 And thank you everyone in the room and online and everyone who would be watching the recording. This talk is called Five Approaches to Increasing Your Happiness, Rear Opens or Happiness. And I would talk about five agreements and which are these five agreements. I will tell you a bit later. And I will first start introducing myself. My name is Stefka Dimitrova. I work at VMware, the open source program manager. And so in the most part of source program office, Don Foster is my manager, she's here in the room. And I work on community strategy, project health. And I've been in tech for about 10 years, started as a consultant. I have a business economics background. So I was a non-tech in the tech company. Went through and developed my way into the program office and open source within these years. So I have been learning and developing. And I also have my other hobbies and interests where I'm learning a lot, work a lot with kids and teenagers and the outdoors. I do improvisation theater work, most for social. Causes, so these old daytime jobs and hobbies or other activities have brought the challenge of needing to balance between all and needing to find the meaning and the purpose in all the activities that I do. So for that, I really got recently reminded about these agreements that I will share about and that they helped me remember why I do most of the things that I do and how it can be more successful. And when I talk about agreements and in the open source context, what are the first things that come to your mind? I guess like license agreements or contributor agreements or all the compliance work or everything related that needs to be documented. And here, as I said, I was recently reminded about a book that I've read many years ago, The Four Agreements by John Miguel Ruiz and then the Fifth Agreement. That's why I try to summarize all the five. And this best-selling author is actually sharing a tautic wisdom of living a life free of beliefs and self-judgements that are rather limiting us than allowing us the freedom to live our lives fully. And I was reminded about this book by these young actors. This picture is by a play that they are so young and so simple way they represented this profound wisdom. And I started thinking, okay, do I do that in my day-to-day work? Do I apply these principles and in what extent I could do better if these kids can understand them, explain them and put them in the art in such a beautiful way why me as a grown-up doesn't do it more often. And that's what I'm actually, I want to achieve with this presentation is to show you these agreements, remind you about them. Actually, who in the room maybe knows about this book, have read the book, have heard about it. That's great because that's one of my goals to tell you something that you probably don't know or don't have in this framework because this is a really simple frame to put things which you've probably been considering in other contexts. And then I will share some of the examples how I apply it in the open source program office work that I do and maybe inspire you to have some ideas how you can apply as well. So starting with the first agreement, it's called by Don Miguel Riz, be impeccable with your work. And I should have started with I'm not an expert in diversity, equity inclusion in being impeccable. And I know many knowledgeable people who've worked and developed their self a lot in that. And also they don't call themselves experts because we're all learning and we're all growing in that. And in this particular agreement or topic, what it's about is really taking full responsibility of what we say, what we think and having that integrity with also what we do. So it's not just about how I talk to other people but also how I talk to myself or the self talk, all the inner critics and everything that affect enormously our life and our relationship with others which in the end is also how they affect our work. And this includes also of course using the constructive and inclusive language being free of judgments. And in all communication channels that we can do that. So it's to be considered in emails, in meetings and in some cases also older language that we are using affects others. So how will we do it? And try to be integral with all of that. Second is related because when we've done or spoken something then it affects others. And how we'll take this? Don't take things personally, don't take anything personally. And this is a picture of my dogs and I was happy seeing dogs here around but what dogs are really good at is really looking innocent because they usually don't do things with the intention to harm anyone even when they are so dirty and trying to lie on my couch or whatever mess they're doing here at home. I know that I shouldn't take that personally and of course which humans that's much harder to do because as humans and when we are overworked, burnt out then there is a lot more tension and it's easier to forget that we own this responsibility and this power of how we react in certain situations. So yeah, just a bit more to the don't take things personally. It's really about that we are clear about how we react on the response and especially in tough conversation when someone might think this is pointed directly to them and my personal example in my day-to-day work I need to remind some packages, like cases, maintainers or teams then they need to do certain things like responding in some time frame on dependable alerts and this is just reminder on my side and when this comes in a bad timing for that person and they react to my reminders if I take this personally that will spoil our relationship or I might start feeling dissatisfaction of work because then my work involves these hard conversations or reminding people of things that they felt to do in time and when I realize that their reaction is not personally to me, it's just a reaction of being overloaded and trying to balance priorities then it's much easier to do that daily work. So next one which I thought is the third agreement is don't make assumptions and as I mentioned I work with kids and teenagers a lot and kids are just great at asking questions when they don't get something when it's a new situation, when it needs a new circumstance, when it's something that's challenging they will ask how it's done, why it's done and that's so normal and I'm a person who tries to understand things before asking and I've known that that makes me do something slower than if I would have asked questions and I try to get reminded by this work that it's so simple to just double check did I really meant this or did the task or that requirement was really about doing this or that or I'm doing some extra work or I'm doing the entire additional work that wasn't required by me and this also involves documenting things describing them well enough so that people don't make assumptions which and it's related also which roles does which activities or what's the growth path in a community what is the usual way to respond which channels do we use to respond in certain projects or communities and then we won't leave people with false expectations so again it's our responsibility to take care of that and it's also as I said I'm a non-tech person in tech environment initially when I start in a new team I often get myself find a conversation when I hear abbreviations or terms that I don't understand and then I need to ask questions but now when I need to onboard someone else or need to share information I try to use less abbreviations or I try to explain a bit more so that don't assume that people just get it and I shared about how we can prevent making consumption is just documenting things better and having Q&A or frequently asked questions just allowing some more time and freedom and this also means being also aware and respectful of people that would be shy or would have other reasons to don't really ask so directly so we need to provide various channels for them to ask just questions in a way that they will be comfortable asking the questions and always do your best that was the fourth agreement which concludes the first book that I've shown you from Don Miguel Ruiz and it is about doing your best at a given moment here one critical part is at the given moment because as I've chosen here a picture from a mountain hike at a given moment depends on the circumstances on your physical condition on your mental, emotional state on the team's current conditions and it's clear in the mountain you adapt the goal when the weather is bad when the group is not feeling well or whatever and we are much more judgmental to ourselves in our work and right now I'm definitely jet lagged I lost my voice so my personal best today would be different from my personal best when I prepare the presentation and practice for it at home so being kinder to myself and to others about this best would really help also communicate and negotiate the goals with others in the team and in the company and in personal lives of course and here it's also related to doing so always do your best emphasis on doing rather than just thinking about it planning about it lying on the couch and don't move here what the book says and what I try to remind myself constantly and others is to try even if I fail at least I've tried and with Open Source project we see that there's a lot of innovation experiments involved not everything would be great but until we try it out that we would never know and part of my work in the Open Source program office is also helping projects be sunsetted so helping, recognizing, helping teams as good Open Source citizens communicate when they're no longer actively maintaining a project and I'm trying to investigate and I was reading and researching about it to see and that's according to that data that I found on GitHub so I'm assuming here so estimating that about 16% of projects will be inactive in one year after they've been published on GitHub or published so you know that not everything will end up being used and in five years actually only half of the projects will remain when this trend continues and I've observed it and derived data from it to conform my observations so that should be okay that's part of the innovation if companies allow and if individuals are allowed to experiment and to try they will have things out there that won't be successful and if we are accepting it we will be less judgmental for ourselves on that again and that will give us the freedom to act and to try out more things and the fifth Grimans is an entire book because in a way it helps explain how to apply the previous form given that we as humans are all biased that's why we have these unconscious behavior or perceptives that's why we try to educate ourselves more and that's why we are all telling the stories in different ways and we are all having our different stories and it's called be skeptical and listen for the truth and skeptical exactly because of these biases and being aware of our own biases of everyone else's biases and just be open to listen to and this is that listening is an entire whole art because there is a lot of layers of what we actually listen what we hear when we listen who we listen to and it requires being present and respectful of everything that will come up and not only to others but again to ourselves being respectful also me is that for me I'm based in Bulgaria in Varna so far away and being here in Canada I see so many things that are just different and I know that I have unconscious biases I know that I have my fears I did a quick escape to the mountains drove through the Squamish and Whistler and I was almost frightened to see bears because I have three rumors that there are a lot here and they are scary and these are my biases on how people are surviving here and I know that I have many more biases that I'm unconscious about and if I accept that I'll be much more willing to grow and to develop and to learn in these areas and what I do in my job to really to really support these being skeptical and listening is doing interviews trying to listen to people asking questions, allowing them this time to pause so that they also learn about themselves by answering my questions because this is just the necessary time to be present and to pause and as I share that I will show some examples of my day-to-day job and how I am applying the principles this was a graph that I worked on to summarize different activities that my role involves in the open source program office and I did it way before I thought about this presentation and having the five agreements but it's so much but I so much liked how they match of course in every task that I do I need to be reminded and I need to remind myself of applying these agreements but I could really easily relate all the maintenance communications work and sending quite regular updates organizing meetups to the being impactable with your work and all the communication efforts also what I shared as an example of security work is here I need to be constantly reminded about not taking things personally and just doing my regular job documentation best practices helping out people to get onboarded in different ways in different tools which I need to not make assumptions I need to really explain well explain better to learn to be inclusive in my language in my actions to more people and I mentioned about cleaning up working on certain setting of projects in terms of doing my best in this case it's in the end of the life cycle project and regular assessments and meetings, interviews which allow people to pause and listen for the truth so to really wrap it up the book the fifth agreement ends with the sentence thank you for helping me change the world by which the author means that by everyone who reads the book if they implement these agreements and change their mindset they'll change their own world and if they change their own world that's the only way they can change the world so we can only change ourselves in order to change the bigger picture so what I really would invite you to do and I will pause for a minute which will be really really uncomfortable for me to stand here in silence but I really want to allow you the time to think of how you can apply the five agreements in your daily work life and just have this minute to think about it maybe write it down and have a mental note about it and I will start the minute so the minute is over but if you need more time I will be happy to allow you that time just looking at people I think you have some thoughts in your mind and what I would encourage you to use the rest of the conference use the rest of this presentation maybe as well to take time, share and discuss and as humans working in a fast growing industry environment in this world we try to think big of really 10 things or 100 things or a great big project to start of when we want to change something or it might be only me how I do it and that's why this reminder stays commit to one small actionable item so not really some great commitments because then it gets again into the trap of failing when it's too big being self judgmental don't want to try again but when it's something small actionable which we could do and some some ideas about it would be really to check on some of the yeah I will go back to the previous topics to really next time when when I feel that I'm going emotional and I'm going to react to an email or message to instead of that get out of my desk or my workplace go for a cup of tea or a cup of water allow myself to breathe and relax and then just consider if I wouldn't think that personally what my reaction I wouldn't take an action what reaction might be and that might be as simple as that just commit to do it every time just commit to do it once and if it succeeded once then you might do it again and of course or sometimes when you're feeling that you are failing with something it's just a good reminder was that the best I could do today yes or no if the answer is yes then give yourself the gratitude that at least you tried even if it was bad day for you so that's my invitation to really use that time until you probably remember this agreement and I really thank you for helping change the world because that's what you do by being in this conference and being there for yourself and for others and being in the communities that you are in and with this I allow for any questions comments, shareings and we'll be happy to hear from anyone who has anything to comment or questions might be just related to anything of the work topics that I mentioned if not we can talk later once we need to use them for the live stream or I can repeat the questions of course I thought you have but I'm not sure okay then thank you all