Other writing: September 2024

What have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Security Boulevard

Duck Alignment Academy

GUAC

Kusari

Other writing: August 2024

What have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Duck Alignment Academy

  • “Helping” versus being helpful — Every situation is different, so ask “would it be helpful if I _?” When you get agreement on your help, your work will be helpful.
  • Volunteers can’t be blockers — Figure out the truly critical processes and accept that non-critical ones may get missed. Give critical processes to paid contributors.
  • Companies: make sustainable contributions — We learned over the past year or two that corporate participation in an open source project is not guaranteed. The contributions a company makes need to be sustainable long after the company stops participating.
  • Strategic use of bikeshedding — Painting a bike shed can be an excellent icebreaker when getting a group to review a document draft.

GUAC

Kusari

Other writing: July 2024

What have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Duck Alignment Academy

Kusari

GUAC

Other writing: June 2024

What have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Duck Alignment Academy

Kusari

Other writing: April 2024

Where have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Stuff I wrote

Duck Alignment Academy

Back on the market

Nearly 10 months to the day since the last time this happened, I was informed yesterday that my position has been eliminated. As before, it’s unrelated to my performance, but the end result is the same: I am looking for a new job.

So what am I looking for? The ideal role would involve leadership in open source strategy or other high-level work. I’m excited by the opportunities to connect open source development to business goals in a way that makes it a mutually-beneficial relationship between company and community. In addition to my open source work, I have experience in program management, marketing, HPC, systems administration, and meteorology. You know, in case you’re thinking about clouds. My full resume (also in PDF) is available on my website.

If you have something that you think might be a good mutual fit, let me know. In the meantime, you can buy Program Management for Open Source Projects for all of your friends and enemies. I’m also available to give talks to communities (for free) and companies (ask about my reasonable prices!) on any subject where I have expertise. My website has a list of talks I’ve given, with video when available.

Other writing: December 2023

What have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Stuff I wrote

Duck Alignment Academy

Indiana COVID-19 final update

Oh hey, it’s been almost two years since my last update. Chalk it up to a busy life and a national lack of interest that resulted in less to talk about. The data I used to create my Indiana COVID-19 dashboard is no longer updated, so the dashboard is also no longer updated. I’ll leave it up for historical reference.

By the end of the third year of the pandemic, we’ve still not managed to keep people from dying of COVID-19 in Indiana. July 2023 was consistently at or near zero, but the daily deaths have been rising since. We’ve had, on average, about four per day in the last 2–3 months. But the state no longer feels the need to track that data.

Graph of daily COVID-19 deaths in Indiana on a logarithmic scale
Daily COVID-19 deaths in Indiana on a logarithmic scale

Still, our death toll has been far lower than in years past.

Line graph of daily COVID-19 deaths in Indiana compared year-to-year.
Daily COVID-19 deaths in Indiana compared year-to-year.

The same can’t be said for hospitalizations. When the state stopped taking a daily census on May 24 of this year, we had consistently been higher in 2023 than at the same time in 2022.

Line graph of daily COVID-19 hospital census in Indiana compared year-to-year.
Daily COVID-19 hospital census in Indiana compared year-to-year.

But I guess COVID is over now. Or at least we’re pretending like it is. Just this morning, my wife and one of our kids tested positive. It’s the 1,375th day of March 2020.

Other writing: October 2023

What have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Stuff I wrote

Fedora

Duck Alignment Academy

Technically We Write

Other writing: September 2023

What have I been writing when I haven’t been writing here?

Stuff I wrote

Duck Alignment Academy

  • One approach to AI contributions — All communities will need an AI contribution policy at some point, and the Apache Software Foundation’s example is a good one to follow.
  • What are you optimizing? — If you start optimizing for a process and then discover you’re optimizing for the wrong thing, you’ve wasted time.
  • For companies, community should be “us” not “them” — Referring to the community as “them” as if there’s no overlap encourages treating company & community interests as separate, harming long-term sustainability.
  • New logo! — Almost two years after I meant to get around to it, Duck Alignment Academy has a logo.
  • Preparing for Hacktoberfest contributors — If your project is participating In Hacktoberfest, you’ll want to make sure you’re ready for an influx of new contributors.

Fedora