Working in Public (Interview)
Nadia Eghbal is back and this time she’s talking with us about her new book Working in Public. If you’re an old school listener you might remember the podcast we produced with Nadia and Mikeal Rogers called Request for Commits. If you weren’t listening then, or can’t remember…don’t worry…the back catalog of Request for Commits is still online and subscribe-able via all the podcast ways. That podcast is still getting listens to this very day!
Obviously we go way back with Nadia…and having a chance to now talk with her through all the details of her new book Working in Public, this was a milestone for this show and Jerod and I. We talked through the reasons she wrote the book in the first place, Nadia’s thoughts on the future of the internet and the connection of creators to the platforms they build their followings on, and we also talk about the health of projects and communities and the challenges we face internet-at-large as well as right here in our backyard in the open source community.
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Featuring:
Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Join Changelog++ to directly support us, make the ads disappear, AND for a chance to win a signed copy of Nadia’s book
The Changelog #193: Funding open source with Nadia Eghbal
Sindre Sorhus
Nadia’s post on Substack about Working in Public
Buy Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software on Amazon
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Working, Making, Creating in Public... and Private
We're living in an unprecedented era of online collaboration, coordination, and creation. All kinds of people are coming together -- whether in an open source project or company, an R&D initiative, a department in a company, a club or special interest group, even a group of friends and family -- around some shared interest or activity. But the word "members" is faceless, and doesn't help us really understand, support (and better design for) these communities.
So in this special book launch episode of the a16z Podcast, Nadia Eghbal -- author of the new book Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software published by Stripe Press -- shares with a16z editor in chief Sonal Chokshi the latest research and insights from years of studying the health of open source communities (for Ford Foundation), working in developer experience (at GitHub), researching the economics and production of software (at Protocol Labs), and now focusing on writer experience at Substack.
Eghbal offers a new taxonomy of communities -- including newer phenomena such as "stadiums" of open source developers, other creators, and really, influencers -- who are performing their work in massive spaces where the work is public (and not necessarily participatory). So what lessons of open source communities do and don't apply to the passion economy and creator communities? How does the evolution of online communities -- really, social networks -- shift the focus to reputation and status as a service? And what if working in public is also about sharing in private, given the "dark forest theory of the internet", the growing desire for more "high-shared context" groups and spaces (including even podcasts and newsletters)? All this and more in this episode.
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ANTHOLOGY — The Future of Open Source at OSCON 2017 (Interview)
This is an anthology episode from OSCON 2017 featuring awesome conversations with Kelsey Hightower (OSCON Co-Chair and Developer Advocate at Google Cloud Platform), Safia Abdalla (Open Source Developer and Creator of Zarf), and Mike McQuaid and Nadia Eghbal (GitHub Open Source Programs).
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Featuring:
Kelsey Hightower – GitHub, X
Safia Abdalla – Website, GitHub, X
Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X
Mike McQuaid – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Kelsey Hightower
Kelsey Hightower is an OSCON Co-Chair and Developer Advocate (Google Cloud Platform) — We talked about being a co-chair, why he does live demos, and his motivations towards open source.
When you say you’re successful, I guarantee when you look around it’s because someone is celebrating your victories.
Check out DevOps Days Austin 2017 on YouTube
The tweets mentioned from Kelsey that were seen as “controversial by some in the community” started with this tweet, then this tweet, and finally this tweet.
“I don’t write code for free. I write code for freedom.”
“Best birthday gift ever!” thanks to Brian Ketelsen
Safia Abdalla
Safia Abdalla is an open source developer and creator of Zarf — We talked about being a command-line junkie and her talk on the intersection of business and open source.
Zarf - an online platform that allows writers to sell subscription content to their readers.
captainsafia/legit
captainsafia/goopshttps
captainsafia/commentator
captainsafia/checklist
Brief
captainsafia/giddy
captainsafia/fony
Open Source at Facebook with James Pearce (Facebook)
Mike McQuaid and Nadia Eghbal
Mike McQuaid and Nadia Eghbal work at GitHub in Open Source Programs — We talked about GitHub’s Open Source Alley at OSCON and how they are working to better support open source maintainers and their communities.
dear-github/dear-github
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
GitHub's Open Source Survey (2017) (Interview)
On Friday, June 2, 2017 – GitHub announced the details of their Open Source Survey – an open data set on the open source community for researchers and the curious. Frannie Zlotnick, Nadia Eghbal, and Mikeal Rogers joined the show to talk through the backstory and key insights of this open data project which sheds light on the broader open source community’s attitudes, experiences, and backgrounds of those who use, build, and maintain open source software.
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GoCD – GoCD is an on-premise open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks that lets you automate and streamline your build-test-release cycle for reliable, continuous delivery of your product.
Microsoft Azure OpenDev – a live one-day virtual conference on June 21, 2017 focused on showcasing open source technologies on Azure. See what’s possible with open source in the cloud. Learn how you can build containerized microservices and improve your open source DevOps pipeline. Participate in Q&A sessions, and get hands-on experience with open source technologies on Azure.
Featuring:
Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X
Frannie Zlotnick – GitHub
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X
Show Notes:
opensourcesurvey.org
github/open-source-survey
GitHub Blog: Announcing an open data set on the open source community
Spotlight #10: How China Does Node with Shiya Luo at Node.js Interactive 2016
Oh, and here’s that Wired article Mikeal mentioned
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Funding open source (Interview)
Nadia Eghbal joined the show to discuss a HUGE topic that’s near and dear to our heart – funding open source! We discussed what it takes to fund open source software development, Nadia’s current investigative journalism efforts around funding open source (funded by the Ford Foundation), venture-backed open source projects, what it means for an open source project to be in good shape, some potential solutions to provide better long-term support for open source, and we tried to determine how much the open source of the world might be worth.
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Featuring:
Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Nadia Eghbal - Homepage
Nadia Eghbal (@nayafia) on Twitter
Nadia Eghbal on Medium
Subscribe to Building Better Software Updates
How I Stumbled Upon The Internet’s Biggest Blind Spot — Medium
Open source was worth at least $143M of Instagram’s $1B acquisition — Medium
Open source infrastructure: the Q&A — Medium
What if Facebook were a nonprofit?
GreatSchools - Public and Private School Ratings, Reviews and Parent Community
500 Startups
Slack Raises $80 Million Fund to Support Platform Strategy - Digits - WSJ
Ruby Together
fundingoss.com
Ford Foundation
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
