Ossummit2023 on Jessica Tegner

How to Lead Open Source Projects and Teams with Better Feedback

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

How do you help your contributors and co-maintainers get better? How do you decline someone without breaking their spirits? How do you make sure that contributors flourish and learn, while still pointing out areas of improvement in a constructive and non-destructive or disheartening way?

Being an open-source maintainer means, you are also a leader, and leaders ask these same questions every day when leading teams. However, providing feedback isn’t as simple as it seems. In this talk, you’ll learn the differences between positive and negative feedback, and what effect it has on the receiver. You’ll also learn various methods to rethink and reframe how to deliver feedback, along with concrete steps to implement them right away. This will be coupled with personal anecdotes and stories from Jessica’s professional life as an open source developer and personal life and advocacy work as a blind woman in tech.

Beyond the Trend Authentic Approaches to Fostering Diversity in Open Source

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Open source is only possibly through open collaboration, and collaboration is only successful through open-mindedness to new and different perspectives. Yet, there are still many challenges when it comes to diversity in open source. How do we intentionally diversify while still being genuine? What can we do to make it feel authentic

and not just like we are filling quotas? Join this talk to learn how to avoid common pitfalls of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) efforts with concrete examples that can be implemented right away, and get a new perspective in diversifying open source, as Jessica shares her journey as a blind woman in tech.

We will dive into how we make our project, team, or workplace more diverse by following a story from someone in multiple minority groups, shedding light on some of the right reasons to diversify with concrete examples that can be efficiently implemented right away.