Meet us at FOSSY!

The Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference (FOSSY) is in less than a week and we will be there!

We will be running the Science of Community track on Saturday July 15.

The Science of Community track is inspired by the CDSC Science of Community Dialogues, which aim to bring together practitioners and researchers to discuss scholarly work that is relevant to the efforts of practitioners. As researchers, we get so much from the communities we work with and study and we want them to also learn from the research they so generously take part in. While the Dialogues cover a broad range of topics and communities, FOSSY presentations focus on how that work related to free and open source software communities, projects, and practitioners.

At FOSSY, we will have a number of really amazing researchers presenting their work. We wanted to share some highlights from the schedule.

Sophia Vargas, from Google’s Open Source Programs Office, will be presenting on how metrics can help us understand contributor burnout. Professor Shoji Kajita, from Kyoto University, will discuss research data management for FOSS communities. Mariam Guizani, from Oregon State University, will cover research on the why and how of corporate participation in FOSS. We will additionally have lightning talks by Adam Hyde, Anita Sarma, Shauna Gordon-McKeon, and incoming Northwestern Ph.D. student Matthew Gaughan.

We are really excited about our workshop “Let’s Get Real: Putting Research Findings Into Practice.” This workshop, designed for FOSS contributors and practitioners, will help guide you on how to get the most out of the incredible research on and relevant to FOSS. If you want to learn how to navigate the sheer volume of interesting research work happening or how to understand what it means, this is the session for you! Our workshop will be led by Kaylea Chamption and Professors Aaron Shaw and Benjamin Mako Hill. You can read more on our wiki.

Due to scheduling issues, Eriol Fox will be presenting their talk, “Community lead user research and usability in Science and Research OSS: What we learned,” in the Wildcard Track. We recommend going!

We hope to see you at FOSSY. Even if you can’t make it to our sessions, we’ll be at the conference so stop by and say hello!