 I'm the Chief Operating Officer at the Drupal Association and I can't help myself from dancing when I get up here, so thanks for humoring me while I did my little dance. I am just really excited to be up here today, mostly because my keynote intro is always about the community and it just ties so nicely with the keynote that you're going to hear today. So before I get going, how's everyone feeling? Are you awake? Well, I can't hear you. Are you awake? How are you? Woo! Awesome! Glad to hear it. Well, today I'm going to share some stories with you about the community and there's just certain things that I've been seeing throughout the year that have just really inspired me here in Europe and I want to have you help me celebrate some people who have done some amazing contributions. But before I do, I just also want to share what we do as a staff, which is after every DrupalCon I'd like to ask the team, what was their DrupalCon moment? And a DrupalCon moment is really that big aha that you had, some profound observation, maybe you just met someone that you've been working with online or you just had this great connection with someone and my DrupalCon moment this year was the welcome reception, which is a new addition to DrupalCon. As we do our research to understand how we can grow this community we find that it's hard to come to a DrupalCon or even come online and figure out how to participate and become a contributor and we had some really smart community members who said, well at DrupalCon you should have a welcoming reception and I was a greeter at this event that we put on and lots of people came to the table and I would help them network and find some commonality so they can start talking and you know, just good old networking. And a woman came up to me and we were chatting and she said, I can't believe there are 200 people here that are new just like me. I was really anxious to come here and I feel really good. I'm not just the only one and yeah and I really, you know, I had a lot of empathy for that feeling of feeling alone and a little isolated and not sure what you're getting into and I kind of kept my eye on her and watched her kind of go around and meet people and it felt really great because at the end of the night I saw her walk off with some new friends and I think that's what this event is really all about is these human connections. So that is my DrupalCon moment and I think it also ties in a lot with what Mike Bell is going to talk about, just these connections that we have and how we help each other in the community. So let me get on with some of these stories that I have. And the first one, has anyone heard of the Drupal8 Accelerate program that we did this year? All right. So I want to thank the Drupal Association Board for coming up with this program. We were having a board retreat and talking about where we are with Drupal8 and how can we help with the association and Angie had said, you know, it would be really great if we had funds to fly people together to sprint on critical issues. We didn't have the money in the budget so we had to go out and raise these funds. The board went out, they secured anchor partners. Many of the anchor partners were their companies that stepped up and they said we will put in $125,000 and we will ask the community to donate funds and we'll match and get to the $250,000 that way. And their goal was to secure $250,000 by this week. And guess what? Just the other day that all of these contributions came in and we are now fully funded and we've been using that money very well over the last couple months. And we'll still have some more because we, you know, to use for these sprints, there's still more work to do. And I'm just really proud for our board to do this for the first time. It's the first time they've done a fundraising campaign. So I'd like to give a special round of applause to our Drupal Association Board. And Don, you want to stand up? There's one board member. And so there's also stories about how people contributed to this fund. We had some were 25 euros, some were 25,000 euros. There's all kinds of contributions in between. But the one that really caught my eye was from Ralph Pendle. He is from Hamburg, Germany. And he wanted to raise funds in a really unique way. He taught himself the piano and wanted to have a recital. It was a beautiful classical music recital. And he invited friends and family to come and listen and asked everyone to donate some money to Drupal 8. So you can even see the Drupal 8 right behind his piano there. And he raised 700 euro for the campaign. I thought that was just such a clever way to help us out. So Ralph, wherever you are, I know you're here. I've already hugged you. Well, anyhow, thank you, Ralph. And so we used that money to bring people together to sprint on critical issues. And we've done several sprints. And every time we do these sprints, you can really see that the critical issues go down significantly. And yes, I'm walking to read notes because I can't remember all these numbers. So our very first one was in Ghent. And you can see the names underneath of all the people that participated in this sprint. At that time, we had 115 critical issues. And by the time they were done, there were 81, which got us down to double digits. And that felt really good to start seeing some significant drops. And then there were some others throughout the year. And then people came together again in London where they solved 15 more critical issues that really started getting us down to, well, much lower. I think we're like 20 at that point. So I just want to acknowledge all of these people that are here listed because they are giving up their personal time being flown in. They're giving up their time even at work. And it's just really wonderful that they are able to do that to really get us to where we are today. So for all of you that in the room, please stand up. I know there's some of you here. Thank you so much. And as I'm sure most of you know, there's a really special developer event that happens here in Europe called Drupal Dev Days. This year it's in Montpellier. And it was put together by the frog team and lots of great French community members that have come together to make this event happen. It has sessions. It has sprints. And it was really instrumental on the critical issues front. And let me get my numbers here. So they solved 13 critical issues which brought it down to 36 remaining critical issues at the time. And so we are so thankful for all that they did. And I'd love for everyone from the French community that helped put on this event to please stand up. And you can see they are wearing their costumes. Thank you so much. Merci beaucoup. So code contribution, of course, is really important, but it is not the only way to contribute. And I really liked Alina McKenzie's story. She said that she went to Drupal.org one day, wanted to learn how to build a website. She could build it in an hour, which I find to be astounding. And a year later her employer said, okay, let's adopt Drupal. And so she started to really get into Drupal that way. And she didn't really know how to find her place in the community as a contributor. Kind of like that person who was at the welcome reception. You know, there's these feelings of anxiety and like, I don't know how to get in. I don't know what's my place here. So Kathy Faes, who just won the Aaron Woodenborn Award, had reached out to her and started showing her how to contribute doing some simple tasks on the issue queue and also teaching her how to be a sprint mentor. And she started getting really involved in doing this. She said, this is my place. This is how I can help and contribute back. And it also feels really good when someone helps you and now you can go and help others in a really big way, right? Get to amplify welcoming people into the community. And, you know, I also want to point out that Ali, like so many volunteers, are spending their own money going to camps and sprints and Drupal cons to help people figure out how to contribute during a sprint. That's a real sacrifice and real dedication. So I'm glad we could give her a grant to help subsidize that. It's just our small way of helping her with her mission. And I also want to point out too that she is motivated to do this because we have people that have been contributing for a really long time and that can cause burnout. And you'll hear later on about mental health from Mike Bell and she's just really passionate about bringing more people into the community to take the pressure off of those who have been contributing for so long. So I think that's just a really wonderful reason for volunteering and I'm just really thankful for what she's done. So Ali, if you don't mind standing up. The person I want to highlight is Ayesh. He is from Sri Lanka and he has been working with Drupal for six years. And what I really like about his story and most people's story that are outside of Europe and North America is that they're so far away they don't get to come to Drupal Con, right? It's expensive and hard to fly all the way here. And yet they are still able to keep that kind of passion that we have. I mean, I feel like these are like passion engines, these Drupal cons, right? We go back to our local community. But they're still able to kind of create that on their own. And he's been pulling people together and trying to find all the newcomers and creating this local community there in Sri Lanka and also reaching out to other Asian countries too to create the more regional connection. And I'm just really excited that Ayesh could be with us today. He's a scholarship recipient. And one of the things that he really wants to get out of this is having that human connections and get to know the humans behind the code. It's really all about the people, right? And so now he gets to go back and take all of this energy and all these ideas back to his community, help grow and strengthen the community in Sri Lanka. And I'm very excited that there will be Drupal Con Asia and he can show his community like just to go right over to Mumbai and have that Drupal Con experience. So Ayesh, if you could stand up. I want to thank you for what you're doing in Sri Lanka. Well, thank you for letting me share everyone's personal stories. It's what gets me out of bed in the morning and I'm just so honored to have this opportunity to share them with everyone. And I'm sure there will be many more next year. And I also want to thank our supporting partners who are funding our work and help make these stories possible. And I'm probably going too fast with these. And now I also want to thank our sponsors because we cannot have this Drupal Con event and bring all of you together to make these great connections if it wasn't for their funding. And just a few announcements. I think everyone's been here for all three days but if you're new and you need to learn about the lunch, just don't eat the vegan's food. That's all I ask. If you're not vegan, just don't eat their special food. And we also have some scheduled changes. And so there's a change in the business track at 1300 in room 111. It's now going to be how to grow stable and recurring revenue for your Drupal shop. And there's another change on the development track, which is at, I'm used to saying 215, but 1415. It will now be Drupal 8 Migrate Developer Overview by Ryan Wheel. We also have a change on the content strategy that you can see is at 1045 in room 118, 119. And now it's going to be looking for the value and content strategy. And then the last change is also this afternoon. It will now be Remote Entities Standardizing External Integrations by Dave Bailey. So just take note of that, please. Also, Paul Johnson would like to take a picture of anyone who's contributed to Drupal 8. So during the afternoon break, if you can go out to the lobby where the big inflatable Drupalcon is, he'll meet you there. He'll gather you all up so he could take a picture. And I'm sorry, there's a correction. It's not just Drupal 8, any kind of contribution. So if you're doing CAMPS or your sprint mentor, he actually wants to show something that's, you know, all the ways that you can contribute. And also, don't miss the closing session this afternoon. You get to here where the next Drupalcon is going to be here in Europe. And again, just as we wrap up, just continue to treat each other really well. We have a code of conduct. And if something comes up that makes you uncomfortable, just reach out to Donna Benjamin, who's already stood up once today. And thank you. That's a really hard job. So, you know, to negotiate anything, but appreciate it. And also tonight, who's going to trivia night? Come on, more hands. This is a thing you do not want to miss. It is a lot of fun. And the doors open at eight o'clock for trivia night. We'll get that out on social media. And you need to get a table early. Thank you, Josh. And what? Okay, we'll get you helpers. All right. It's like interactive now. I like this. Okay. Awesome. We would love to sell out the store. So please come down to the Drupal store. Get your Drupal swag. And just remember, contribution sprints, the general sprints, mentored course sprints, first time sprinter workshop is tomorrow. And then we have extended sprints throughout the weekend. So hopefully you can join us. It will really make a difference. And now it's my honor to invite our keynotes. David Rolfos. Yeah, thank you. And Mike Bell will be our keynote speakers today. So David, if you don't mind coming up. Okay, my hand's full. So hello, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for this opportunity to present this first research of findings from my research. It's really, really an honor. I mean, this is like a dream coming true for me. So thank you so much. So today I would like to talk a bit about contribution and the notion of contribution in Drupal. So just very quickly about myself, my name is David. I'm doing a PhD at the University of Surrey in the UK, although I'm originally from Madrid, Spain, as you probably noticed already because my accent. And always be very interested in free software, both from the technical side, but also from the social side. So that probably explains how I ended up doing a PhD in sociology, although my background was in computer science. And I'm also collaborating with a project, a research project called peer-to-peer value, which is looking at common space preproduction, which is one of the concepts I will be introducing today. So just a very brief outline. First of all, I would like to introduce some of the concepts in order to frame Drupal as a common base preproduction community. Then I will go faster into the research question data methods and then I'll go deeper into the findings and discussion, which I think is the most interesting thing. And then we'll have time for conclusion and future work. My apology is in advance if I rush a bit, but I have so many things to tell and we'll have time for questions. If everything is unclear, please let me know at the end. So I wanted to start talking a bit about the growth and success of free software. And I think this is obvious pretty clear for this audience, but I wanted to start with a couple of studies. The first one was an study by the Spandian Relay in 2008. And they concluded that there was an exponential growth in the production of free software. And more recent studies, for instance, this future of open source 2015 in Serbia, also found that there is an increasing adoption of free software and abundance of organization participation on it. So I think this tweet from Professor González Baragona summarized quite well this idea. This Serbia conference, what we all suspected, open source has won. But today I would like to put not the focus on the software, but rather on the ways we are organizing ourselves in order to produce this software. And one of the pioneers was Raymond. He talked about this model of the bazaar in which there were certain characteristics that differed with the traditional software engineering practices. Like, for instance, search code is publicly available at any time and there is a process of public testing, scrutiny, and experimentation. So what we are seeing is how, actually, this mode of production is being extended to many different areas. So we all know things like Wikipedia free software. But in the first stage of the peer-to-peer value project, we were actually looking at this diversity, and we found cases of open science, open agriculture, peer-to-peer urbanism. So actually some scholars are arguing that this is a new mode of production. And the pioneer on this was Professor Johann Benkler. He's from Harvard. And he was coining this term, common-based peer production, to refer to a new model of socioeconomic production in which groups of people, they cooperate with each other in order to produce meaningful products but not following a hierarchical traditional organization. So let me introduce a bit some of the concepts. So first, the commons. Who are the commons? And the commons could be defined as defined by Hess and Eleanor Ostron as a resource or good, which is shared by a group of people that might be subject to social dilemmas, such as augmentation of freedom. And also, Vincent and Eleanor Ostron, they provided these two dimensions to classify goods. The first one is cludability, meaning if it's feasible or not, to prevent its access to it. And the second one, rivalry, meaning if the use of consumption prevents or affects the use of consumption by others. So according to these two dimensions, then we have free software, an example of public good, meaning that it's non-excludable and non-rival. And I think this goes quite in line with last year's keynote of this and discussing how the Drupal goods are a set of commons. But furthermore, Sonne's collars actually are when the son of these goods are anti-rival, meaning that the more people use them, the more utility each person receives. And free software, Drupal is a good example of this, but you can think as well of Wikipedia, for instance. So the fact that I'm abusing Wikipedia, even if I'm not contributing, I'm making Wikipedia more valuable. So just let me define one more dimension in the scope of the ownership. And Professor Antonio La Fuente, his Spanish sociologist, he defined the commons, or procomun, in Spanish as those goods that belong to everyone and no one at the same time, and therefore not following the rules of the market. So with all this in mind, then we can think of the Drupal goods as a set of commons, meaning that they're anti-rival, meaning that the ownership used by a person increases the value for other users. They are non-excludable, because that accessibility is protected as part of the licenses, for instance, for the code, or for instance, for the context-recreative commons licenses. And it's also global, meaning that the ownership does not belong to an individual or a state, again, as presented by the licenses. There are some exceptions for this, like, for instance, the treatment that belongs to this. And then we can think of the Drupal community as a common-based production community. And there is a really big discussion on academia about the differences between peer production, social production, common-based production. I will not go into that, but I'll just let you know that I'm drawing on the delimitation criteria that we defined in the first year of the peer-to-peer value project, in which then we can think of Drupal as a community whose mode of production is based on a collaborative process. I think this is pretty clear here. It's peer-based, meaning that, of course, there are different levels of structure, depending on the process, which is not mainly based on contextual obligations, nor coercion. It's also a common process, meaning that it's a process driven by the general interest. And, for instance, in the case of the digital commons, they will resolve in the openness of the resources. And finally, it favors reproducibility, as I was saying, in this case, by free software licenses of rated commons, but also, for instance, of social practices, thanks to the culture of openness and freedom that we are creating. So, the kind of big picture of my research and what I'm really interested in is in understanding how these communities organize themselves. That's like the big picture. And when I was doing the literature review, what I found is that most of the studies will be typically looking at a very individual level or a very macro level. I'll give you some examples. So, for instance, the most tackle question in free software studies is, why do people contribute? And for that, they will typically look at individual level motivations. We have some other studies. For instance, there's a study from Juan Lee and Panchal in which they were looking at the structure of the Drupal community doing social network analysis, so very macro. And my approach is slightly different. I'm looking at contribution activities as a unit of analysis. And for that, I'm drawing on activity theory, which is a theoretical framework. I will not give into that neither, but it's basically a theoretical framework in which the unit of analysis is the activity. So that may, actually, that during the first stage, I really have to understand what deeply, what contribution means. And that's actually what I will be talking today after this introduction. So, contribution. What is contribution, actually? And we can think of a contribution as a very blurry notion in which there are set of meanings that are constantly evolving as part of negotiation processes between all the participants in that community. And this is a very critical notion because as identified by Willow, common-based pre-production communities focus on the digital commons, they will typically have an economy of contribution rather than a gave economy, meaning that they are not based on direct reciprocity. And then again, when I was doing the literature review, what I found is what I call co-centrism. So, for instance, looking at the literature, most of the notion of contribution will always, will typically look at source-correlated activities. So, writing code, testing, reporting bugs. And I think this is something we have in the communities as well. So, if you think about this motto, talk is silver, code is gold. I think it embodies quite well this co-centrism, right? So, I started thinking, okay, what happened with these other contributions, right? And I got inspired by this online article by David Bolier in which he was talking about affected labor as the lightblood of the commons. And affected labor is a term coined by Har, which can be defined as a material labor which creates or modifies the emotional experiences of the participants through social interaction. So, with all this, I ended up with the following research questions of first, what kind of activities perceive as contributions in the Drupal community if the official meanings were matching the one of the members of the community. Secondly, if how these identified activities were represented in the main platform of collaboration in an individual level. And then if some of these activities could be understood as a source of affected labor and if there were any differences depending on the degree of experience. So, just very quickly, they done methods and following an enographic methodical approach and doing both online-of-line. And I draw on a triangulation of collection methods or participant observation online but also offline, events like this, Drupal camps, local events. Also, I was doing document analysis and my starting point for that was Drupal Planet. I was also doing some semi-structural qualitative interviews in London and Madrid. And then I used CADDAS, which is basically software to help you analyze all this big amount of qualitative data. So, findings. So, first of all, what kind of activities are perceived as contributions? And I think this excerpt from one of the interviews represents quite well the idea of the diversity of contribution activities that we have in the community. Organized talks, meetups, or just now with Drupalistas to bring some beers and have a talk are also very important activities and they are very positive for the community. So, I ended up with this super huge table of activities that obviously you cannot see. This is an example of one of the cells. But two main types of categories emerge. The first one is what I call object-oriented ones, meaning that the main focus of action of that contribution activity is directed towards an object. This will be typically digital commons, like, for instance, source code, documentation, translation, et cetera. And then we have another category, community-oriented one, meaning that the main focus of action is directed towards the community. And this includes things like users and support, online community management, training and mentoring, and organizational participation in face-to-face events like this. So, I'm not arguing that actually this is an exhaustive list, but it's a subjective one to illustrate the idea of the diversity of contribution activities that we have in the community. So, then, regarding the second part of this first set of research questions, how is this actually this much what we have? And what I find is that actually the community-oriented ones are much less visible, and this is affecting, especially, so I'll give you an example. For instance, if you go to Drupal or slash contribute, you will find that all the object-oriented ones are represented, even some of them are more specifically, like, for instance, code, you have theming, development testing, but the community-oriented ones are less visible, and in some cases, they are not visible at all. So the first kind of contribution of this paper is actually to offer empirical evidence of the need for widening our understanding of contribution activities, and then to show that they are reflected in the main platform of collaboration. Going further on this, then I was interested, okay, how are the identified activities actually represented on the individual level? And for that, I was looking at user profiles, and user profiles in the free software literature have been found as a very key element for the generation of perception in free software communities. They are a source of public references. They play a very significant role in this process of staltus attimen in the community. Another interesting thing is that there is an inequality in the representation of community-oriented activities, and again, this is affecting especially the organization and participation in local and regional phase-to-phase events. Another interesting finding was actually that some Drupalists that were trying to overcome these limitations using some fields that were open and were not intended for that, like bio, so now we have another field contribution, but at that point, they were not. And they were using these fields to visibilize these kind of contributions. So for instance, object-oriented ones, so code, you know, you have the commits, you have the commits sorted by the modules, documentation, you have the number of additions or translations partially. You have, for instance, the number of approved strings. But these are just some of the few examples I found regarding community-oriented ones. So for instance, Drupalcon. You can check in your Drupal profile if you help organize a Drupalcon somehow, but it's a check. If you attend it, you can also check that. No reference at all of Drupalcams or local events. And this is, for me, the very, very interesting one, mentors. So in your Drupal profile, you can add who is or where your mentors. And interestingly, after the study, actually, this became even more relevant. So now we have the picture as well and even the reverse metric. So I think it's these kind of indicators, the ones that are kind of peer-to-peer indicators, that are very useful to show this kind, to show visibility and the value of these kind of contribution activities. So, yes, I was saying there what I found as well, that some Drupalistas were trying to work on this. So for instance, just to give you an example, this Drupalista was using the bio to say, yeah, I'm also training and mentoring. I'm speaking at Cams. I'm also the founder and organizer of a local group in London. So there is a need for some Drupalistas to visualize this. The kind of second contribution of this paper is actually to show a descriptive account of how the identified activities are represented and then to show an empirical evidence of the even representation of some of them and how this is affecting especially the community-oriented ones. So finally, regarding affected labor, for that, I focused my analysis on the participation and organization in face-to-face events because it emerged as the most clear example of affected labor. Just very quickly to recall, affected labor, this idea of immaterial labor that creates or modifies the emotional experiences of the participants through social interaction. So what I found is actually that these contribution activities, they play a very relevant role in the sustainability of the community. So if you think about the DrupalMoto, you come for the software, but you stay for the community. Then the question becomes what makes that community, right? How do we create this sense of community? So I'll give you some examples basically there were aberrations depending on the degree of experience of the Drupalista. So for instance, one example, a relative newbie, Drupalista, was telling, yeah, indeed, the fact of obtaining these meet-ups referring to local events, it was really good because you realize there are people behind the source code, right? There are people behind the modules and you meet people that can tell you these kind of personal stories and then it stopped being something anonymous, it becomes something yours. That's how Drupal becomes a community. It was really, really interesting to see during the interviews how at some point people don't talk about Drupal as a piece of software anymore. They talk about Drupal as a community. So it's this kind of events, actually this kind of contribution activities which are creating this sense. This is just one example of the outcome, but for instance, for newbies avoiding barriers such as imposter syndrome was very important also to increase the will for reciprocity. But furthermore, actually this plays also a relevant role in the experience Drupalistas. So for instance, in an interview with a more experienced Drupalista, we're discussing about friendship in Drupal. And this Drupalista was explaining, yeah, friendships are developed and seeing people in person helps a lot. I believe so. The idea of having face-to-face meet-ups and get to know each other in person is essential. In the IRC, you would talk about certain things, but after a day's acting 50 or 60 kilometers referring to the Tour de Drupal, there will be more interaction for sure and most of you are aware, but this is basically a local initiative in which people that love Drupal and cycling they decided to cycle together last year to Amsterdam this year to Barcelona. So we see here actually how the engagement with the common increases affect the relationships developed. In some cases, for some Drupalistas, there were even considered friendship. So this again, just one example of the outcome, but we see how this helps to increase the commitment to increase this sense of community to avoid to burn out in some of the cases. But furthermore, actually, in a community like Drupal, which has been constantly growing, these activities play a very, very relevant role in order to scale up the sense of community. So for instance, with this very experience, Drupalista, was explaining, yeah, because the community is growing, then you have less of a sense of community. But I think the solution to that is to have smaller local communities. So, you know, as the worldwide community grows, then you start finding like whereas before, maybe in like 50 people, worldwide, now you have like 50 people in your part of London or wherever. So we are seeing here, actually, how these activities play a very relevant role in order to scale up the sense of community in a community that has been growing constantly. So again, just to summarize this last set of findings, so first, to show the existence and relevance of affected labor and how different type of emotional experiences emerge, depending on the degree of experience, but they help to foster collaboration. So it's not just about what the community is. So it's not only that some of these activities are understood as a type of contribution, which is something that looking at the literature we don't see. It's not only that they are not and it's not only that they are unequally represented, it's also that they are very key for the sustainability of the community. And yeah, going back to the literature, so I was, for instance, Gabriela Koleman, she was doing an enographic study of the Debian community, the Linux distribution. And she found something similar regarding the role of face-to-face events. She was looking at death cones and she defined that they have affected moral, economic, and political dimensions. She writes, yeah, people embark on decisions and actions they probably would not have considered otherwise. Some hackers decide to formally apply to become a Debian developer while long-time developers decide not to quit the project. So when we're in this paper it's actually providing additional evidence of this, but actually I think we have to take a step forward and to frame these activities as contributions because the community are framing these as contributions. I'm also trying to offer empirical evidence of sorry, of the lack of visibility both in the main platform of collaboration but also in the main sorry, in the main section but also in individual level for user profiles. Also Daniel Nordins is a very well-known Drupalista. She was also doing an enographic study of the Drupal community for her master thesis and she was interested in looking at possible barriers to contribute but she also has to tackle the same question what does to contribute mean. And she concluded also something similar. Metrics such as code commits used to gauge contribution by open source literature and by Drupal work itself paint an incomplete picture of the types of contribution that actually happen in this paper basically and as I was saying providing additional evidence of this but also trying to fill one of Nordin's that she didn't look at local events so also to explain this idea of how this helped to scale up the sense of community in such a large community as Drupal which has been constantly growing. And finally I'm connecting this to the major literature on the commons through the concept of vector playwork. In this online article by David Bollier he was talking about a paper by Nita Singh in which she was doing an enographic study of a self-organized community based forest in India. So completely different domain obviously non-digital but we see how there is a very similar set of dynamics how through the participation in the commons actually this transforms the local subjectivities of the participants in the community. So it's this idea that it shapes the subjectivity. It's the idea that you become a commoner through commoning or in this idea you become in this case you become a Drupalist. So regarding the limitations to visibility I wanted to discuss as well that this is not only due to sociocultural reasons so there are obviously some technical limitations and also limitations on conceptualization. So this goes further this goes to the idea of how can we we need new dimensions of value basically new dimensions of value they don't work anymore in common-based preproduction communities. And peer-to-peer value project is looking at this as I was saying in a much wider perspective it's another project like Open Value Network and it's also about how can we incorporate them in this sociotechnical system that we are using to organize ourselves in ways that are concise, useful and distributed. So it's basically this is a call to we have to keep on doing this and not offering a proper answer because we often understand this better basically. So you are interested in this paper from some of my colleagues Primavera de Felipe and Sameer Hassan and they propose a system based on blockchain which is the technology behind Bitcoin to have a kind of first approach on how can we measure and value in these communities. And I think the Drupal community is working in that direction and as I was saying for instance this example of the mentors now they became more relevant and also the other metric. I think this comment illustrates quite well this was a comment from Isulis in the Drupal work profile saying that we have to go beyond code creation activity and into more community oriented staff since that's also a huge part of what makes Drupal healthy. So just very quickly to conclude, so first of all I want to talk about this need to broaden our understanding of contribution activities in free software communities let's say object-centric ones. Secondly I wanted to show how this lack of visibility of the community oriented ones and the relevance that they play and finally basically making a call for the need to keep on exploring conceptualization and the cooperation and value in commerce preproduction communities such as Drupal. So this is basically kind of my first paper and my first chapter of finding some of my thesis so I'm planning to write two more and so now my plan is basically to look at some of these contribution activities in depth and for that I was saying and drawing on activity theory so my idea is I'm interested in understanding some of the organizational dynamics such as decentralization, formalization and also this framework provides you the notion of tension between different activity systems so that's and regarding the community oriented indicators actually I got this is something probably I'll do parallel to my PhD but I was really interested in about this indicator and one of the first things, so what I told today is completely qualitative but I wanted to explore a bit more quantitative so one of the things I was doing is basically collecting data from Drupal or KPI and trying to visualize first of all the network of mentors in Drupal but this is just with 33% of the data but I'm planning to keep on and I'm also trying to research in what I call a Drupal way so I think coming from a very free software perspective going back to academia I was like I have some tensions in there so I'm trying to do research in an open way so it's not only I was trying, last year I was running above on Amsterdam and this year I ran as well but it's this idea that we should create a kind of network of researchers about Drupal it's that idea that let's work together so just to give you an example when I was doing the literature review I had to go through hundreds of papers and it was like okay this might be interesting for someone as well so I said let's put it as a wiki in the Drupal work group and yeah I will be also looking for Drupalistas to interview and probably running some service so I would love to count on your help with this and yeah let's research in a Drupal way and yeah these are the references and that's all so thank you very much thank you David so it was easy to see while you were asked to present one of the community keynotes it's a really important topic and it was great to see a rigorous scientific analysis of what many of us in the community kind of already know community oriented contributions are possibly undervalued in our community so I guess the first question is we talked about community oriented activities and object oriented activities but based on and what you know and what you've seen do you think that by further exposing the value of community oriented activities on Drupal.org that will have some sort of crossover and positive effect on object oriented activities? I definitely think so because as we were saying the fact that these communities create a more healthy community this will help to attract more people to retain more people to make people more enthusiastic and to belong to the community so definitely I think it will have an impact on I think it already does basically but improving this will probably attract more people on doing this as well and this will probably make the community more healthy let's say do you see one as an entry to the other? I think they are both interconnected basically I would say that both are interconnected okay and then do you I think we probably know the answer to this but let me ask you in a different way how do you think our lack of exposing community oriented activities has I don't want to use the word hurt but maybe slow this down a little bit do you think it's a result in fewer contributors and we could possibly have? I think as the community actually grows this become a bigger problem because what happened is that you know I mean Drupal is not a representative case of a free software community because it's a huge community it's an extreme case basically most of free software communities has very small ones but in this case the community has grown so much the more the community grows the more relevant it becomes because basically the profile has become more important because you might not be able to know everyone basically I think this ties back to what you saw earlier in the presentation about the fact that as the community grows if you use London as the example you might have had 50 people in London at one point now you have 50 people in one area so having more smaller groups provides an easier entry this is how I think that basically the Drupal community scales up and in order to scale up this sense of community we need this kind of local events because this is basically what humanized the community so it plays a very relevant role and as part of that we will need more community organizers if we're going to have more smaller groups we need more people to step up and say let's get a smaller group going here and that's kind of the gateway drug into Drupal so to speak we talked about this a little bit yesterday but what you're talking about this is not unique to Drupal this is an issue that many open source communities not only open source that's one of the things I wanted to discuss this is a bigger problem this is related to the commons in general and it's the idea that how can we measure value in ways that are not monetaried so I'm going to burst a bit but for instance in this first stage of the study some of my colleagues from Autonomia Barcelona they were looking at let's look for some dimensions of value like internal ones like for instance community building and external ones like for instance social value the thing is that I mean you can do that categories like very big for a statistical analysis and things like that but then coming back to your question we need to every community basically need to define the ways of how this value works so then you have to kind of tailorize this and to give you a more concrete example like for instance I was attending last year one of the presentation on the changes on Drupal work and there was this study on the Drupal personas and this idea you know we have to put focus not only on the coming back and I'm going to digress a bit but something we find in commons production communities is typically a power load distribution so 1% of the people are like super contributors then we have 9% of the people that are actively contributing but not as much as the 1% and then you have like the 90% of the people so I think we tend to put the focus a lot on the 1% and I think we should put the focus as well on the 9% and on the 90% on how to move to the 9% basically so coming to your question again so for instance on Drupal work I think the Drupal community is going in this direction I think this is a problem that every commons production community is having and Drupal is kind of pioneer on that and the fact that with this study on Drupal personas putting the focus that I interpreted last year it was like we were trying to put the focus on the 9% as well or for instance the presentation of the keynote of this he was talking as well about non-code contributes and try it so I think that there is an effort on that and I think the Drupal community actually is a very very good example of this because as I was saying it's an extreme example of a community large which has grown largely another example the other day I was meeting some researchers here in Barcelona and they were talking about Wikipedia and they found similar issues like for instance this is they call it this is still I think not available but they were looking at a system called WikiCredit in which their contribution is not only the number of editions it's actually the amount of text that remains after several so I think so I think it's we can come up with several dimensions of value like generic and then its community will have to figure out how to you know how to quantify the quantified or contributions so almost like some type of then a next step forward will be actually to be able to have assistance and that's what my colleagues talk about in this paper assistance where you can actually change this so like a kind of currency but it's not obviously it's not a currency in the sense that it's not transferable it's not you know that's a topic that we talked about yesterday 30 more questions as far as you know quantifying you know you might be 1% in Drupal and you might be a 9% in Cowsharfin and you might be a 90% in Wikipedia so it's this idea that we can rate an economy in which it's an economy based on contribution basically exactly alright well we have another keynote to get to so thank you very much David Rothas alright so we're running a little bit short on time so if you have additional questions for David or our next speaker Mike please use official hashtag and we'll ask those guys to get on Twitter and answer your questions online or you can you know grab them in the hallway and make them late for wherever they're going that's another option as well so it's my pleasure to introduce our next keynote speaker Mr. Mike Bell he's a self-described and I'm going to read this so I make sure I get it right developer Tinker and fiance who is powered by coffee and whiskey he's a Drupal technical architect with CTI digital in Manchester UK and today he's going to be talking to us about mental health and open source so take it away Mike thank you very much so yes as I've been introduced my name is Mike Bell and I suffer from depression anxiety and in syndrome so I'm a developer soon to be husband and hopefully a fairly nice guy I've been working with Drupal for about 8 years now and I've been involved with some form or another with the community in the UK for most of that and last year experience but before I start there are some caveats to my talk so I'm not a doctor at least I don't think I am what to do although I will try and point people in the right direction so when the depression hit it really destroyed my ability to curd it made problem solving impossible and simple problems just became huge tasks that I couldn't face on a day to day basis and it became a mental barrier that prevented me from doing something I love I couldn't get that amazing feeling of solving a problem with an elegant solution and that's something that I found really difficult because a developer I love to problem solve that's what we do and that's what got me out of bed in the morning that's what makes me go to work the ability to solve a problem and have that elegant solution but it was like a cloud that descended on my brain it made logical thinking very difficult and it's still very difficult to truly explain what it feels like especially to lose something you love and then it's just such a terrible feeling and it's still something that scares me to this day so anxiety leads to panic attacks which are horrible I get the fear of people and my surroundings and this really affects how I live my day to day life and we take this stuff so for granted but the stuff we take for granted such as seeing our friends and family is affected by anxiety attacks and just feeling nervous and panic it all the time and anxiety is such a primeval thing it comes from our evolution into who we are today so anxiety is something that helps us from when we're evolving and being on the plains and in jungles running away from predators and nowadays we're running away from ourselves in offices and our home and it's a very very powerful feeling because it's so deep-seated in our brain it is an evolutionary thing so it's right there in the base of our brain and this kind of triggers our fight or fight response and it's such an easy thing to trigger because it's part of our survival instinct I mean being here today is a real test of this for me every part of me is telling me to run and hide so in Poster Syndrome it makes me question my ability to stand here and do this I get scared that I think I'm not authentic that I'm just faking all of this and you are all going to find out that I'm an utter fraud and again I'm just a developer and I'm not a doctor so I sometimes feel that I don't have the ability to come and speak about these things and it's sometimes really difficult for me when I sit around with my colleagues at work it feels like I don't belong there because they're so clever and they're such great people but I know it's a baseless feeling I know I'm good at what I do and I know that I have the respect of my colleagues so it's kind of the brain is just so very powerful at the end of the day sometimes it can be very very stupid and no one tells you what to do in these situations there's no user guide there's certainly no API documentation there's no coding style that we can follow for this and you can't go on Stack Overflow and ask what the hell do I do I mean I would very much just love to be able to curl an API endpoint and get the result that I need to be normal so I manage all of this with a mixture of medication and cognitive behavioural therapy firstly I was on two types of medication the first is an antidepressant called citalopram and I continue to take this to this day because it makes me feel on a level that I am comfortable enough to work and come and do things like this the second is called propanolol this is a better blocker which I use to manage anxiety or which I used to use it I really wish I was using it right now and the cognitive behavioural therapy has made me analyse the situations that I'm in so this is kind of how I should respond in order to get the best out of a situation so it's about taking a step back and analysing what's going on and asking yourself a question like why am I angry, why am I worried and more importantly, what is making me worried all of these questions can help compartmentalise my feelings and bring me back down to a normal state and to kind of normalise myself and get myself out of a cycle of anxiety and panic attacks and we live in a society where these issues are kind of seen to be a bit but it's not a new area for people and I still find it really odd especially considering the stats in the UK so I'm just going to read off these stats so 1 in 4 British adults can suffer from any one of a huge list of mental health illnesses and trust me, there are lots of them 2.6 in 100 people suffer from depression in the UK and approximately 4.7 people in 100 suffer from anxiety and in 2012 and 2013 1.6 million people were in contact with specialist mental health services so after looking at these statistics it's not difficult to understand why mental health is so important but there is a silver lining things are getting better and our awareness of these issues is spreading the fact that I now have an audience like this means that perception towards mental health are changing and it's becoming a real concern for people from all sorts of professions and backgrounds and because of this diverse audience it's important that we talk about the cost of mental health so when I first brought down there were multiple questions that went through my head and they were very hard questions so the first one was what if I lose my job these are my colleagues who are all awesome and I love to work with every day what if I lose my beautiful fiance who looks a bit weird there and ultimately what if I lose everything and there's not just a personal cost there's also financial cost to all of this and again money is quite a subject for people and it's not just a cost to the people it's not just a financial cost to people it's a financial cost to companies as well because it's not cheap so for a company you could lose an employee in the middle of an important project it could also be even more subtle than that so what I found is that if my mental state is low or I'm not feeling happy or depressed or having issues with anxiety then my productivity just dips and dies which has a huge financial cost for the company because they're still expecting me to produce work at the same speed that I should be and then when you couple this in with imposter syndrome it just becomes a huge recipe for disaster and overall affects the confidence in my work and money also affects us on quite a personal level so it means ultimately it means a lack of income which in turn is its own source of stress and anxiety and it just becomes a cycle of very depressing thoughts the questions going around in your head like how will I pay my rent how will I buy food and it kind of also impacts our community as well we effectively have two jobs here so we have our day to day job and we also have our contributions to the Drupal community and other communities we're part of and with the contributions to open source we also have this fear of open embarrassment in front of our peers so when we push patches up to Drupal core and they're knocked back this ultimately has an effect of oh that's not good enough when that's not really the case and when we talk about mental health it's very easy to forget the actual health part in mental health and I remember back when I first was diagnosed with depression and anxiety I was told by my doctor that you can go to a doctor for flu or a broken leg but you can also go for anything that leads to your head and the doctor will help you with all of these things and just like going to the gym or out for a run there's mental health fitness as well and this is just the ongoing practice of making sure that a mind is fit and prepared for what the day has to throw at you for me I spend a lot of time outside work on different projects learning different programming languages to supplement PHP and I spend time with my fiance we discuss politics, religion and ethics and quite in depth weird topics and these all provide ways of sharpening my mind and keeping it kind of healthy and active and I'm lucky enough to be in a job where I have quite a bit of freedom to plan my day's work which helps massively in preparing for what I have to do and making sure that there are no surprises which is very important which could trigger anxiety attacks or me questioning my ability to do what I do so by being able to plan ahead I can also come up with potential solutions to the problems that I might have during the day and this helps with impostor syndrome massively because if I can come up with a solution that before I start work or while I'm working I then have the opportunity to test that with my colleagues and one of the things that I think is so very important is the ability to ask for help from your colleagues so for people that work in offices it's easy to turn around and ask somebody for people that work remote it's very easy to jump on Slack or HipChat or Skype and it's okay to just ask for help on things you're all there to kind of work together you're not working against each other and so this is the bit where I kind of have questions to ask to just the general community so the first question is do people know that they can actually get help from their local doctor so anybody that finds that any of this is familiar your local doctor can help and also your company so do you know if your company offers any kind of third party services for support without the company I work for I don't think I would be here I don't think I would be doing development anymore and even more important to that these things before it's a problem so when you join a company do they kind of educate you on what services are available and the last question is do you recognize any of that in yourself so it's important to take a step back and think am I do I understand any of this and does this apply to me and we're very lucky that we have such an amazing community and we have events like this where people form different companies people from around the world can come together and share their experiences again yesterday there was a talk by Schnitzel on burnout in the community which was fantastic and I find that the Drupal community has been so helpful and I've made friends that I can rely on and give me support when I need it the most and provide such a grounding point when things get too much and as well as for the community we have to look more locally though so once this conference ends and we all go back to our homes and offices that's where the really important work happens because then we have to think about it in our own head to make sure that people don't fall into the same trap so if you don't know what your company offers in terms of mental health services then just ask companies and managers aren't the enemy even if they do seem like it sometimes and again your doctor is a great source of help as well and once we it's important to embrace these issues and help each other because again you're not alone out there we have this great community so where do we go from here well kind of for me it's really simple I still have to carry on recovering I'm not a hundred percent I don't think I ever will be I think that's the part of mental health issues that people don't really understand very much is these things take time and I think I will be recovering for a good few years to come so I'm going to do my best to keep going and practice everything that I've learned along the way and there lastly I'd just like to say thank you to my friends family, colleagues and Drew Parkon for making this session possible I think that it's brilliant we have a community track and that people like me and David can come up here and talk about these important issues in front of such a huge audience so yeah thank you very much alright well wow first of all thank you for being as courageous and open as you've been with this presentation I know you've given forms of this presentation in the past but it's hugely courageous I'm not sure how many people could do what you just did so thank you for that there are more than a few tweets from people who have some of the same feelings and experience some of the same things as you I feel like after this we're all going to have a big group hug so you'll probably be at the center of it so be prepared for that so a bunch of questions and you kind of touched them on this at the end but if you can go back in time I asked a question a couple of days ago but if you can go back in time a couple of years when this was first coming on and you could whisper a message to yourself to help what would that be? I think it would be it will be okay going back and saying to myself that everything is going to be okay and recovery is a long process because at the time I was expecting this to be like any other illness like a cold or something I was expecting to give it a few weeks and then I'd be perfectly fine shake it off I would go back and I'd say to myself it's going to take time but everything will be okay and that's the most important thing just to know that there's an end point yeah because when you go into this your mind becomes blank you're becoming capable of logical thought you can see the future it's just a very much sort of black cloud of you now and focusing on the future just isn't a thing whereas you really need to be looking at that and also to seek help sooner as well so I could feel these things coming on but at the same time I didn't know how to deal with them and that's kind of my next question is if there's people listening who are feeling the same way and are on that same path where you were a couple of years ago what's the first thing they should do they'd ask for help so if people like even within the community there are people that you can talk to and everybody's friendly so just ask for help people doing that then go to your doctor and talk to them everything with your doctor is confidential so go to your doctor and ask them for help the most important thing is it's kind of recognize that this is how you feel and then from there somebody can't force you to recover you have to realize that you need to recover and you have to start that process yourself because without doing that so you mentioned your personal support system your fiancee a little bit how about your professional support system I guess I'm asking this more from the standpoint of organizations that have staff that might be going through the same things that you've gone through what can those organizations do how can they support their staff to help with the situation so it's a mixture of three things for me I started out going back to work it was on a phased return so I started out doing three days at work and then moved back to four days and now I'm back at five days I also have regular meetings with the director of Drupal at our company just to see how things are going and another thing is on a project basis I love to get my head down into a project and just focus on that so I can pick up work that is quite in depth and focus is it and then I get great enjoyment out of that so I'm doing something I love but yeah I think it's very important for management of companies to acknowledge that everybody is human and that they have to communicate and it's not just a case of asking how a project is going it's like how are you feeling how are things going it's very important to keep that communication with all staff members going and sort of like mental health checkups kind of thing so I'm going to try and tie the two keynotes together here you mentioned imposter syndrome we got a lot of comments about imposter syndrome and a lot of people feel like they have, you know, they feel that so what are some ways that we can support community members with mental health, oh I'm sorry I read the wrong question do you alleviate imposter syndrome a little bit via greater recognition within the community yes I think we're on the right lines with some of the changes that have been made within the Drupal.org issue queues and I think with the stuff that has been going on with the multilingual initiative and the kind of the positive feedback that has always been given along the way those kind of things are so important to people it's the feedback coming from the community back to the person saying you've done something you've contributed something so it's the positive feedback on whatever you do so if you create a patch then that in itself is a positive thing but you might not realise that so it's nice if somebody when they review it is like yes this is good we'll RTBC it along and I think any kind of positive reinforcement is always good and just sort of keeping in contact and making sure that there is communication between people that are working together the recognition and the validation yeah validation exactly that is so keen in terms of feeling like you're doing the right thing I feel like these two keynotes are making a lot of work for the Drupal Association in the future but again they're my mentors thing on each profile is a great example of showing your appreciation to the people that have helped you and when you get if somebody marks you as a mentor that should be a huge boosting confidence alright so last question Meg Plunkett what are some ways we can support community members with mental health issues but unlike you who's been very public about this while still respecting their privacy for people who don't want to put themselves out there as much as you have so I think one of the ideas and I remember talking about it with a few people is dedicated spaces at conferences so I know a few conferences have had like safe areas where they've been because these conferences are really busy there's thousands of people wandering around there's always noise so some of the conferences have like quiet areas which are areas where you can just go and relax and there's also I think a great idea would be if the local team for any kind of big conference was in contact with their local mental health provider and offered a space for them to come and kind of not present but have say a booth where you can get information and flyers be available so yeah somebody could go up and take a flyer or take some information and they don't necessarily have to speak to anybody but they have that information okay that's a great answer thank you very much Mike Bell so real quick we move off to the break update on one of the schedule changes that Megan mentioned a minute ago Dave Bailey will be presenting on remote entities at 1415 in room 12 replacing Ryan wheels presentation don't forget to attend the closing session at 1530 and let's hear it one more time for David and Mike