are Adopting open source and open standards of the french government to have some Really great policies around everything they do should be released as open source software and um There's you know, there has to be a pretty strong reason for it not to be released as open source software So, you know as open source developers as contributors to open source There's going to be more and more and tremendous opportunities for working in government environments as well so clearly a lot of this is not um something that I had planned You can't really plan for it But one of the things I did was every opportunity that came up to do something interesting to meet interesting people To work with them to volunteer I took up all of those opportunities and that's what snowballed and and led to this career. So There isn't a formula for Doing this work, right? It's a passion of mine. Um, so I have to ask you like why You know What, you know, why do I do why do I do open source? So this is this is my big reason. It's on my tour account Um, you know, it's really, you know, it would be great if what you're doing is meaningful and beneficial to the world So, um, I just want to ask the audience like what are some of the things And the reasons why you're doing open source any anyone want to shout out? No It's too early on sunday morning Well, um, okay, so, uh, I gave this conference at a talk a talk at a conference in the us And there was a lot of people showing shouting out and there were things like giving back As a reason freedom is another reason privacy Transparency somebody was doing it for political activism And just producing a better software for users and for themselves. So and those are all absolutely valid reasons You know, a lot of the times people come to the community for code And then They stay because of the of the people, right? So there are Apache and In debion, you know, they say code of a community or come for the come for the code stay for the community so, um Right now my role is head of open source strategy at aws and the reason I'm giving this talk on careers is that I've been I was in my first year I was building a team and managing a team and in doing that I ended up talking to a lot of people in the open source community and I found that um I was giving a lot of input into their careers and how they could build a career and I've also been speaking at universities in india and in africa also In terms of advice for students and motivating students. So I thought it would be an interesting topic to cover here So another another quick question. Um, how many of you think open source has won? Okay, that's Okay, that's that's like about 80 percent of the room Um, so some of the conferences I go to and it's an open source crowd um, it may end up being the whole room are It may end up being just like 30 percent Even in an open source crowd when I speak to like an enterprise audience It can only be it may end up only being 10 percent. So The perception out there in the industry Is very very varied like um, if you'd have gone to a government audience, um A couple of years back. Absolutely. Um, you know, you wouldn't get any hands going up But if you'd go to somewhere like to a french government, that's very progressive You would have a lot of hands up because they've done a lot of work within their government as well And we've been disrupting This software industry The open source community has for over 20 years now. So I mean it's everywhere It's in our devices and it's in all the market sectors and you know to the projects I'm involved in one is about Reducing poverty around the world and it's called me fos And b6 trial foundation is actually a project that's Trying to save the planet from an asteroid attack And they're also working on an open source platform. So there's a whole range of open source projects that you can get involved in Based on your interest. So You know, these are some of the headlines that we see that software is eating the world. This is a quote from mark anderson and um Here's one that um, I know jim zemlin uses from the linux foundation uses a lot saying that open source Has won and open source is eating the software world And and it didn't happen overnight. It's taken time, right? And every company that's building services in the cloud This is the important thing every company is consuming open source software. They may not know it um, and they may not know, um What to do with the fact that they're consuming open source software And everybody's trying to come up to speed on open source how to contribute How to actively participate and so there is a tremendous opportunity for every one of you that's engaged in open source To go out there and have very fulfilling careers, right? So, you know, you look at the trend here And these are numbers from the linux foundation for last year. So 23 million more than 23 million developers on github and six more than 64 million github repos and and the number of projects are You know just growing and i'm sure that numbers are a lot bigger than that now. So There's huge momentum and you know, this is the scale that we're working at in open source And at conferences, we kind of hear people like echoing back that, you know Software and open source is eating the world. So it's good news for all of you for all of us That the opportunities in open source is just going to grow And and this is a job report that shows, you know, the employees are actually looking for Expertise in, you know in cloud and web technologies In linux so and and the kind of skills that they're looking for as well So so you wouldn't have seen these numbers A few years ago, but this is growing not just in europe It's also growing in Places like india as well that i've seen One thing i haven't seen at fosdam is a jobs board And this is very typical of most of the open source Events that i go to And hopefully we'll see that at fosdam as well Where, um, you know, you can see what is available and who are the companies that are looking But you only have to go online and just do a search on open source and like every company out there, you know You know amazon's also hiring for open source positions. That's the only plug i have in this For my employer So what are the kinds of roles? You know when i was when i was at university and i admittedly it was a long time ago. I'm going to date myself now Um The there were two options one was a programmer and the other one was a systems analyst and that was it Those were the only two tracks leaving university. So, um, what are the things you can do? Besides, you know the function that you have in open source if you wanted to Look further afield These are just some of the roles that i've had working in open source, you know ranging from You know release manager to contributor Um to setting up a governance board To managing events To managing programs and creating a program like google summer of code To coming out here and educating and advocating it. So there's a whole range of um roles and Depending on the skill you have or the skills that you want to develop because a tremendous opportunity to do that within open source um, you can within projects look for people who have that skill and you think are actually um doing really well in a particular space and start partnering with them and learning from them So Actually, I was talking to somebody yesterday and um, they said that they were working on organizational and people development And and said well, i'm not sure that there's an opportunity for me in open source because i'm not a developer but you know, um this the The people skills are really hugely in demand because um open source Is just it is about people it's about people coming together to build code and build technologies And you know whenever linus gets interviewed he always says the technology part is very very easy Um, it's actually working with the people that actually becomes the biggest challenge. So, um, You know, I'm sure those of you that are experienced in open source projects are very familiar with that And you have to look around you and look at people who are very skilled in that because that is a really key piece of open source um participation so I'm going to cover the tips of working in a project and how to build your career Depending on you know, I already asked how many of you were newbies. So Given there's a third of the Room here that put the hand up I'm going to just go through those a little bit more in detail than some of the other areas So first of all, um You have to think about If you're already in projects actually, um, just a quick show of hands, how many are not involved in a project? Okay. All right. So this next bit applies to all of you Think about your um, what motivates you? What are you excited about? What are you using? Right because um, when I think of the people that came to the open office project They were they were users of open office. So they were very passionate about giving back And it was something that they could help contribute But also they could help improve it for themselves and the rest of the community So think about your interests and select your project based on that It's actually, um, I'm kind of encouraged as a whole bunch of people here That are relatively new but it's You know open sources you get back what you put into it as well as a project Within a project and within the community as well. So Not just um, not just the technologies, but also Look at the community look at I call it and evaluate the tribe And and the people so when you join a project, um, you need to look at, um How many When when people are responding writing on them on the mailing lists, are they getting responses is a project very responsive? Um, are people friendly to each other? Um, are they dismissive when you contribute if you contribute something small at the outset? How is that received? Is there willingness to accept the work that you're doing is there willingness to point you in the right direction And not just you know Go read the document and don't bother us, right? Um, is their website Um pretty well documented Do they have tasks for new joiners to the project so often projects will have like a list of You know, here's here's what what we need help with and it may be kind of in the read me file Hey, maybe here's some of the things that you could get involved in If if you're not finding Um a responsive community Oh, one other thing is to read the code of conduct And and make sure that that aligns with your values as well um So it's it's not about the just the code and contributing It's a a whole package that you need to evaluate and my first advice on anyone joining an open source project is Go on to the mailing list and do that from a couple of projects Do that for three or four projects that you're interested in and just look for a while It's perfectly perfectly okay to go on to a project and just Observe and and see kind of how the community is managed because that's going to be Um pretty important because the work that you do you will be contributing To that project and to that community Yeah, so make sure you look at the read me docs and the to do your docs and yeah, if none of these exists um go go to another project and um or If it's something you want to do maybe you can make a suggestion, but be cognizant of The feedback that you get, you know You want to be in a welcoming community and that was something that we fostered within our communities as well so One of the things that the gsoc students the google summer of code students say that they Learn from joining an open source project is How to how to use some of the tools out there? You know if you're using github if you're using if you're a patchy You may be using the tools there at a patchy you may be using another System for tracking and managing information as well and a difference governance model so The typically in a university environment for all of you, you know, who are at college What you end up doing is um You're focused on working Just on your piece of work and you know, this is it i'm i'm going to submit my A dissertation i'm going to submit my code In open source you're collaboratively working with many many people And it's a different way of working in a different way of communicating taking feedback And integrating that feedback into your work and i'm not getting upset because somebody said that something you did wasn't wasn't What they can accept right? You know as long as they don't say your code sucks You kind of hopefully it's a little bit more diplomatic, but There's an opportunity to improve all of your skills And that's what the google summer of code students found And if you're new to open source these are two fantastic references and Particularly carl fuggles book. Um, he's got a new one coming out and you can find copies of that pdf's of that online for free And john o bacon's book the art of community how to work in community. They really both go hand in hand And it's a big part of this is making friends and You know in an office environment you have that and here you will you'll be part of a virtual environment of people That you'll be connected to And and this is very valuable later on If you don't like it vote with your feet and leave that's okay. That's perfectly fine, you know, this was in 2008 so about Almost nine years From this from the time the project was kicked off We were having events in lots of different countries and A lot of the same people showed up at the events because they just wanted to connect with their buddies once a year And really meet in person and share So how many of you have been working on project one to two years? Okay, fewer of you. Okay. So there's a couple of things. I guess, you know often same same Same with your job you get you get very focused on Producing that piece of code delivering what you need to that you Sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture. So it's really important to just step back and here's a you know great quote from Bill Joy That innovation happens elsewhere. So You know not just completely focused on your projects, but look outside at what some of the other projects are doing That might be interesting There's a huge opportunity to learn from developers Um because in open source it come from all different companies All different countries and all different backgrounds And there must be somebody doing something innovative and creative that you can learn from So if you haven't thought of participating in a community as a way of learning and And experience to learn this is something that you need to consider and then You know observe by learn by just kind of observing and Watching different styles, whether it's coding or whether it's Resolving a problem somebody may just be so good at answering Messages and resolving issues for people that that might be that might be a skill that you can learn from someone else So you know ask yourself. What are you doing for your project? Besides the code contribution, right? Um, and here's kind of a you know Apache pyramid, which Which kind of says, you know, you go from a user to contributor to a trusted committer to a lead and an architect so there's a kind of a structure with an Apache not all projects have this and um, you know You may be in a position to really engage on helping improve your improve your project, but Engaging your newbies and Start mentoring, you know, you can start mentoring from about a year into a project And start teaching new members to your community as well so There's also things like event participation showing up in your community and um engaging face-to-face Writing skills is another big piece. So if you find the That's something that you want to focus on that maybe especially someone who's been there a while Starting to produce better helpful information for the community Would be would be a really good thing and For for the folks that have been in the projects for a couple of years What you've been doing go out and speak at conferences. Um, how many of you here are speakers? Okay, that's about half the room Excellent. Okay. Um for those of you who are not this is a great way to get your work out there and um A lot of conferences will also pay for your travel So if that's something that um is a bar barrier to travel going then you should look at that Write papers. You could also write a book with your knowledge. I'm just going to step this up a little bit because I'm just conscious of time How we doing Okay, so build your resume online The social media github You know mailing lists like All the recruiters all of the companies I guess now even the government recruiters everyone Will be looking at your profiles online and what you're doing So it's part of working in open source Everything you do is already out there and and it's a really great way to not just to hire people but also To get your knowledge and information out there, right? And be nice. I think that's really important in our community is um Just because you're at the end of an email You don't know what kind of a situation somebody else is in you just so you know always remember be nice Whatever you do and and that's always been a motto for all the projects that I've been involved in um and to make maintain Uh and make a healthy project to make it grow um Building effective teams is really important and here's a great book that's um Written by ben Colin Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick, but they also have some really great youtube videos That you could go back and look at and and it's kind of dealing with difficult people I mean it's part of life if you're working with people you're going to have Um great, you know great buddies, but you're also going to have people that you don't agree with So I'd highly recommend watching that For the folks who have been here and have been doing open source for five or more years. Can I get a quick show? Okay, so that's like well about 40 percent of the room. Cool. So I think um You know and I'm the same kind of I was thinking about okay, what are the things that I do with projects and um, you know You if you're not interested you may be interested in taking a leadership role and I think This is a huge opportunity for those of you who've been to know doing open source for a long time um building your leadership skills and developing that and developing Leaders from within the community So you've got to think about a transition a succession plan as well Because you're continuing to do this, but you really need to help like the folks that have been there a few years um really through their kind of next phase and into leadership roles as well and I assume I didn't see any hands go up for google summer of code mentoring I'm assuming and I'm hoping that some of you are mentoring within your projects Because that is how we got to do that's how I got to do open source was those two great mentors that I had And I'm hoping that that's features very largely in your projects and if it isn't I would Urge you to raise that within your projects as well So I have I have here mentor mentor mentor and that's absolutely key So, you know these are some of the founding fathers of the asf And and and the giants that you know on whose shoulders we all stand so They've been responsible for you know teaching so many projects the Apache way and Helping a lot of the successful projects as well and and you know kind of model yourself on some of the folks that you see In open source who you kind of admire who you've learned from or who you think have done fabulous job and really um build your own skills that way if you look at um the Apache Foundation so you can move up to project management committee and you can move up to a board level And there are other opportunities on other projects to go into Help being a community member on the board So I'm going to run through these fairly quickly because I think we had a slow start early on so I'm going to need to Run through these so for a successful community We all have superpowers right some of you think superpowers are you know night vision or flying or Let's see telepathy But actually everybody has superpowers And they're maybe just something like being a warm friendly face in the community And I think that's really valuable being a good listener Being a curator of people And even superpowers have to work hard Um Remember it's taken 20 years to get to this. It's not something that it's happened overnight and I know that you know these days with Uh social media Everyone you know there's this kind of movement of yeah, I want it and I want it now. It's not This is not open source is not about that. It's about hard work and it's about being persistent with time And recruiting it's a big part of the job everybody that's been in the projects for a while Every one of you is a recruiter and probably for a developer that they're probably squirming at the idea that no I'm not a recruiter But you're all recruiting for your projects everybody you tell About how to use it and what are you doing is potentially could be interested in coming to work for your project diversity is really really important diversity and inclusion and I was just in London just before coming here and The talk was about um that the event was about um design and accessibility And if you think about people all over the world that aren't like you that may be Differently abled, you know, they may be blind. They may be they may be hard of hearing But they're all part of our communities And they're all consumers of our software as well So think about um diversity in your projects and how do you serve The folks that are using your software that aren't abled in the same way that you are And um, you know, what are the tools And the skills that open source gives you a big part of it is the community Is your reference, you know, that is that is the key to this is um Not just the information that you put online But everything you do out there your community is your big reference And there's so many of the folks that I work in with open in open source Have said to me My you know my reference has been the community and that's how I got this amazing role So pay attention to that And it's your career And it's really up to you to kind of Manage this and and build it and some people I know like Jeremy who was here yesterday speaking Jeremy Allison, um, he works at google and he's working full time on samba And they hired Jeremy when I was there to come and just do that full time So, you know, if you're shining on your project and it's something a company is interested in They may just bring you in to just work on that because the contributions you're making matters to them um, it's it's up to you to um Lead from within and take a look at the projects you're working and take a look at what you're doing and really Look at how you can not just shift what you're doing in your career, but also your project as well How can you help that grow? Build on your amp and it really is the ticket you could write so There's another talk very quickly. I want to mention is from Jono bacon that you can find online and it's about burnout and you know when you can work on open source projects 24 hours and um And still do your day job um, there's a danger of burnout. So I would highly advise you to take a look at um Jono's presentation and read about this and look at the signs because you'll just say, yeah, I'm not burning out, but Uh, it's something that's happening in our community. And so that's why these talks happen as well And it's one of the areas where I think I find the most passionate people Anybody that's involved in open source has such a passion for what they do And it's kind of infectious. So um, and it's really awesome to be around people in this space um, it's not all roses and um, there are pitfalls So you have to be aware of them You need to put in the work and it will pay you dividends So it's up to you to really be the change that you want and um really You know share and contribute and just be nice. Um, I was going to share a couple of stories But I think we're kind of running short on time So I'm not going to share these stories But what I would like is, you know, if you have any questions you can come up to me at the end um, I just have one um Last thing to say here is really take Take all the opportunities that come your way and um through open source We've been able to not just transform industries We've been able to transform people's careers and their lives as well. So it's um It's an incredibly powerful tool that will help you change your careers as well So grab that and do what you love. Thank you