Netzwerkfrühstück: Open Source in der Verwaltung #

Networking breakfast: Open Source in public admin (at German “Smart country convention” Berlin).

Back in August, in the middle of my vacation, I got an e-mail from plain schwarz asking if I would be willing to give a brief talk at an event they were organising about open source. All I needed to do was get back to them within a week and coordinate in a quick call. Luckily we were in the middle of no-where in Denmark - so internet access was easy. Luckily also, my family was very understanding about me taking a conference call in the middle of no-where in between time at the beach.

Cutting a long story short: Thank you plain schwarz for inviting me to give a ten minute brief mini talk about the three pillars of open source: How open source projects differ beyond license - and how informed use leads to participation leads to being an active player in the ecosystem.

The breakfast was a collaboration between City Lab Berlin and FOSS Backstage. For full disclosure: Several years ago, together with Stefan Rudnitzki I carried the vague nucleus of an idea to plain schwarz of what turned into an amazing conference on all things open source behind the scenes: Think governance, finance, legal, collaboration, corporate shenanigans, documentation, security etc.

The entire breakfast started with an incredibly helpful ice breaker question: All attendees were asked to stand up, sort themselves into one line ranging from “user of open source” via “contributor to open source” towards “shaping the ecosystem, e.g. as maintainer”. To be fully honest: Even though the event was bound to draw proponents of open source in public admin, I was surprised by the number of people who were not only using open source, but were also contributing to projects - up to the level of influencing the ecosystem. Sure, compared to the entire convention spanning multiple halls at Messe Berlin (the largest exhibition space in Berlin) the group was a small percentage. And still it was several dozen people who knew about the value and who are already very actively part of the ecosystem.

I really appreciated hearing stories about first time contributions to Apache Airflow and Superset. It was awesome seeing the strategy of the city of Munich that couples donations, paying for features, giving time to people on their pay roll and handing out paid OSS sabbaticals for experts from the private sector and publishing custom software under free and open source licenses. Last but not least Citylab talked about the projects that they are working on.

I’ll be sharing more about the ideas that I had to condense down to ten minutes in upcoming blog posts. So far I would like to say thank you for having me as a speaker, for a lot of inspiring conversations and looking forward to seeing those conversations continued at FOSS Backstage next year.