Celebrating Open Source Software and Communities

The Linux Foundation Open Source Summit is an enormous conference focused entirely on open source software and the communities that create OSS. There are many tracks in the conference, including Linux Systems, Infrastructure and Automation, Kubernetes/Containers/Cloud Native Apps, etc. In addition, there are thematic ‘conference’ tracks on community, collaboration, and diversity running throughout the three to five day event. And associated conferences are run in conjunction with the Open Source Summit such as the Embedded Linux Conference and the Open IoT Summit.

With thousands of attendees, the conference might seem overwhelming, but the track structure, workshops, and welcome programs help attendees get the most out of the wealth of knowledge and opportunities that the conference presents. Many of the excellent keynotes and talks were filmed. I am still talking to people about Eric Berlow’s keynote on ‘The Future of AI is Data’ and Patrick Ball’s keynote on ‘Digital Echoes: Understanding Mass Violence with Data and Statistics’.

A conference is structured by the talks, keynotes, and workshops, but even more memorable are the people you meet. This is especially true in open source as most communities are made up of individuals from all over the world and projects generally have distributed teams: open source conferences are a perfect opportunity to be in the same location and to meet people with whom you have collaborated on projects. I had a wonderful time speaking with Juraci Paixão Kröhling, who was a very impressive Outreachy mentor for Jaeger tracing, and was fortunate to attend his talk on Jaeger and distributed tracing.

I learned about the Outreachy programme last year at the Linux Foundation Open Source Summit in Prague and immediately applied to work on the Node client for Jaeger. A write up of last year’s OSSummit can be read here. Inês Coelho, my mentor on Rails Girls Summer of Code, also attended the OSSummit and spending time with her and other RGSoC alumni and mentors made my first experience at an OSSummit so welcoming and enjoyable. Happily, this year I met Laura Gaetano, who does incredible work organising RGSoC and with the Travis Foundation.