 Welcome to the untold stories behind the hyperledger community, a monthly podcast in which we invite developers from across the hyperledger ecosystem to share about why they're using hyperledger projects and why they're actively involved in the community. While there are lots of venues to learn about the what of hyperledger technologies this show is focused on why individuals roll up their sleeves to help develop and deploy them. Each episode features an in depth discussion with a guest who is helping to shape the future of enterprise blockchain and their journey as a leader, developer and an open source contributor. Conversations will delve into topics such as why they get involved with hyperledger, why they're excited about the technology and how they deal with the challenges involved in contributing to a large global open source community. My name is David Boswell and I'm the senior director of community architecture at the hyperledger foundation. And I'm speaking today to Tracy Kurt, who has been involved in the hyperledger community for several years and several roles. She was a Linux foundation staff member who supported the community. She has been a developer and a project maintainer. For the last two years, she has led the technical oversight committee as the group's chair, and she is the associate director blockchain and multi party systems architecture at Accenture. Because of the depth and breadth of her experience, she is a great guest to start our series with. So thank you for joining us today, Tracy. Thanks for having me. So I've known you for about the last few years I think just over you were here at the Linux foundation when I started as an employee. And I think we pretty much interacted fairly regularly ever since then, but I really don't know much about your story before that so I thought today we could start with some questions that touch on your life before you got involved with hyperledger. So as a starting point I was curious when did you first start getting involved and interested in programming and do you remember the first open source project you ever started using. Yeah, so I got interested in programming back in junior high school. The, there was some project that they had us do or they had us research a number of different jobs for years, right that we're out there. I think we had to research three different careers and one of them that I picked was computer programming. And I'll say at the time I chose for a very poor reason, which was that the computer programmers made the most money. But that was the reason I chose it, but you know, I would say that the good thing about it is it really led to me making decisions throughout the rest of my life around what it was that I wanted to do. So for example, what it of what school I wanted to go to, and what, you know, I wanted to focus on which was computer science and engineering, you know, the first kind of job that I had and so on and so forth. So, even though I made like a decision based on some poor reasoning, I think the decision actually ended up being very beneficial. The first open source project that I used was actually Slackware Linux version one. So I was working as an intern at the time at GE aircraft engines. And my, I don't, I think my boss came to me and he's like hey there's this thing called Linux like let's go take a look at it see what it's all about. And so like 24 disk later, after installing them and getting it on right taking a look at Linux and using it so I guess it's a good thing that Linux was made my first one to be able to stay on this podcast that you know for the Linux foundation and the hyperledger foundation. That was my first experience with open source. That did work out well certainly. So was that also the first open source community you got involved with and participated in or you were just using Linux at that point. So I was just using Linux at that point on the first actual open source project that I contributed to was the GNU binary utilities. At that point I was working at microchip technologies. I was developing compilers assemblers and linkers for their 8 bit 16 bit microcontrollers. And I was working on adding some functionality to basically make the code that we were putting on the 8 bit microcontroller smaller right that was generated from our compilers. In doing that I was using the assembler and found some bugs in the code. And so I contributed those fixes back to the community. So I think it's a pretty typical sort of experience right you use open source code you find issues with it you report those issues maybe you fix those issues so that you can continue on with using that code and making progress so yeah I think that was the first real community that I would participate in. And you're right that's a classic example you're using something you needed to do something that doesn't and you can, you know, because it's open you can show up and do it so it's great. So I'm curious about the mechanics of how that community operated because I think all open source projects, you know, obviously have some similarities but differences to like, was there anything that community did around encouraging contribution or recognizing contribution or making contribution easier that you think would be a good idea for hyperledger to take a look at. I think it boils down to the sort of response that I got back from the maintainer of the assembler portion of the good and binary utilities right. It was very welcoming I felt like, you know, there were communication was very open. We communicated via mailing list to report issues and, and have conversations about what's the best way to fix this and those sorts of things and I really think that as maintainers, the best thing that we can do for people who are looking to contribute is do our best not to turn them away. Feel feel like they have a voice that they are part of a larger group and, and that the mentoring occurs I think mentoring is so important for new new joiners to a community and so that was the one thing I think I would take away from from that experience is just that I felt like there was somebody on the other end that understood my problems and was willing to have the conversations and, and help me through the process of contributions. Very similar to I think my first experience at hyperledger as well and contributing code to hyperledger. Is there was somebody here at his name was Nick Gatsky he helped me with adding some, some changes to documentation and just that experience of walking through the process with somebody right the very first time that you have to contribute it's kind of nerve wracking. Yeah, I feel like, you know, there are things that we can can do to help people as they come in and contribute to our, our projects. Yeah, I mean that's a great example and it obviously made an impact on you and it was memorable I mean you've been involved in the community for several years and you still remember the person who helped you so yeah that that was obviously a memorable and useful experience I think that's great advice you're right if you show up at a community and you don't think about the opposite nobody nobody helps or nobody responds or nobody makes you feel welcome yeah why would you stick around right. And since you mentioned mentorship, I guess I'll just do a quick plug, you know the hyperledger foundation runs an annual mentorship program. The 2023 mentorship program is getting started now. I'm not sure exactly when this will go live, but take a look on our wiki. If you're interested in being a mentor or being a mentee take a look at our mentorship program and we hope you apply. Yeah, actually kicking kicking off today. So February 1 is the start date if you have any mentorship project proposals through March 15 I think is the date that you have to submit those so looking forward to seeing what comes out this year with the mentorship. Yeah, absolutely every year there's really interesting projects so yeah I'm looking forward to this years as well. And you mentioned hyperledger some curious how did you go from being a Linux user for example to ending up in the hyperledger community was there. What was the connection how did you end up taking a look at hyperledger. Yeah, so I think it's a similar sort of experience to how I got involved with the GNU binary utility. So I was working at the time at PayPal. I was part of their strategic architecture team. My boss came to me and he's he had just been to an IBM think conference and he came back and he said hey IBM announced this thing called the IBM open blockchain platform. Could you take a look at this and see what it is and what is this blockchain thing all about and, you know, let me know. And so, yeah, I went off and I installed the the IBM OBC, I think I still have a fork of that repo. For those of you who don't know that eventually became hyperledger fabric. So that that was my real intro into into the hyperledger space and, you know, joining the chat and being part of that and that's really how I got my involvement or start to with hyperledger foundation. That's cool. And you mentioned talking about what is this blockchain thing and that led to a question I have I do want to talk more about the hyperledger community but I do think maybe people who are listening have that same question what is this blockchain thing all about. So it's curious before we talk more about hyperledger just what what how would you answer that question what is blockchain all about but because I think there are reasons that people could be really skeptical about that answer right now you know I think for example. When people hear blockchain a lot of people naturally think of cryptocurrencies and there are certainly valid reasons to, you know, have, you know, questions about that you know for example just the recent collapse of FTX, you know raises questions. And I, and I understand that blockchain and cryptocurrency are two different things but maybe not everybody you know has that understanding right now. But I think beyond that, I think there's also concerns if you do kind of understand blockchain is a separate technology you can build all sorts of things with it separate from cryptocurrencies. I think there's even concerns around that you know just to give you one example, I was recently reading an article with the title blockchain is not only crappy technology but but a bad vision for the future. The author there is saying that some people treat blockchain as a futuristic integrity wand was his expression, and he gave an example like you can set up a blockchain network to track something for example his example was about organic mangoes but he said there's nothing magic about that system somebody could still put bad data into it. So that data is not necessarily trusted at that point. So, when you talk to people about what this blockchain thing is all about like how do you address those concerns and what do you say, kind of the role in the live of, you know, why somebody would want to look at blockchain. I think when I was community architect at Hyperlider, and one of the things I used to say when I talked to people was, instead of garbage in garbage out, it's garbage in garbage forever. You know, given given that blockchain basically tracks all of the transactions through the through the history and gives you that, you know, log of what's happened. I think it's, it's really interesting to think about that difference that you mentioned right that blockchain is a technology upon which we can build other things cryptocurrency being one of those. And other technologies like the decentralized identity projects that we have there are focused on potentially using blockchain or not. Right. And I do think that, you know, if I have to explain blockchain, it's about sharing data for one, but there are a lot of different ways in which we can share data today. It's about making sure that you have that that single source of truth of what that data is. And you can see kind of how that data has changed along the history of all the transactions that have occurred. But I think that the piece of blockchain ads on top of your shared data, which can be accomplished in, like I said, many different ways is that that tokenized value right being able to understand the custody of the assets that are stored on the blockchain, being able to prevent double spend of those assets, make sure that the asset exists only once and that it can't be held by more than one party I think those things are important. You know, as an architect. I think that the interesting thing that I see is that, you know, we have to use the right tools for solving our problems. And if we're using the wrong tools to solve the problem, then then we're going to end up in a situation where how did you say that. What was the title of that article. The title is blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future you're right I mean if we use the wrong tools in the wrong way maybe that does lead to a bad vision of the future right. Yeah, I think you know as an architect one of the things I say more than anything to people looking to start a blockchain project, which I put in quotes blockchain project because you know we don't talk about a SQL server project or WordPress project or whatever. You know, it's like, why are you using blockchain here. What is it that you're trying to accomplish who are the participants that are being part of this network. What are you trying to do right and, and I think that is the big question that we have to ask and have an answer before we can decide whether or not blockchain is the right, right technology to use for a project what are the requirements what are we trying to solve. And if we don't understand that then we shouldn't be using or choosing the technology. Yeah, for sure. Well thanks for going through that explanation I hope it's helpful and it gives a little bit more context for for everybody listening when we talk about what's happening here at hyperledger. So going back to some more questions about hyperledger. So how, how did you go from just taking a look at the code, looking at what's going on in the community to ending up actually working at the hyperledger community as a community architect. Yeah, so, as I mentioned right when I was taking a look at what became hyperledger fabric I joined the hyperledger chat. And was basically following along with what was happening there. We had somebody posted on the board right, we're looking for a community architect for hyperledger if you're interested to meet your resume and I was like, this sounds interesting right I think that the technology the technology is extremely interesting I think the way in which we're combining a bunch of different sorts of technologies in a different way was interesting. And I wanted to dig in more and basically say let's get in on the ground floor and and see where this leads and so I took a took the leap submitted my resume and ended up as a hyperledger community architect. And that's where we met I joined, I guess you'd been here about a year and a half or so maybe when I joined. Sounds about right. Yeah, yeah, and then we worked together and then you, then after being a community architect you ended up going into Accenture so how did that journey lead, lead you further into your new role. You know, you know, I think it was really my my experience as a community architect at hyperledger was extremely interesting I got to to really travel the world. Talk about what we were doing at the hyperledger foundation and, you know, explain the different projects that were going on, I got to meet a ton of people in the community. Right from people on chat who, you know, even today I have people tell me like that was their first experience of meeting me was talking to me on chat. I didn't write like, you know, to actually meeting people in person at some of these conferences and, and, you know, I think that the network, right that the people within the community are just a really interesting set of people. And, you know, I think network is so important, right, the people that you know is is how you get to kind of the next stage in your career and, you know, and and lead you on a journey that you might not have taken otherwise. And that's really how I got exposed to the people at Accenture and how I met those folks and ended up coming over to Accenture as a as an architect. Right. And then when you went over there you still remain in the hyperledger community I mean it's one thing when you're links foundation employee you're obviously your job is to be involved in the community. And then when you left that role you still stayed in the community and I suppose you didn't have to so what you know what benefits did you see about continuing to invest your time in the hyperledger community and that new role. So, so the role that I took at Accenture, I was part of our blockchain practice, working as a technology architect, looking at a number of different blockchain platforms and distribute ledger platforms. And one of those obviously being the different hyperledger projects that exist. And so, really, for me, saying evolve with the hyperledger community is about, again, continuing to talk to people, learning what they're doing with the technology understanding the challenges that they're having where where they're going, kind of that future direction. Right. And also a hyperledger lab Stewart and so I get to see all these new things that are coming into the labs area and really understand the sorts of things where people are having problems. You know, they're trying to solve some sort of issue and, and really just having those conversations is what makes it worthwhile to continue to invest my time in the community is really continuing to want to expand myself and the knowledge that I have, but also help others, I think is another piece of this right obviously we're very collaborative community. I think it's so so very important to to work with others and understand how to work with others. Yeah, I mean I feel the same way that's why I mean I kind of accidentally stumbled into open source, you know not exactly knowing what it is but that's what got me hooked I've been involved for 20 years for the same reason you meet people who have a shared passion and that's just really exciting to you know, if you're excited about something and you know it's great to be surrounded by other people who share that interest and want to and want to work with you on whatever it is that you're trying to achieve. I feel the same way it's definitely a great interesting environment. And speaking about community members, I did, it felt appropriate if we're going to talk about why people get involved in the community. In our discussion, I felt that only appropriate to invite community members to take a part in this discussion so I did ask on the hyperliters discord server if people had questions that they wanted to ask in this discussion today and one person did submit a question so I will thank that person for their contribution and then ask that question they wanted to know about recognition so I think recognition is very important in an open source community goes back to what I think you were saying earlier about feeling welcome if you show up and do something. And nobody says thank you or nobody responds or you know nobody even acknowledges that you're not going to feel like really great you're like well did anybody really care that I did that thing so I think. When those people show up when they get involved, recognizing them in some way, you know, is critical, at least in my mind, I think that recognition can look a lot of different ways sometimes, you know, people get t shirts, if they're an active contributor sometimes they just get a thank you or a shout out in some way we sometimes write spotlight blog posts so the question this person asked when I asked her questions on discord was, do you personally have a preferred way to be recognized when you make a contribution again there's lots of different different people may feel different and might have different answers like I don't necessarily need more to t shirts at this point, but maybe you know thank you would be much more meaningful did you have a preference for recognition. Yeah, I have to say my wardrobe of hyperledger t shirts was quite large when I left the Linux Foundation. I still wear them today but you know I'm one of those people who doesn't want to be called up on the stage and sort of thing I want just somebody to say exactly what you said right thank you. Thank you for the effort. Thank you for the time thank you. And I tried to try to do that. I'm probably not as good as I should be but I do try to call out different community members. You know at the goal forum and at the member summit I tried to call out the hyperledger to see and just recognize the fact that they had put in an entire year in helping to guide the direction of the technical community and I think that's so important. Now, I will say that I'll never turned out a t shirt or sticker. I love the challenge points that you guys have created I think those are great. I have all the poker chips right for the different projects I have the challenge points right like those are little collector items just for me. As far as like, hey I was part of this community and and I can look at those and say yeah back in whatever year it was right I have a challenge point for that. Yeah, yeah I really like the coins too and for people listening. Yeah what we started doing a couple years is creating a physical hyperledger coin that had the date on it so you could point to say hey I contributed to this community this year. So we've kind of started making that a tradition. And we are, since this is the beginning of 2023 we can share that we're finally we're working into designer right now to finalize a design for a new coin for this year so if you're interested in getting a coin show up. Get involved in the community and we'll be happy to recognize you for your contribution. And I'll just have to add on top of what you said to I feel the same way I don't necessarily want a spotlight on me and don't want to be up on the stage so it's the more personal one on one connection really matters but again it's interesting people have different preferences and then you know, what's meaningful to one person isn't necessarily meaningful to another so I think it's important for us to recognize people in a variety of different ways we really can kind of do something that's meaningful to everybody. Yeah, I completely agree. I think, you know, the times that you remember the most or the times when you weren't recognized for the work that you put in. So, I think we have a little bit more time left so I am interested to hear more about what you're doing currently in Accenture and again with the focus of this discussion being on the why of things. I am really curious to hear how discussions kind of internally at Accenture have gone about talking about, you know, again why get involved, you know why do things in an open way. Because it's, again, I have I've been involved in open source for you know around 20 years at this point and I think the reasons why not to get involved are often, you know, over, you know, often kind of really compelling for some people you know I think, especially if you have short what I've noticed if you have short term deadlines if you had a company that's using an open source piece of code and you have short term deadlines sometimes that kind of time pressure makes the why of getting involved not make sense right because it's often quicker to not contribute right. You can take code modified internally and you're off and running right, but to try to get that code that you might have modified back right into the community requires extra steps right and if you just don't have that time maybe you don't do those extra steps right you have to talk to containers go to calls submit, you know, your issue, you know there's a bunch of different steps right. So, I have noticed that kind of the why not to is often really compelling so I'm curious. How do you address those concerns and say no it is really important to take those extra steps here is why it's important why we really should not just take the code and use it but take the code and contribute back. You know, do you get pushed back around that internally at your role or is everybody on the same page or how do you kind of address those concerns if they do come up. Yeah, I think it's, I think there's a couple things that we can talk about here I think sponsorship is extremely, extremely important. Having a sponsor in your organization I think set open source is important is is so key to making sure that you can contribute to that there's no roadblocks that are put in place I think education of different people and what it means to do open source. You know, I've, I've had conversations around different sorts of licensing terms and what that means for for us, right. I think those things are important to just to bring up and, you know, I'm sure there's repositories of knowledge out there, because people have been doing this, you know, for many, many years. And, you know, but getting that knowledge to the right people, the people who need to understand that there are benefits to contributing is so important. I think, you know, if you look at the example that you gave right I take the code or modify it I don't contribute that back. What happens when you need to upgrade to the latest version. Sure, sure. That is time consuming. And, you know, would you have spent more time up front, if you had contributed that back, or are you actually spending more time at a later point in the cycle, where maybe it's even more critical that you, you know, don't have the time to do that. And I think it's really, really important for us to think about the, the unintended consequences of our choices and kind of what what we're doing when we decide whether or not to contribute something or not contribute something. You know, looking at certain projects that have been, you know, end of life, and then wait, that can't be an end of life project because I'm using that project. If you're using that project, then maybe you should contribute to what's going on there and be more involved in that community. I think it's so important that people recognize that, you know, people are investing their time and when they don't have the time to invest. It's very possible that a project that you're very dependent on goes away. I mean, you mentioned Hyperledric Composer earlier. It's so interesting that we continue to see people who are like, Hey, I found this link about Hyperledric Composer and I want to use it and it's like, well, that's been end of life for a while now years. Exactly. And so, you know, I think it's just, you know, a bit of knowledge transfer that needs to happen to make people understand what could possibly go wrong in the future. Well, you've said a couple of things there I'll respond to and you're right. I mean, I think the Composer example is a great one. You could say the same thing about Hyperledric Explorer that was also end of life recently. Both of those didn't go end of life because they had no users. I mean, people were absolutely using them. They just didn't have maintainers, right? And you're right. We did the same experience that you talked about with Composer. We had with Explorer too. There was a lot of people who showed up and said, Hey, I was using that. But nobody was left to maintain it, right? And so, you know, it's this catch 22. So yeah, I think that's definitely a compelling reason for why to get involved. If you rely on something, right? You want to make sure it grows and evolves and meet your needs, right? And the only way to make sure it's growing and evolving to meet your needs is to get involved, right? Right. And to, you know, even, you know, make sure that if there's any security issues or anything like that, they get addressed, right? You know, they get addressed. You address any bug fixes that you have, right? Those bug fixes that come in from the community, so important, so important. Yeah. Agreed, agreed. And you also were talking about that kind of the short term speed kind of angle, but then you pointed out that maybe you do go more quickly. Not contributing in the short term, but you're right. It's, I think it's absolutely right to focus on what happens in the long term. Maybe you're heading for a much bigger slowdown later, right? When you're kind of internal development is kind of completely out of sync with where the open source development has gone, right? Maybe you saved a little bit of time up front, but you're going to have to deal with that, you know, time at some point in the future. So I've kind of used the phrase in the past and I don't know how effective it's been, but I've talked to people about go slow now to go quickly later, right? I mean, if you do take that time up front to contribute back, you will go more quickly later, right? Because you will be doing your work with a much larger team, right? If you integrate with that open source community, it's not just you and your internal team anymore, right? It's everybody else in the community who cares about that same project, too, but you don't really get that benefit unless you do that short term slowdown to really integrate in there, right? That's correct. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I do want to point out that beyond just contributing to open source code, Accenture has done more than that in the hyperledger community. You're not just contributing to a given project, you've also started projects as well. So is that a different calculus? Like, how do you say, it's one thing to say, hey, we're using this open source code, we rely on it, so let's get involved. I think it's another thing to say, hey, we're doing this thing internally. Do we open source it? Or, hey, we need to start something. There's a, there's kind of a gap here. We need to start something. Do we start it as open source code? Is that a different discussion internally or how, I'm curious, what did, how did the discussions internally go about the two hyperledger projects you have started? Yeah, so I think with both hyperledger bevel and hyperledger, again, the sponsorship is so key, right? We do have a sponsor with an Accenture who believes that we should pretty much open source everything that we possibly can, right? I think with bevel, there was a recognition that, you know, when we did proof of concepts and pilots with blockchain, we got to a point where, you know, oh, let's change this from a proof of concept to something that we're going to put in production. So how did, how did, how do we make a deployment tool that allows for us to deploy blockchain networks that would be production ready at the gate and allow for those proof of concepts to more easily move from a proof of concept to something that goes to production? I think that was a key kind of missing area that existed out there in the space and so hyperledger bevel was created specifically for that to fill a gap, right? With hyperledger cat die, the focus was on interoperability and for some of you may know Accenture has a couple of different patents on the interoperability between different blockchain networks and the way in which that might be done. But really wanted to get the community involved in, you know, developing something larger and something that would meet more use cases and basically have the benefit of all of those different voices coming in and saying this is what we think interoperability should look like. And so cat day has become that, right? We've taken it from hyperledger cactus to bringing in weaver to making it cat die, right? And really, there is a big focus on talking to the community and bringing interoperability as a whole into and under the hyperledger cat die project. And I think there's been some some benefits, right? Just as you would expect, right? When more people come in with their ideas, you end up with something better. I think collaboration as we talked about, right? So important for us to understand how to do that, how to collaborate with others and work with others. And, you know, I think it's a skill, a skill that people can can get and gain and I think that's another kind of reason why people should contribute to open source is because it helps them kind of work with others and it's like a skill that is really hard to learn until you do it, right? The more you do it, the better you get at it and so on and so forth. So yeah, hopefully that helps kind of understand the the why of both of those projects and kind of why I think, again, open source is so important. Yeah. And I agree with what you say about the skill and I'll just give a shout out to the maintainers of the bevel and cacti projects that you're talking about. I mean, I see them doing exactly what you were talking about earlier about, you know, how do you bring people into the community? Peter, for example, you know, on cacti, you know, is out there and very welcoming and but that takes his time, right? I mean, I guess, again, you could make the argument Peter could say, well, I'm just going to be heads down and do coding, right? Versus running, he runs regular peer programming calls. He's on Discord. He's in the community answering questions. I mean, that that's time that he's taking to do that. But I guess he must get, you know, a return on that benefit from that, right? And I think one of that, you know, benefit is cacti is a very active community project, right? That's correct. Yeah. And, you know, shout out to Peter, shout out to all the maintainers for all the different projects. I think it's just so important to have that welcoming spirit. Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. Bringing bringing people together. It's so so important. Yeah. I would say if you're looking at, you know, these two projects, you know, check out the community. If you're seeing like, what does it mean to go back to what you said earlier, Tracy about community building as a skill. If you're kind of wanting to see a good model of that, I think both bevel and cacti are great models. So, you know, this is all open, go to their community calls, you know, no invitation is necessary. And so, you know, if your intention is on the hyperledger wiki, you can just show up, right? You can just show up anywhere, right? No invitation needed on discord or the mailing list or really anything. So if you want to see what these projects are doing and how it works and the kind of the whole mechanics of, you know, community development, you know, show up and take a look, you know, everything, everything at hyperledger is open. And I think these, these are two good projects to, you know, check out to see how it all works in practice. Yeah, if you do need an invitation. David just gave you one. So, you know, I like, I like to tell people, right? Yes, they don't need an invitation, but if you need one, you just got one. So please show up. Yeah, even though no invitation is necessary, I think it's still helpful to, you know, still, still offer one because it's weird. I mean, I still remember getting involved. You're like, and it goes back to what you said, do people really care what I have to say or what I have to contribute, right? And until you have that positive affirmation coming back at you, I think you still have that question mark. And I think it's really telling that, again, you remember that person who gave you that, you know, entry point into the hyperledger community, even though this was like, what, seven or eight years back, right? Yeah. It's memorable and helpful. So we may be about out of time, but I'm curious, is there anything else you want to share with the people who are listening about why, excuse me, why you're getting involved in the community or any other points that you want people to take away from this conversation? I mean, maybe just to summarize why some of the topics that we've covered, right? Collaboration, so important when you use a project, contributing back to that project in some way, shape, or form, be it a bug fix, an issue, or report to, you know, any sort of documentation or education or blogging or anything that you could possibly do to help people understand answering questions and chat, right? These are things that help other people get involved and feel like the project is moving forward, right? I think that's so important. I think, you know, having sponsors in your organizations, understanding what the benefit is to really contributing and, you know, educating people on what open source is and what the impact of being part of these organizations are, the networking that's involved, right? As we go back to some of the really early questions that we had, all of these things are reasons why you should get involved. And so hopefully, yeah, I've imparted a bit of knowledge here and happy to talk to anybody in the community if they would like to follow up at any point. I think that's a great way to end it, yeah. I mean, if people do have additional questions, you're in the community, they're going to ask, yeah, hop on our Discord server, for example. I think that's maybe kind of a best way to get in touch, although there's other options. You know, again, we run community calls, there's mailing lists. But if you're curious to get on Discord and talk directly to Tracy or to me or anybody else in the community, just go to chat.hyperlegio.org. The information is there about how to join the Discord server. We've got a bunch of different channels based on projects or special interest groups or what have you. And we hope to see you then. So maybe that's a good place to stop it and we'll hopefully talk to people more soon. Thanks everybody. Thanks for having me, David.