In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Tim Falls of Digital Ocean about developer relations, the importance of embracing and providing open-source software, the need to offer free education in software development and the importance of ethics in education.
Key Takeaways
- There is a need to take a more open and community-based approach to business
- Taking an open-source viewpoint means you can build products and give them away for free while still building a sustainable business
- If you’re solving a real problem for your customers, they will happily pay you for your solution
- Not only can this approach build a successful business; it is a more enjoyable way of going about things
- We need more and more people able to build software and providing free online education will enable the whole industry to grow
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Show Notes
- 00:38 Introductions
- 02:42 The importance of inter-personal relationships when building a community
- 03:12 Tim’s story of working with a startup accelerator company
- 04:52 Describing the role of developer relationships and community building
- 05:52 Competencies needed in the community building role
- 06:48 The need to take a more open and community approach to business
- 07:35 The mindset shift needed when products are built for the good of everyone
- 07:56 Taking an open-source viewpoint means you can build products and give them away for free while still building a sustainable business
- 08:08 The balance between open-source and proprietary elements
- 08:24 If you’re solving a real problem for your customers, they will happily pay you for your solution
- 08:52 An example of how this plays out in a real situation
- 09:52 The difference between a free and open-source version of a product and one that is charged for
- 10:55 The value that comes from having a vibrant open-source community supporting a product
- 11:25 The need for a forward-thinking an open-minded culture to make this approach work
- 11:52 Not only can this approach build a successful business; it is a more enjoyable way of going about things
- 12:10 The easiest way to establish such a culture is to start from the beginning – it’s hard to shift an existing culture to this open, collaborative way of thinking
- 12:36 The startup community benefits from open-source software, they should be finding ways to contribute and give back
- 13:02 The need to focus on education
- 13:32 Making software development more accessible – it’s just another language
- 14:24 Software is more and more pervasive in our lives and more and more people need to learn the languages of software development
- 15:05 We need more and more people able to build software and providing free education will enable the whole industry to grow
- 15:48 The rapidly changing nature of the software industry is a driver towards making free education available
- 16:10 There are some fundamental and foundational things you can learn that provide a basis for future learning
- 17:05 Leveraging open source thinking in developer education
- 18:05 The importance of taking an ethical approach and conveying the ethical message as part of the education
- 19:00 If you want people to learn from you, you have the responsibility to keep ethics in mind
- 19:17 Codes of conduct as a manifestation of ethics in the open-source community
- 20:01 The core of most codes of conduct come down to be a nice, kind person in all your interactions and dealings
- 20:28 Treat each other with kindness and collectively create an environment that is inclusive of all people, of all works of life, of different experience levels, and feels safe for others to contribute to the community
- 21:18 Codes of conduct apply in both online environments and in offline experiences such as conferences and meetups
- 21:58 The importance of ethics in the application of our tools
- 22:34 It’s easy to ignore the potential for a technology to be used to do bad things
- 22:42 As builders of technology we have a responsibility to force ourselves to think about the potential misuses of our products and design to prevent them as far as possible
- 23:05 In cases where it’s not 100% preventable then we must do everything we can to detect and combat the misuse
- 23:24 Software creators have a level of accountability and responsibility for the products they create
- 24:03 When talking to others in the organisation about the impact of these things and the value they bring, adapt your language to their context
- 25:12 When communicating about these things, if you don’t have local data yet then draw on industry examples and data
- 25:44 Key in on the metrics your audience is looking at and link the value you deliver to these metrics
- 26:06 Link the cultural and community activities to the metrics that are important to the business and show how they impact the outcomes
Mentioned:
- Digital Ocean
- Techstars startup accelerator
- SendGrid
- Twilio
- Tim on Twitter and LinkedIn
- Tim’s email tf@do.co
- InfoQ DevOps Trends Report
