Inductive Bias

An update to the 'Children tinkering' after >10years

April 14, 2024
tinkering, tech, kids

Children tinkering, part 2 # Roughly a decade ago I wrote a short post about children tinkering. A lot of the advice from back then is still valid today. I just noticed that ten years later there are a few more things one could look into: Instead of only being a subtrack of FrOSCon, Froglabs have turned into Teckids e.V. - including online fora, a yearly week for an off-site and several side tracks of Chemnitzer Linuxtage, FrOSCon and FOSS events in Graz. ...

A short, incomprehensive history of spam and counter measures

April 11, 2024
ranking, recommendations, adverserial learning, Learning To Rank, spam, social media, hacks

A short, incomprehensive history of spam and counter measures # “… it should be clear that improvements in communication tend to divide mankind …” by Harold Innis in Changing Concepts of Time This post was triggered by multiple conversations in my big data circle of friends. All conversations agreed on some important topics: Social media sites these days are influential on the daily life of people globally. With that influence comes an incentive to use these sites to influence behaviour and public opinion. ...

InnerSource Commons Board of Directors - a retrospective

January 28, 2023
ISC, board, director, oss governance
ISC, board, director

InnerSource Commons Board of Directors - a retrospective # In the last years I had the honour of serving on the InnerSource Commons board of directors. I was one of the founding board members. Thank you to Danese Cooper for inviting me to that: I still remember sitting in the subway on my way to work years ago reading her question of whether I wanted to be founding member of the InnerSource Commons. ...

When it takes a pandemic ...

May 25, 2021

When it takes a pandemic … # to understand the speed of innovation. 2020 was a special year for all of us - with “us” here meaning the entire world: Faced with a truly urgent global problem that year was a learning opportunity for everyone. For me personally the year started like any other year - except that news coming out of China were troubling. Little did I know how fast those news would reach the rest of the world - little did I know the impact that this would have. ...

Apache Board of Directors - a retrospective

March 28, 2019
Apache, board, director, oss governance
Apache, board, director

Apache Board of Directors - a retrospective # Last term I had the honour of serving on the ASF board of directors, better explained in context of the ASF governance structure. As quite a few directors (myself included) declined to run for the board this year again, I thought it would be a good idea to think about the past term, write that down and publish those thoughts. As I wanted to give every board member a chance to respond, I shared some guiding questions but left it to board members to choose the channel they deemed most appropriate to share their responses on. ...

FrOSCon 2018

August 29, 2018
Hacking people
FrOSCon, conferences, Open Source

FrOSCon 2018 # A more general summary: https://tech.europace.de/froscon-2018/ of the conference written in German. Below a more detailed summary of the keynote by Lorena Jaume-Palasi. In her keynote “Blessed by the algorithm - the computer says no!” Lorena detailed the intersection of ethics and technology when it comes to automated decision making systems. As much as humans with a technical training shy away from questions related to ethics, humans trained in ethics often shy away from topics that involve a technical layer. ...

DataworksSummit Berlin - Wednesday morning

April 19, 2018
Apache, BigData
hortonworks, BigData, Apache

DataworksSummit Berlin - Wednesday morning # Data strategy - cloud strategy - business strategy: Aligning the three was one of the main themes (initially put forward in his opening keynote by CTO of Hortonworks Scott Gnau) thoughout this weeks Dataworks Summit Berlin kindly organised and hosted by Hortonworks. The event was attended by over 1000 attendees joining from 51 countries. The inspiration hat was put forward in the first keynote by Scott was to take a closer look at the data lifecycle - including the fact that a lot of data is being created (and made available) outside the control of those using it: Smart farming users are using a combination of weather data, information on soil conditions gathered through sensors out in the field in order to inform daily decisions. ...

Apache Breakfast

April 17, 2018
FOSS, Apache
Apache

Apache Breakfast # In case you missed it but are living in Berlin - or are visiting Berlin/ Germany this week: A handful of Apache people (committers/ members) are meeting over breakfast on Friday morning this week. If you are interested in joining, please let me know (or check yourself - in the archives of the mailing list party@apache.org)

FOSS Backstage - Schedule online

April 17, 2018
fossback, events
fossback, FOSS, Apache

FOSS Backstage - Schedule online # In January the CfP for FOSS Backstage opened. By now reviews have been done, speakers notified and a schedule created. I’m delighted to find both - a lot of friends from the Apache Software Foundation but also a great many speakers that aren’t affiliated with the ASF among the speakers. If you want to know how Open Source really works, if you want to get a glimpse behind the stage, do not wait for too long to grab your ticket now and join us in summer in Berlin/ Germany. ...

My board nomination statement 2018

March 23, 2018
Apache, organisation
Apache, TheASF

My board nomination statement 2018 # Two days ago the Apache Software Foundation members meeting started. One of the outcomes of each members meeting is an elected board of directors. The way that works is explained here: Annual Apache members meeting. As explained in the linked post, members accepting their nomination to become a director are supposed to provide a nomination statement. This year they were also asked to answer a set of questions so members could better decide who to vote for. ...