 Hi there, my name is Claire Dillon and I am delighted to be with you here today to have a little chat about how we can flex, how we think about things to help open source change the world. Before we start, I'd like to give a little bit of background, and it's probably worth mentioning that I am neither a developer and nor have I been in open source for very long. I have had over 20 years experience in the tech industry but I'm a more recent convert to open source and the open source way. But I do believe that there should be more converts. And although I am not here to teach you guys to suck eggs because I know you know a lot more about open source than I do at this point in time. I do think that perhaps some of the learnings I've had on my journey to open source might be relevant and hopefully are useful. And I'd certainly like to point out that I am still on a learning journey around open source, but I really welcome any feedback or thoughts or how we could actually bring the conversation forward because I am very keen to get more people involved in open source and the open source movement. So I suppose a good place to start is why do I think that open source can change the world. And I mean, it's probably worthwhile saying that open source can really help developers do things much faster than they might otherwise do. And that's not just in terms of being able to use pre existing code actually open source development methods have been proven to increase developer velocity and productivity so that's all amazing. And then alongside that, of course, everyone I know that has been involved in working in an open way. Love it. Right. And why wouldn't you want happy developers and people who are involved in building technology to be happier so that's another fantastic reason. But I do think that there is a whole emerging set of information around how open source can actually be commercially impactful. That's possibly missing from the narrative that I certainly was aware of before I became more involved in open source. So there's still kind of a lingering story that open source is all about hobbyist developers and it's only about building passion projects. But, you know, when you're looking at the whole ecosystem from the inside. It's very clear that there is a huge amount of commercial opportunity in the open source ecosystem. In fact, many of the world's most profitable and interesting companies that have come out in the last little while have had a huge dependency on open source and are very involved in that ecosystem. So that is definitely another reason why open source can actually have a huge impact on the economic situations within countries say for example. The next reason is probably one of the reasons why I'm most excited about it. I've spent a long time thinking about how technology can be adopted faster because in my work. I have for a long time been aware that even if you build something that's absolutely technically amazing and works brilliantly. That's no guarantee that it will actually be adopted. An awful lot of digital transformation efforts are actually stymied by the fact that people just don't want to use the end result. Now, I have come to believe that trust in technology forms a huge part of that equation. And I believe that open source software can generate trust in its end users that can accelerate the adoption of technology and therefore accelerate the whole digital transformation movement. But also because when we think about the advances and things like AI and lots of technology, I think it's incredibly important for us to think about transparency and think about how we allow people who are going to be affected by this technology to actually have agency and be able to get involved in the development of the technology that's happening in the world around them. So this whole idea of trust and transparency. I think it's something that open source can really help with. And I think it's one of the most important reasons why this way of working can actually help us change the world faster and really leverage all those opportunities that technology brings us. And then of course, you know, it's just a great way to work together. And when I hear of anything that helps people collaborate. I feel like it's something that we should promote. So, you know, I look at all the opportunity that surrounds the technology industry when I think about what we can do these days with technology when I think about the global challenges that we all have to address. I know that not one person, not one organization, not even one country can ever hope to be able to do what needs to be done. So anything that can help us all work better together is good in my book. So these are the reasons why I think open source can change the world. And a fantastic example for me was the recent development of Ireland's covert tracker app. This app was conceived way back in March when Ireland was in the beginning like everyone else of the pandemic pandemic situation. And Ireland decided that they needed something to enhance its track and trace efforts. And this app was decided and designed and built by the health service executive in conjunction with near form who I used to work with. Now, when they were thinking about building this app, one of the primary priorities I guess for it was to make sure that it would be downloaded and used right. And around the time, there was a lot of news in the press about how tracker apps were out by big brother just to make sure you know to figure out where everyone was and there was a kind of a growing distrust that the government would actually be able to build something that was trustworthy. So as a result, the developers of this app decided that they would actually make the source code public before they launched the app so that privacy experts and and advocates would be able to examine the source code and show and it would show them that that it was trustworthy and that there was no reason why anyone wouldn't want to download it. And so they did that they made the source code available. And as a result, all the privacy experts gave it the thumbs up. And that played a huge part in the Irish public trusting this technology. The Ireland covert tracker app was incredibly successful. It had huge rates of adoption. And I think, nearly 33% of the Irish population downloaded in first week alone. And that was one of the fastest rates of adoption of any app of its kind in the world. But one of the most interesting stories about this app, for me, happened after the app went live. And one of the first pull requests that I noted in GitHub against this app was actually someone who wanted to correct the spelling of Kahrasavine. Now Kahrasavine is a small town in the south of Ireland. And I thought it was amazing that there was someone there who was kind of like, that's not how we spell Kahrasavine and Kahrasavine. And they were able to make that app their own people actually felt that they had agency to be able to take that app, and, and make it something that they cared about. And it was that kind of engagement with the public with the people that was expected to download and use this app that I think helped make it so successful. And that is one of the primary benefits of open source. So let's talk about this idea of Mindflex. It's an interesting idea. And I first heard of it when I was following a chap called Dave Snowden on Twitter, just a couple of months ago. Now I'm a huge fan of Dave Snowden. If you don't know him, he was the originator of the Kenevan framework for sense making. So he talks a lot about anthro complexity and complex adaptive systems. And he made this comment about, in particular the agile community, but I think it applies elsewhere as well. This idea that we should get away from talking or even thinking about mind sets or setting our mind in a particular place, but more start thinking about flexing our minds and thinking about how do we take multiple ideas that may seem like they're conflicting and hold them in our heads so that we can actually figure out a way forward. It actually reminded me of a quote from F Scott Fitzgerald, where he said that the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in your mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. I think that's a really interesting concept. It comes up again when we hear James Joyce thinking about this idea of two things at the same time. How do we actually hold these two things in our mind. When people can hold two conflicting ideas in their heads at the same time. It really, really helps them navigate through a complex world but also create consensus and collaboration. And it made me start to think about how often we hear from people in the open source world. In fact, in so many places these days where there are these polarized views where there's a lot of conflict. And we sometimes miss the opportunity to collaborate. So as a result, I started thinking well okay if I wanted to get more people involved in the open source movement. How could we use this idea of two things to maybe flex the way people think about open source and maybe encourage more people to get involved. So let's look at a few of these ideas that I've certainly come across that made me start to think maybe I can flex how we think about these things. The first is this idea of open source and money, because when I have been involved in this community, there's like there's these two conflicting stories that are going on around open source. The first is that oftentimes there is not enough money for open source software maintainers. And then secondly, there's a whole narrative around there's so much money and opportunity in open source. For me, they're kind of conflicting. But when you start thinking about them in the context of mind flex you can kind of start saying well actually these are two things we should actually be both are true. And we should be able to hold both of them in our mind, and then flex when we might use each story, because it is both true that we need to get more money to the people who are maintaining critical parts of the technology ecosystem. But then it's also important for us to be able to talk about the fact that there is a huge amount of money in the ecosystem in the system itself. When we think about open source and that there were opportunities around that. And so we need to start thinking about and flexing when we have certain conversations and with whom in order to actually encourage the growth of the open source ecosystem. Another one is this idea of open source and proprietary code. When I first started getting involved with people working in the open source community. I was very conscious that there was a group of people who believed that open source and should be only should be used all the time and everywhere. And that in every situation, the open source version is the better one to use. Now I'm also aware that there are groups of people for whom open source is not always the way to go. In certain cases, it's absolutely fantastic, but that they would also prefer to use proprietary code in a mix. And again, it strikes me that these things are not necessarily in conflict with each other that both can be true. And in fact, it is good and healthy for us to have a population of people who believe that open source is is the way to go very frequently. It's also good for us to have a population of people who think, okay, we'll use it where it's appropriate. And in some cases it may not be. And there's room for both thoughts and in many respects, enabling and supporting both points of view will help us grow the the overall community of people who get involved in open source. Another point is around the path to open source. I am also involved in a group of folks called the inner source commons and their people who are taking the practices of open source and actually applying them for proprietary code behind firewalls in corporations. And in many respects, it's a fantastic way to bring people on a path to open source many corporations actually decide to go down in a source route in order to train up their staff and get them familiar with the open source world. Sometimes that jump to open source is not necessarily practical for some of these organizations. So this is a step on the way. So that's one point of view. Another point of view is that if we want to get people involved in open source we should get them involved in open source as early as possible we should actually make sure that they're participating in communities contributing code and how do we do that directly and that perhaps any other path might be just slowing that momentum. And again for me. These two things there are there are two things but they're both appropriate depending on the context. So in some cases, it makes absolute sense for people to jump into open source to try and ease that path to try and encourage more people to get involved earlier but it's also true that in some circumstances that inner source for example could be a great path to bring people forward on that journey. And in fact, these days we're even seeing people coming from the open source world and coming into organizations and saying we should do inner source here because I just love the way of working in the open source way. And I want to bring that into this organization just to make developers faster and happier. And that's a great thing too, because it's not just the final result of open source that's valuable. The way of working is really valuable to and the more people who do it the better. Another area is around diversity. And this topic is really close to my heart. I have spent a long time in many conversations about how do we increase diversity in the tech community. And I think when I when I think about the idea of how open source can actually help that. And I think there's huge opportunity there. I'll tell you a little story. I, as I mentioned, have been a long time in the tech community. But I have never actually been involved in writing code for many decades at this point in time. And I was involved in the inner source comments community and just around just after Christmas time. I actually decided to jump in and start creating my GitHub account and started making changes to their website through GitHub and making pull requests and everything like that. And I remember one Friday evening, I was making a chain, I put in the commit and it got accepted. And I rang up Denise Cooper who I know through the inner source comments and I was like, this was amazing. I got such a high from the whole, the whole way in which that whole thing worked out. It was like this little shot of dopamine, this sense of achievement that I got. And I remember saying to her, why aren't we using this as a way to get more people involved in technology, women or or any marginalized group, why aren't we using this as a fantastic pathway to help them understand that they can have impact in this technology world because that was such an amazing experience. You know, the inner source community were so supportive to help me understand how to go through that process that that it was fun, which was amazing. And I remember Denise saying to me, it's fantastic that you had that positive experience within the inner source community. But you have to remember that that's not always the case in every open source project, and that that experience isn't the same everywhere you go, which brings me to the point that there are two things in this area to. I mean, it's pretty clear that the open source community in general could do more to increase diversity inclusion, but that is true of the tech industry in general. And so any efforts to actually increase diversity inclusion and to support that are welcome. I really do think that there is a huge potential with open source software in particular to allow new pathways into tech and to offer that opportunity to any group who may currently feel like they're outside the tech community. So for me, this is a definite place where we should explore it further, we should always make sure to think about how we can increase diversity inclusion in existing projects and that is a really worthwhile effort and activity. And it is also true that we should recognize the fact that the open source development methods provide pathways and accessibility to allow people to feel like they are engaged with technology that may not exist in other places that don't necessarily require you to go to college and get a degree in computer science in order to be able to engage with this stuff. And I think that those pathways need to be explored. And I think it's a real positive way in which we can actually get more engagement from a broader population in technology. And considering technology is pretty much defining how the future of the world will look like. And I think that's a really worthwhile valid path to take. So the next one is around open source definitions. And again, this probably won't be a surprise to many of you, but it's worthwhile mentioning that from my perspective, certainly from the outside looking in, there is still this concept that open source is just about the license. It's just about how you make your software available, what license you choose to use and whether you decide to go proprietary or open. Of course, now I've begun to realize that open source is a lot to do with not just the license or the code, but in fact the community, and the ways of actually working in an open way. And so it's incredibly important that people don't just throw code over the wall, but that they actually work to build a community and that that takes effort and time and probably resources that people don't necessarily consider initially. So this is an important one for people to actually remember. You all probably know this already but for people outside to understand more clearly that open source is not just a license but is also community or in fact maybe we can start thinking about three things in this particular scenario that open source is a license. It is also about community, but that also the whole open source ecosystem is like a complex system. And this brings me back to the whole Dave Snowden argument that in a complex system, we need to allow room for evolution for emerging ideas for novel ideas, we need to be able to spot those, and we need to be able to experiment but at the same time, we probably need to create scaffolding and supports to enable that complex system to exist, and to ensure that for example, the things that we know to be true that the truths in the system are also recognized and and applied. So when we start thinking about what kind of scaffolding and supports could be applied to the open source ecosystem so that it becomes more successful. The idea that I think could be very, very useful is is the idea of an asshole plus plus. Now, an asshole is an open source program office, and it is a construct that is very familiar in the corporate world. Right. I mean these days, a lot of the large organizations would have open source program offices, and they do things like, you know, define the internal businesses they have a center of excellence for compliance and legal. They measure the open source activity within an organization they educate people about how to do it. They manage relationships with foundations and they do advocacy and communications around what's happening around open source in the organization. But there is this idea that we could take that construct and we could expand it beyond the idea of having it within corporations, but actually taking it and bringing it to universities and municipalities and regional governments. And that's where it's not so common. But if we take that idea, and we bring it to these new places. And perhaps, we would need to consider more things than just open source software, also things like open data, open hardware open standards innovation and scholarship. And importantly, we think about not just the idea of creating these constructs to be inward looking to look within organizations to see what they're doing and to help and support, but also think about how they can be extended externally, and how they can create networks of of of us posts that could work together. Then we're really getting to a point where we're creating a supporting scaffolding or a system that could create real change in the world. Because of all the benefits I mentioned earlier, all the things that open source can do to, to help change the world and make the world a better place. We need to support those activities, and in some ways, help orchestrate them and create those pathways and connections and networks that would allow people to work together better. And I think that an auspil plus plus is something that can go along these, these lines and can help in that way. And the benefits could be a multitude of benefits, we could help municipalities and regional citizens services. That's both in the terms of actually, if you build it once you can actually replicate it across different cities, but also in terms of that trust idea I mentioned earlier, where we can release a citizen service but that more people will adopt it because it means something to them, and they have an ability to impact it which becomes so important. So that's the idea of how we think about research translation, how we think about the outputs of the public money we invest in research in our universities. How does that manifest itself. Right now, it's very tied to the idea of IP and how people monetize IP and license it afterwards. There is so much more impact. If we actually think about all that software that never gets licensed, but could really do good in the world. How do we think about how do we get a return on the impact of that kind of software. If it was made available through open source and publicized and and promoted through an open source program office, that would be something that kind of huge impact and could actually accelerate our learning so much space and we're seeing a lot of that around covert and the collaborations that are happening. I also think that we need to think about these ideas of building the skills for the future. For me, if anything that helps us collaborate more and build structures around that is a good thing. So, I think that an also plus plus could help us on that journey. And in particular, as I mentioned one of the most important things is that I can think it can actually increase transparency and trust in citizen services and in the technology that we are building to help the future of the world. So, an open source program office, thinking about extending that come construct, thinking about flexing the way we define what an aspo is, and that could really really help us grow the open source ecosystem and actually have huge impact in the world. I just wanted to say that I'm involved with an organization called mass labs that are working to get more aspo plus plus organizations live around the world in municipalities, regional governments and universities and research centers. So, if you are in that community, or if you know anyone who is, please do reach out and find out more about this network that that is emerging around the world, and how to actually get linked into that. I would be delighted to hear from you. And if you have any ideas about how we can flex the messages of open source to encourage more people to get involved. I would also love to hear from you, because I would love to help spread those stories, and hopefully help open source software change the world. Thank you very much.