 roller skates. Over to you Mars. Hi everyone, thank you Sirenjit for that introduction. I will be presenting some slides here. I will also drop the link to the slides if you would like to have your own copy. They're also hosted on GitHub with different versions if you prefer to view it that way. I will now share my screen and get that started. Okay, can everyone see my screen here? Yes, we can. And only the slides or at least the browser. We can see your browser. Oh, well, you can't, can you see the speaker notes? No, just the browser. All right. Hi everyone, I'm Mars and I am one of the speakers for RSE's Asia-Australian Conference Early Careers keynote. And my keynote is about my unconventional start, how open source opened my opportunities. So a very quick introduction. I am Mars Lee, a short visual description of myself for the visually impaired. I have green hair. I'm wearing this cool star bandana and I got a dangly earring. It's actually kit. I'm a technical illustrator at Kwan Sight. I'm from South Korea and grew up in Singapore. And fun fact, I roller skate. I contribute to two open source projects, NumPy and open source design. And so at this point, you're probably thinking, whoa, who is this mysterious person? Why are they giving a keynote? What's a technical illustrator? And to be honest, I am thinking the exact same things. Who am I? Am I qualified to give a keynote? And what is a technical illustrator? When I was asked to give this keynote, I made some assumptions of what I would have to do that to be inspirational, explain how it got here and how give advice. And I asked myself then, what inspired me? How did I get here? And who helped me? And so once they started thinking beyond myself, I saw the connections much more clearly. And so for me, the purpose of this keynote is three things to recognize community open source specifically, connect newcomers to projects, and encourage more diverse contributions to open source research software. So a quick note is that I may not fit strictly into the definition of a research software engineer, but we're all here at this conference to find out what that means. And so I'm happy to be here. And I don't work with, say, research software directly. I rather work in the open source space. And a lot of open source projects are start and use in research projects. So in my case with NumPy, that is computational Python and would be used in all sorts of projects of like calculating big important things, data flows, things like that. And so I'm not strictly an engineer either, but I still contribute to software when we think of it in the broader terms of like, something that people use and create. And so I do illustrations, I do workshops, I do accessibility. And, you know, I can go into more detail later of like, how my job works and how that looks like in terms of like, career, because I think that's career because I think that's the topic that we're here at the conference to talk about. So the overview is that the first half is going to talk about my unconventional start, overcoming these insecurities, finding strength to support, and then showing off my unconventional contributions. The second part is a mirror and that is something reflected back in you, dear audience, of how you can start overcome your insecurities, find your strength, and your contributions as well. So the first part, part one, my unconventional start. You might have in mind what a open source research software contributor is like a software engineer, if you get like two PhDs and an expert on all this software before they make their first contribution. And me, I am none of these things. In fact, I thought you had to be plugged into the matrix to start doing this kind of work. And little me, I got none of these things. And so I was comparing myself in those ways. And so what am I? I am an artist. I am a university college dropout. And my exposure to open source beforehand was free alternatives to Photoshop, please, because Adobe software is pricey. And so when I came into this space, I had a lot of insecurities of who I was. But I thought to myself, what if these are strengths, not weaknesses? What if I view myself as having a different and equally valuable skill set that I'm not letting arbitrary measures of just like degrees determine what I can do? And that I'm an everyday user of open source software. And so I am still, you know, now a bit more proud of what I'm doing, because I understand that I have something to give. And I actually have a blog post that you can see from the very start of my open source journey of how I started. I in the details there are that like I went to Pi data, I was a college dropout, I learned to code, but I presented a lightning talk about comics. It's all very exciting stuff. And so I that's how I landed in my position as a technical illustrator at Quonsite. And but I want to kind of bring it back to open source. And so the third part is that I needed to find a strength of support. So even if I changed my mindset, I wasn't necessarily sure how to actually make things to contribute. And so I actually connected to like communities and people. And they really helped me move forward. And that specifically like other designers and open source design, mentors and contributor experience leads and just hanging out with fellow contributors. And over there I went to community calls even when I was completely lost, I failed many times and asked many times for help. And so once I changed my mindset, I was able to contribute. So looking at this slide, I was able to kind of like build that momentum, I'm charged up, super stay in mode. And so I went for it. And so I saw that I could use art to communicate what text and code cannot that open source fuels powerful research. But my focus is outside of research is more for the public and for the everyday user. And like Homer Simpson here, I now have a gallery of quote unquote unconventional contributions. If you go to the Google slide link that I posted in the chat, you can actually click on these and it will lead you to the page with more information. So I have these comics that are made about accessibility, specifically how to write out texts for scientific diagrams and documentation. I host workshops with that topic. I did one for RSC Asia earlier this year with Syringine. And I've given talks about it too. I've also printed out physical comics. And I gave them out at SciPy, which is a conference dedicated to scientific Python. I led an accessibility sprint at that conference, both remote and in person. And I'm doing even more. I made a rough draft of this NumPy contributors journey. And this is based off the discussions that we've been having in NumPy of how do we get more people to know about maintainers and that it is a role that they can get into, but they should know what should they not know. And so I've been at the community calls getting feedback. I'm also bringing it to the open source design community and say, hey, what do you think about this as a second artist? Because getting the developer perspective or the user research perspective design perspective is all like a really cool. And this wasn't submitted, but I did grant dip my toes into grant writing for a small development grant. And even though it didn't happen, I better understand how open source is funded. And so that's a lot of bragging about me. And let's put enough of that. So what about you? For those who are earlier in their careers, how can you start? If you are already a user of open source software, you can think, how can I make this better? You can check out the contributor guides or good first issues on GitHub. And if you don't have a project in mind, may I recommend NumPy? I am clearly biased, but I assure you it's for a good reason. A great place to start is the NumPy newcomers hour. It has both hangout sessions and talks. And there is a YouTube channel there as well, plugging that in. And some recent topics that we had are one by a form maintainer, Sebastian Berg, about youth funds and D types. And he goes through the code base and explains how everything works together, which is really valuable because it's a big code base over like 10 years. And it's so important and it funds a lot of other research software on top of it, but he's able to go down, down, down into the C and explain how it all works. We also have Ryan Cooper on how he uses NumPy as part of his open curriculum to teach applied mathematics in his college course. And if you want to see how this software is maintained specifically with deprecations, again, we have Sebastian with a video on that too. So clearly NumPy newcomers hour has a lot to offer and a good place to start if anyone's interested. And if you want to do specific contributions, you could add timestamps. And what timestamps do is cut up videos so that they are easier for people to get an overview, digest information. We have Benny here who did a contribution, we set up a meeting and now we have like collaboration ideas. You can also write meeting notes for NumPy, which I do here. In this way, you can instead sit back and soak up like a sponge, the culture, the workflow, and you could build the confidence to start being in this space. So part six is like actually overcoming your insecurities. And the secret is that we're all figuring it out. So even though I'm here giving a keynote, I don't have everything put together. In fact, as you can see here, I have GitHub, I have Twitter, but I don't have a personal website. I know a lot of people who are more established in this space would have all these things. But so even though I'm a bit embarrassed, I'm showing you, hey, I'm still here. I'm also figuring it out. And I'm still trying to move forward. And so if I can do it, you can do it. And for finding strength and support, I think this on conference is a really great place to start. There is the on conference board, the padlet, there is the conference lobby, and there are projects as well. And, you know, perhaps in next year's on conference, maybe you'll be the one giving this keynote. And so the last part is your unconventional contributions. So think about the skills that you have and that you want to grow the research and software that you want to see in the world in the communities you can connect with. There are different contributions you could do, you could, you know, translate and internationalize, do hosting community events and chapters like Siren Cheat here, you could design, you could write, you could do user testing, accessibility, release management and, you know, code as well. But in talking about all these contributions, I also want to recognize my privileges. I am working full times in work with open source, so I'm compensated for this. I live in North America, part of the global north, so you need to attend a lot of meetings that work with that time zone. And I don't have dependence, so it's easier in terms of like money and time responsibilities for me to make this work that I do. And so while I recognize my work as unconventional, as I call it here, it is still, you know, shaped and limited by my skills and privileges. But that is also why it's really, I think, cool that we have open source and that we're having this conference where we have attendees with different skills. And I kind of invite you, attendee, to think what do you have that is different from other contributions? What is something beyond code as open source matures? How are other ways that we can support the software and the people that use it? How can we be more well-rounded? How can we be more diverse? Represent the world for nothing about us is without us. And so congratulations, you've reached the end of my keynote. I have pulled back the curtains and actually revealed the true nature of this talk. And it is about you, that it is about how you can have an unconventional start and how that open source can open your doors and your opportunities. You can fill this gallery and so that we can have better, stronger open source and better, stronger research software. And so, thank you. Thank you to a lot of people, but I first want to thank the organizers, specifically Sarenjeet and Paula. I also want to recognize Melissa and Anessa and the open source design community with Baleen, Errol, Bernard, Yuhan, Yan, and so much more. And so, if you are interested in connecting with me, I have my Twitter and LinkedIn. If you would like to meet me, you could send me an email and we could set up a date as well. Thank you. This is the end of my keynote speech. The second part is the Q&A and I think this is when I'll hand it off back to the host. There's a lot of interesting possible questions and in fact, I've put out some, you know, possible questions if anyone is interested about the career and how does this intersect with Lake academia and industry who is funding this. And so, a lot of fun put possibilities. So, for now, I'll stop sharing my screen and hand it back to the host. Thank you.