A reopened grant, a plaintive LaTeX comment, & a vision of a healthy industry
Hi, newsletter subscribers! Thanks for being interested in Changeset Consulting and my open source project management work.
I’ll talk a little about my book in progress and some past and upcoming conference talks, then tell you about useful new resources, and close out with a few laughs. For hyperlinks, view as HTML or see the archived version on the web at https://buttondown.email/Changeset .
Getting Unstuck -- the book
As a subscriber, you should have already gotten a copy of the 38-page sampler of my book on getting open source projects unstuck. Please do let me know if you haven't! I'm now talking with publishers and working on the full book. Related material shows up on my blog and in my talks -- for instance:
- The sampler includes a chapter on how to do a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) of an open source project. An autoconf developer read this chapter and immediately wrote up a SWOT assessment of autoconf, and it's already helped his colleagues focus on priorities.
- I'm requesting resources on working well with neuroatypical colleagues in open source.
- In the process of writing up a bibliography of competing books, I thought about why general software management advice -- which usually assumes the whole team works for the same company/organization -- doesn't address most open source maintainers' needs.
Talks
You can register now for MozFest, March 8th–19th, 2021. I'm leading 2 sessions: "How To Get A Project Unstuck" (discussion, 2021-03-09 21:15 CET/3:15pm EST) and "Apply for Grants To Fund Open Source Work" (skillshare, 2021-03-10 21:15 CET/3:15 PM EST). Since most sessions have a maximum capacity for participants to ensure interactivity, if you want to make sure you can attend, get a conference ticket now, and register for specific sessions.
I'll speak in GitHub OCTO's speaker series on March 30th at 9:30am PST/12:30pm EST. My tentative title is "What Would Open Source Look Like If It Were Healthy?"
And you can now watch video of my January talk at Linux.Conf.Au: "How To Get A Project Unstuck -- And Fixing The Skill Gaps That Got Us Here".
Tools and news
The Open Tech Fund's Rapid Response Fund has reopened to applications.
Tidelift asks maintainers to take their survey and spices it up with an offer of free shoes.
If you are/are not thrilled with the "Authentication for Participants in Critical Software" section of Google's recent post about securing open source, then check out, join, email & talk with the Digital Identity Attestation working group of the Open Source Security Foundation.
Funny
Karl Fogel shares an "Actual comment from a LaTeX document that I am writing now.".
In a FOSS & Crafts interview (about 50:25-54:30), I performed a bit of stand-up comedy for open sourcey folks.
Best wishes, as always.
– Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset Consulting