 Yeah, this talk is preparing clients. I threw in and ourselves Because it in some ways that's what it's about for open-source contribution So hi a little background about me. I'm Aaron Cowich. I Help create decan. I've been working on open data for five or six years. I love cheap pizza If you want me if you really want to like To go from zero to ten for me is someone from New York Telling me that the pizza from New York is better than Philadelphia It hurts because it's kind of true, but just don't go there So I'm feeling really I've got the white dude privileges. It's a mixed bag to be honest in some ways, but I I just turned 40 so like my life is Early bedtime and and dad jokes and I'm currently talking to you right now We're all stuck in the present moment and it's really interesting way So if you want to talk to me about that after the talk, I'd be happy to But that's not what this is about So what is at stake? Why do I why do I care about false for you know open-source software? Distributed power Someone asked a couple me like a year ago like what am I really like what's my good professional goal? And it was to prepare ourselves for the singularity And I think Foss plays Roll in that in that it's it distributes power in a way that is really structurally important It the freedom part of it is like a visceral thing for me. I recently fixed my dryer Hold the applause, but it was pretty awesome but the belt broke and I went online and I Saw a tutorial and it was not actually that hard, but like imagine if you couldn't you weren't allowed to open your dryer Like that's kind of what closed-source code is like and So I it's kind of like a visceral thing for me The the idea of the commons like we're all kind of working together as humans is something that open-source code speaks to And it's awesome how it empowers contributors and empowers people empowers leaders to Help us envision an open society Why should government care about Foss? Yeah, it's crazy to spend public funds on private code. It's my favorite saying around that Transparent seeing accountability and Yeah, I mean it's our it's that's it's our code and it is something that we should have access to a Lot of the private companies create closed ecosystems around their data and their tooling that is pretty Anathetical to the public good And that's problematic as well So I work in open data Primarily and wise Foss useful for open data The if you if the tools to Unlock the data are closed then the data isn't Truly open we Have created a resource called the open data open source open data manifesto that is we're in a soft launch right now But kind of distills those beliefs and go check it out So what is not at stake there's been a lot of hanging I think in the civic tech community around like Are we not having the impact that we want to because like Civic tech and Foss aren't are not organizing. I think it's useful to be honest about what it is and what it isn't so like I think this is what we're doing and I think it's super important When I told my mom about this talk she said that doesn't sound very sexy And it's not but I mean indoor like plumbing like it's super important and I will scowl Versificely at anyone that disagrees with that So it is But it's not it's not social justice. It's it's a different beast, but it's it's super important so There was a really interesting talk that Joe gave yesterday about connecting people connecting with people that are Using software and like does what open source matter to them. So open source has to have ultimately we want the tools to be better and I think that's part of the Where the the goal for us Needs to be I shared this because I'm trying to quit Facebook like everyone probably but so my dad died recently and Someone shared something really personally Powerful about my dad that I wouldn't have had if I wasn't on Facebook and so I want to live in a world where I woke up. You know, I wake up Having an open source phone that doesn't have data that is controlled by Google and I want to interact with my lived environment with all these tools but as we Build and envision ultimately people are using these and so the theory verse practices Is important so who pays for all these open source tools that we think are important VC's clients foundations governments, etc and So where did how do we like how do we actually bring these things forward? This is kind of often what happens with open source. So we have, you know client a client B They have their feature set some of it overlaps with maybe something that's a little bigger so Similarly here these features, you know, maybe aren't useful for for this kind of core open-source thing So what if like when is the right time to actually Contribute back like is that is that a bad thing right there if you're mostly Using just extensions and configuration and you're not contributing back It has to be About values. So that's something that really just depends on The project so I what is the value proposition of clients for free and open-source software? I left this I left this blank on purpose So I'm gonna ask the crowd does anyone why why should a vet why should a client want to use free and open-source software? Does anyone I So just to repeat for the recording proprietary software vendor lock-in proprietary software can Go out of business and then you're screwed ain't any other Reasons why for you know from source software is important for clients Yeah, better support actually arrow is on the civic actions team who does support and I think he does better support than anyone else I know so So there's a lot of value in Free and open-source software. Why do we want why why would? Clients actually want to contribute to free and open-source software Does anyone To ensure continuity great any other reasons it's broken it makes me angry The visceral one it's broken. It makes me angry anything else Build in-house skills. Yeah, that one of the my favorite stories about Decan is that um we created a portal for Jamaica and hosted it and did all the work and Last fall they Basically took it over and are now hiring people Now have people in Jamaica Running the servers running like doing it fully. So that's another You know potential value is that for governments especially is that instead of having those jobs out in Silicon Valley having them in like VC funded kind of Structurally hierarchical places There's people in Jamaica That have got the training have and have taken over the tool So one one big value Proposition for clients to contribute to FOS and I think this is maybe the biggest one that I would argue or I Propose when talking to clients is that owning features is expensive. You don't want to they're You you don't want to Yeah own a certain feature because There's no public documentation for it. There's no public upgrade path. You're forking and That's that's really expensive It all it keeps the nerds happy. I mean is that is that kind of What we're saying as well So in terms of Talking to and convincing clients to adopt open source. There's a Whole there's the whole the whole the whole team needs to be involved in it It can't just be It can't just be these folks So let's let's look at that kind of cycle in some ways the community is kind of like the first place that those kind of that those discussions are had and Then sales and marketing is a bigger channel Then once you've got a client that you're going to onboard them Then you have the agile kind of process hopefully you're making big feet awesome features and Hopefully you're having a much bigger impact Mm-hmm So community Here we are we can all You know pat ourselves on the back But are we in the right communities or do we know what the client communities are? Do we know what the user communities are? And the idea of community itself like all of the all much of the engines that the features and and software that we are interested in Requires a community and a community is something that is not There's not like a direct funding model for so That's a tension that Is is hard to resolve so in terms of Sales and marketing you it's important to talk about for you know, it's been sourced software, right? So this is civic actions calm before before the talk I was It's gonna kind of show like okay, you know, here's how we're talking about free and open-source software and That's the Are you even talking about open source so I was like oh man, so that's the control F We're not even mentioning open source poop And Additionally so the the next step I didn't capture that but I click we have a decan and open data page that we haven't updated in probably a year and a half Similar probably marketing story. We are working on updating this I promise But I was like, okay. It's certainly decan our open-source Catalog says open source. It was the same thing. We didn't even mention it ouch Our source code is For the site it's in Gatsby Markdown So at least we mentioned open source in 35 places But most of them are either interviews or if you scroll down Like everyone's bio says open source. So it's interesting like and It's it's something that we value and try and Make sure that We treat we do communicate that to clients, but oops So the first step of once you want once we're past the sales and marketing So this is my reaction to to lawyer stuff But like it's super critical are you allowed to actually are you even allowed to contribute like You need that bare minimum This this is our lawyer. He's he's amazing his name is Mark Jones. He was super stressed about me having only one slide about this he He gives he gives like two-week in-depth primers about or trainings about Open source licensing licensing, but if you're interested in exploring it a little bit more This is maybe the best place to start. I'm not sure who this is, but he's talking to our security Or our chop security person. So that's even more scary lawyers and Security people So, okay, we've got the we've we've passed that gate. We've got the right license Now we're actually starting the work, you know, you we have that that that first that first client meeting where you're Where if it's a great Relationship you think back. It's like your first date, you know, everyone is happy and But are you actually talking about open source contribution from the beginning of the project? So surely you're talking about false at that point, right? But how do you even talk about that like what what are the What are your goals and your your KPIs keep performance? Indicators, can you measure what your open source contribution can be like can we have like a linter that says, okay, you know of the amount of code that we created we are Publishing 10 percent or 20 percent like would that would that even be useful? I mean, I think the biggest thing is is is features like what features are you building and are you? contributing those back to Where are you started? So typically There's this difference between like a configuration and and Actually feature building so if you're working on WordPress Like a WordPress site and you actually contribute something back to like WordPress core or like a new theme or something like that's amazing Because it's such a big project like if you're using something that's newer That contribution maybe should be bigger Or if you're I'm trying something if it's kind of a greenfield project like maybe the whole thing should be open source I have the frictionless data stuff here because I'm super excited about that and I'm hoping that people are Going to contribute that more So how like how do we? Okay, we've we've gotten past that first meeting. We've gotten the client convinced that okay X feature We're gonna we're gonna open source. We can either like as a new project or we're gonna contribute it back How do we actually get that into the? The project so this is my this is my new kind of big thing like or this is my thesis maybe is that? Personas are a way of injecting The open source user stories into the project So Here's to kind of open source personas for us an adopter like what do they want in terms of features? Like what's their experience and how can you actually build that create user stories in the agile? in the agile Adam so that agile is Adam is like the the place where all this work happens and We have the technology we can inject user stories directly into backlogs Around this so as an open data adopter. I want a new XYZ That's one strategy that I've started working on another is to like Within agile the day after the sprint is over. Maybe those are like a day or two of cleanup So yeah, these are some Strategies around that kind of That kind of contribution so Yeah, that's a good stopping point I think Does anyone have any questions or discussion topics? I was wondering if So like when you're like creating like open source software like some users are great But like you might get like a small minority of users who like why didn't you answer my email within the hour? So I was wondering if you had any like tips or guidelines about like setting expectations about the project Yeah, I mean that There's a like you could be you could give a whole there's a whole kind of Area of right community building that you need to try and figure out how to to allocate for and manage and like hopefully It's like a little bit of a chicken and egg thing like hopefully you can have enough clients where you can devote the time to that and Yeah within the Within kind of like the the program of your your work Allocating for that is is important But it's hard because those are the that's another reason that like the personas idea is important to me because like those aren't your paying clients And so they just like get like it's hard to Address that through a lot of the kind of agile processes that we have I Can I can describe an experience that I've had on open data projects? designed to outlive a company and then get a company to pay the development of the data and then The data goes over the company goes away. You can keep working on it in future projects This is what maps that has done and it's continuing to do it other companies Not so much a question. Yeah, no, it's I mean it's exciting because Yeah, the project is bigger than the company that's actually what happened with with decan and secan exists outside of a specific company and It's awesome because you can keep working on things that are interesting to you outside of like whoever your quote-unquote Whatever the structure is that In genders paychecks Do you find that in your experience anyone actually buys like the moral imperatives for companies to contribute to open source? So I'm thinking specifically of folks who like or companies that are really into using open source But basically don't contribute back money or labor to it So in your experience has anyone actually been like yeah, it's the right thing to do and not have to make all of these sort of marketing value propositions Yeah, I mean I think I think one of the hard things is that a lot of people think it is the right thing to do But then if it's not articulated why and how then It just creates like Like who's actually gonna do it is a problem like we have a yeah There's a I've had experience with a bunch of clients that are like yeah open source. We're totally into it But then like you're like, okay Well, this feature is gonna take longer because we're gonna contribute it back and they're like well, but we need that Like but we're launching soon. So why you know My question is basically like does the moral argument ever work and so if the answer is no, I think it does I mean, I think it does but ultimately It's like It it shouldn't we shouldn't rely on the moral argument like because it does Produce better value for people If it's done right Awesome. Thanks