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CHAOSS DEI Self-Reflection Summary

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Several months ago, we ran a survey to better understand the CHAOSS community. Thank you so much to those who participated in that survey! We really appreciate your valuable input. From the survey, we were able to identify five themes that you told us about. We’ll describe those five themes here and discuss what we are doing in the CHAOSS project to help address these themes.

 

 

Theme 1: Clear Communication  
Comments What We’ve Done in CHAOSS
Processes about how to check-in with the wider community would be helpful. Each regional chapter hosts their own Community Meetings and we post those meeting summaries and links to the meeting recordings in Slack and on Discourse, so anyone in the community can quickly stay up to date on what’s going on in other parts of CHAOSS. We will continue to improve cross-chapter and cross-group communication among the entire CHAOSS community through our newsletters and weekly CHAOSS Community meetings.
It is hard to navigate the detail of the focus areas Sifting through the ever growing list of CHAOSS metrics has proven to be challenging for our users and those new to the community. Previously, focus areas were used to categorize metrics into contextual buckets. The user would have to be familiar with which working group developed the metric, and which focus area we decided provided the best fit. This required a level of knowledge of CHAOSS and the way we work that was a barrier for those new to the community.
We have since moved away from displaying metrics in this way, and have moved toward a more intuitive model of categorization. First we assign 1-2 high-level topics to each metric, then we assign a number of keywords, which provide more context. This gives the user the ability to search for more specific criteria.
Also, we improved the UX by no longer displaying metrics in one single document. Now there are visually clear “tiles” on our website that allow users to easily explore our metrics based on the high-level topic they’re interested in.
With the addition of our metrics models, we also help the user identify sets of metrics that naturally come together.
Theme 2: Working Groups  
Comments What We’ve Done in CHAOSS
Sunsetting working groups may be a good thing. The structure of CHAOSS has evolved over the past year to shift away from the concept of “working groups that develop metrics through a particular lens” and more toward the context in which metrics can be used to help answer questions. Because some metric development benefits from specific areas of expertise, we chose to retain our DEI and Risk Working Groups, but have effectively folded the rest into other groups. We now have 3 working groups focused on metric development: Risk, DEI, and Common.
Preference for the real use cases in metrics models With the hiring of our Director of Data Science and the launch of our Context Working Groups, bridging the gap between theoretical and practical use of our metrics and metrics models will be a primary focus of CHAOSS moving forward.
Contextual work can be distinct from metrics working groups, and this is good. As mentioned previously, the evolution of CHAOSS means a shift toward a separation of Context Working Groups and the working groups responsible for metrics development. In this way, we are able to collaborate with our user community to answer the questions that arise in their individual contexts. We now have 3 Context Working Groups where these high-level discussions occur: Corporate OSPOs, University OSPOs, and Open Source Scientific Software. An outgrowth of our continued discussions with CHAOSS’s expanding community may be additional Context Working Groups.
The Common WG seems to be where “things that don’t clearly go anywhere fit”. The Common Working Group has indeed been through a few iterations! It does seem to act as a catch-all, especially with regard to metric development. But as we have pared down the number of Working Groups, it makes more sense that this development would land in Common. CHAOSS will continue to communicate that message and clarify the mission of the Common Working Group.
Theme 3: Software  
Comments What We’ve Done in CHAOSS
Build community around software. This has always been challenging for us, and it’s something we continue to strive for. With the hiring of our Director of Data Science, and conversations with potential partners, we aim to allocate and acquire additional dedicated resources for this effort. This will likely be a focus for us in 2024, as it is critical to the sustainability of CHAOSS software.
Theme 4: Newcomer Experiences  
Comments What We’ve Done in CHAOSS
Improve processes of where to begin, especially when a person comes to CHAOSS with an interest where work is being done in the many places. Newcomer experience has been a primary focus for the past 12-18 months.
With the creation of a newcomers Quickstart, we have a central document with a few action items for newcomers to complete. This allows them to learn about CHAOSS and be more prepared to fully join our community.
We are improving the long term onboarding experience by moving away from a monthly onboarding call (which was overwhelming and not as inclusive as it could be because of time zones) toward building out a set of learning modules for newcomers to work through at their leisure. This will occur in a learning management system and will allow newcomers to move at their own pace, and learn about CHAOSS in digestible chunks.
We also launched a Tour Guide program whereby newcomers can receive individual attention and guidance to find the spaces within CHAOSS where they might have an interest in participating.
Promote new opportunities for people to engage with the community as they come up. As mentioned previously, our Tour Guides act as a link between opportunities and new contributors, but we are also organizing the many sub projects within CHAOSS through a more structured project management framework. By bringing together contributors with project management experience, we can allow them to contribute by keeping these smaller projects on track, clarifying engagement opportunities, and communicating them regularly to our community.
We also promote the use of the “First Timers Only” labels on issues in our many repositories.
Make “where to begin” clearer in documentation. With the development of our Quickstart, and prominent links to this on the CHAOSS website homepage, newcomer Slack channel, and in the newcomer Slack Bot, we now have one central place where we can point newcomers.
Theme 5: Community Experiences  
Comments What We’ve Done in CHAOSS
As the community has grown, it is beginning to feel more fragmented. This is a challenge for any global community with a lot of moving parts. We have many Slack channels and many sub-projects and it’s difficult to keep track of what is going on with everyone.
We implemented a Discourse Forum with the idea that it would be a way to bring the whole community together in a more substantial way than many fragmented Slack channels, but this has not been as well received as we hoped. The CHAOSS community will continue to iterate on and think about ways to combat this issue.
A learning pathways framework would be helpful. As mentioned, CHAOSS is currently building out such a framework using a learning management system. We think this will bring clarity to the onboarding process and help educate potential contributors so they can actively engage with the community in the way that means the most to them.
There are times that focus on tools becomes too central. While tools are a big part of CHAOSS (even appearing in our name), they are definitely not the only thing CHAOSS works on. We hope that with clearer communication on all the sub-projects happening in CHAOSS, it will not feel like our tools take center stage.
There may be too many working groups. As mentioned, we have effectively cut our metrics development working groups down to 3.
Provide more workshops, peer mentoring, and programs on software and metrics (perhaps also newcomer experience) We plan to include some of this type of education in our learning management system modules. Currently, we don’t have the individual resources to consistently host other types of workshops (aside from the occasional CHAOSScon). By making it easier to learn about CHAOSS, we hope to grow our community of leaders who can facilitate these types of workshops. It would be outstanding to be able to provide these experiences for our community!

 

CHAOSSweekly (July 31-August 4, 2023)

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Welcome CHAOSS’s New Director of Data Science, Dr. Dawn Foster!

We are beyond excited to now officially welcome Dr. Dawn Foster as our new Director of Data Science for CHAOSS! Although she has been contributing to the CHAOSS project for years, with Dawn joining us in a full-time capacity, we have the ability to expand our efforts into data science. Dawn will be spending time defining what that means, precisely, but the four areas she will be focusing on to start are:

  1. Positioning of and guidance around the usage of Augur and GrimoireLab
  2. Building a Data Science community within CHAOSS
  3. Improving our understanding of the challenges with implementing and interpreting metrics and using them to inform CHAOSS moving forward
  4. Evangelizing and promoting CHAOSS, generating meaningful insights, and educating our users

Dawn is building this community around Data Science in the aptly named #data-science CHAOSS Slack channel, and this is open to absolutely everyone in the CHAOSS community. You do not have to be a data scientist or any kind of expert in this area to join and help build out our plans for this! We welcome participation from anyone with an interest. Exciting things are ahead for CHAOSS!

New Badger Orientation – August 17, 2023

For anyone who is interested in participating in the next round of Badger Orientations, there is a meeting starting at 9:00 am US Central / Chicago time on Thursday, August 17. In this meeting we will go over the badging process and how to review applications. You do not need to register for this meeting if you are interested in becoming a Badger or learning about the process, but if you’d like to be added to the calendar invite, just let Elizabeth Barron know. This is a great way for newcomers to CHAOSS to contribute to the project – you don’t need to know much about CHAOSS or our metrics to participate!

Let’s Celebrate our CHAOTICS of the Week – Our CHAOSScon Africa Planning Committee!

This week we’d like to celebrate a whole team of CHAOTICS! The CHAOSScon Africa Planning Committee did a phenomenal job planning and executing our very first CHAOSScon Africa, and we wanted to highlight and celebrate their amazing work. We also wanted to give the community the opportunity to get to know them a little better!

Maryblessing Okolie

  • A little about Maryblessing: I am Maryblessing, I am a community architect. I live in Lagos, Nigeria.
  • How Maryblessing contributed to CHAOSScon Africa: I particularly handled the event schedule, however I was a support person for the programs team to help review speaker applications and the communications team to help share publication content on our socials.
  • Maryblessing’s advice for those attending an open source conference: My advice would be, come open. Come with an open mind to learn. Ask questions about things you don’t understand, take notes while at it. And lastly, have fun. Be you and respect and keep to the event code of conduct.

Busayo Ojo

  • A little about Busayo: I’m Busayo, living in Lagos, Nigeria, and I’m in program management.
  • How Busayo contributed to CHAOSScon Africa: I co-led the programs team at CHAOSScon Africa, which meant ensuring every aspect went smoothly and was up to par.
  • Busayo’s advice for those attending an open source conference: To make the most of an open source event, do some research beforehand to see if the event aligns with your goals and interests. Once you decide to attend, don’t interact with only people you know; network and have fun!

Precious Abubakar

  • A little about Precious: I’m Precious, and I’m in software engineering. I live in Lagos, Nigeria.
  • How Precious contributed to CHAOSScon Africa: I assisted with organising some items on the schedule. I was also part of the ushering team, helping attendees navigate the event and ensuring everything went smoothly.
  • Precious’s advice for those attending an open source conference: I would advise them to take advantage of the resources, have conversations with other attendees and key persons they find interesting, and remember to follow up later.

Faith Kovi

  • A little about Faith: I am Faith Kovi, a DevOps Engineer. I live in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
  • How Faith contributed to CHAOSScon Africa: Worked on the event planning documentation and also worked with the social media team.
  • Faith’s advice for those attending an open source conference: Be open to learn and have conversations, network and also find ways to Sustain your network post conference.

Ihuoma Anosike

  • A little about Ihuoma: I am Ihuoma Anosike, a Technical Writer, I live in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
  • How Ihuoma contributed to CHAOSScon Africa: I was part of the Programs Team.  I helped in reviewing the CFP and creating the feedback form.
  • Ihuoma’s advice for those attending an open source conference: Ask questions during sessions, Document your experience, take notes at the event, and share this experience on your socials or Blog.

Davies Esogbue

  • A little about Davies: I’m Davies, I live in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. I’m a data analyst & technical sales specialist.
  • How Davies contributed to CHAOSScon Africa: I worked with the registration team and followed up team members on tasks.  
  • Davies’s advice for those attending an open source conference: You might experience imposter syndrome at first, which is totally ok. Prepare your mind to learn, connect and network, ask questions, and you might just be leaving better than you attended.

Oluchi Nwankwo

  • A little about Oluchi: I’m Oluchi Nwankwo, a content creator. I live in Lagos, Nigeria.
  • How Oluchi contributed to CHAOSScon Africa: I managed the social media activities, from creating promotional content about the event, and I also ensured that the activities on the day of the event were tweeted out.
  • Oluchi’s advice for those attending an open source conference: Follow up on the event before the d-day, check for schedules and be prepared. Give your undivided attention during the sessions, participate actively, and connect with others.

Kingsley Mkpandiok

  • A little about Kingsley: UX/Brand Identity Designer. I live in Lagos, Nigeria.
  • How Kingsley contributed to CHAOSScon Africa: CHAOSScon Brand/Experience Designer. Managed other designers who contributed to the event design.

Ruth Ikegah

  • A little about Ruth: My name is Ruth Ikegah and I live in Lagos Nigeria.
  • How Ruth contributed to CHAOSScon Africa: Program Manager
  • Ruth’s advice for those attending an open source conference: Networking and asking questions: It is important that you can connect with people during events, it could be through saying hi, contributing to the conversations or even following them on social media. By connecting, you are expanding your network that can bring you opportunities.

ASAIJE Elozino Lopez

  • A little about ElozinoLopez: I am ASAIJE Elozino Lopez. Hardware Engineer turned Software Engineer. I live in Okota, Lagos, Nigeria.
  • How ElozinoLopez contributed to CHAOSScon Africa: Media.
  • ElozinoLopez’s advice for those attending an open source conference: Clear your schedule so you can focus and fully engage!

Special thanks from Elizabeth and the CHAOSS Community: I think I can speak for the whole community when I say how impressed we are with the end result that was our very first CHAOSScon Africa. Your collective attention to detail and your commitment to making this event an amazing experience for all CHAOTICS really speaks to your dedication to making open source an inclusive and welcoming space for all. We are so happy and appreciative of the time and energy you all spent making this event what it was! You’re all incredible additions to our community, and thank you for being here! 🤩💥💖

Meeting Summaries

Here are the meeting summaries for the week:

Besides Discourse, we also post these in the respective Slack channels. Let us know if this is helpful or if there are other places we can post these summaries. Thanks!

Upcoming Meetings

All calls use our CHAOSS Community Zoom link (https://zoom.us/my/chaoss). All meetings listed here are in US Central / Chicago Time Zone, currently on Daylight Savings Time (UTC -5). You can convert to your local time here. You can also subscribe to the CHAOSS Calendar or watch for meeting reminders that are posted daily in the #general channel in Slack.

Tuesday, August 8

4:00 am CHAOSS Africa Developer Meeting (no agenda)

8:00 am Getting Started with Augur Workshop (no agenda)

9:00 am Newcomer Hangout (no agenda)

11:00 am CHAOSS Weekly Community Call (Minutes and Agenda)

Wednesday, August 9

10:00 am DEI Working Group Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

11:00 am University OSPO Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

Thursday, August 10

9:00 am CHAOSS Africa Community Call (Minutes and Agenda)

10:00 am Scientific Software Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

11:00 am OSPO Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

CHAOSSweekly (July 24-28, 2023)

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CHAOSS Project

Risk Working Group Meeting Update

The Risk Working Group has decided to follow in the footsteps of the Evolution Working Group and move to primarily asynchronous interaction. This means that the regular Risk Working Group meetings have been removed from the CHAOSS calendar. Thank you to Sophia Vargas for volunteering to be the Risk Liaison in case new metrics need to be developed. Two points of note:

  • The Risk WG Minutes/Agenda will be kept as an open document and when there are enough items to be discussed, an ad-hoc meeting can be scheduled.
  • This group also interacts often with the OpenSSF Risk Dashboard meetings and the CHAOSS OSPO/Todo Group meetings, so risk-related discussions can also happen there.

If you are not a part of the Risk Working Group on Slack, you can join here.

Thanks to Our New Context Liaisons!

We recently put the call out for Context Liaisons and it was immediately answered! Our Context Liaisons are responsible for attending both meetings (Common and their Context WG). They will create a first draft of the metrics/metrics models to be developed using the CHAOSS template. We are currently documenting the finer details of this role, but in the meantime we are sending out a huge thanks to the following CHAOTICS for stepping up to fulfill this role:

  • Jenn Colt – University OSPO Context Group
  • Ruth Ikegah, Maryblessing Okolie – OSPO/Todo Context Working Group
  • Sean Goggins, Anita Ihuman, Busayo Oyo – Scientific Software Working Group

CHAOTIC of the Week Will Be Back Soon

Just a point of note that our regular CHAOTIC of the Week segment has been on pause for a couple of weeks, but it will continue next week. If you have any nominations for a CHAOTIC of the Week, let Elizabeth Barron know!

Meeting Summaries

Here are the summaries of all the CHAOSS meetings this week:

Upcoming Meetings

All calls use our CHAOSS Community Zoom link (https://zoom.us/my/chaoss). All meetings listed here are in US Central / Chicago Time Zone, currently on Daylight Savings Time (UTC -5). You can convert to your local time here. You can also subscribe to the CHAOSS Calendar or watch for meeting reminders that are posted daily in the #general channel in Slack.

Tuesday, August 1

4:00 am CHAOSS Africa Developers Sync (no agenda)

7:30 am Metrics Models Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

9:00 am Newcomer Hangout (no agenda)

11:00 am CHAOSS Weekly Community Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

Wednesday, August 2

10:00 am Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

Thursday, August 3

10:00 am Common Working Group Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

CHAOSSweekly (July 17-21, 2023)

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Thank you, FOSSY!

FOSSY was a wonderful conference and the first time we had an official CHAOSS booth presence. We introduced lots of folks to CHAOSS and caught up with a lot of old friends as well. We came back with some ideas about how we can improve the booth for the next conference and some excellent insights as to how folks are using and thinking about open source community metrics. Thank you to everyone who stopped by to say hello!

Context Working Group Liaisons Needed

We are currently looking for help with a Context Working Group Liaison Role. In our #general Slack channel, Matt Germonprez explains what we’re looking for exactly:

As part of CHAOSS we currently have three different groups considering metrics and metrics models in their own particular context. The current groups include:

1. Corporate Open Source Program Offices

2. University Open Source Efforts

3. Scientific Software Efforts

Matt goes on to say:

In each of these groups, we ask participants to speak about the different metrics and metrics models that could support work in their particular context. As part of this, we have the actual creation of metrics and metrics models done in the CHAOSS Common WG — so members of the three different groups don’t have to spend too much time in the details associated with metrics/model creation.As such, we could use a few community members as liaisons between the different groups listed above and the CHAOSS Common WG. What would this entail?

  1. 1-2 liaisons for each of the groups listed above (total of six liaisons)
  2. You would attend meeting for the group you are a liaison for (i.e., Scientific Software) as well as the CHAOSS Common WG meeting. This would be about 4 meetings per month.
  3. You would listen to the conversation that is happening in your respective context group (i.e., Scientific Software) and identify/document when the group has identified new metrics/models that need to be developed.
  4. You would bring the metrics/models ideas to the CHAOSS Common WG and talk about them in that meeting.
  5. Once it is decided that a new metric/model needs to be developed, you would create a preliminary draft of the metric/model, using existing templates.
  6. The metric/model would then be iterated on between your group (i.e., Scientific Software) and the Common WG — collaboratively developing the metric/model.

If you have questions, please ask them in the #general channel, or reach out to Matt G or Elizabeth Barron. 

Meeting Summaries

Here are the summaries for this week’s meetings and links to the recordings. If we can make this easier to access or more informative please let Elizabeth Barron know!

Upcoming Meetings

All calls use our CHAOSS Community Zoom link (https://zoom.us/my/chaoss). All meetings listed here are in US Central / Chicago Time Zone, currently on Daylight Savings Time (UTC -5). You can convert to your local time here. You can also subscribe to the CHAOSS Calendar or watch for meeting reminders that are posted daily in the #general channel in Slack.

Tuesday, July 25

4:00 am CHAOSS Africa Developer Meeting (no agenda)

8:00 am Getting Started with Augur Workshop (no agenda)

9:00 am Newcomer Hangout (no agenda)

11:00 am CHAOSS Weekly Community Call (Minutes and Agenda)

Wednesday, July 26

8:30 am Community Knowledgebase Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

10:00 am DEI Working Group Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

11:00 am University OSPO Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

Thursday, July 27

9:00 am CHAOSS Africa Community Call (Minutes and Agenda)

10:00 am Scientific Software Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

11:00 am OSPO Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

CHAOSSweekly (July 10-14, 2023)

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CHAOSS Project

CHAOSScon Africa Wrap Up and Recordings Now Available

For those who missed the first CHAOSScon Africa, have no fear! You can read an amazing write-up by Maryblessing Okolie on the CHAOSS blog. And the recorded talks are all available on the CHAOSScon Africa Youtube playlist. Thanks to Maryblessing for taking the time to summarize the event, and to all who worked on recording and uploading the videos for our whole community!

CHAOSS at FOSSY

Some of the CHAOSS crew have spent the week at FOSSY in Portland, Oregon, and CHAOSS has been staffing its first booth at a tech conference. Although the conference is at its midpoint, we have met so many great new friends and have already had wonderful conversations about metrics and open source community health. Thanks to everyone who has stopped by our table to interact with us- it’s been fantastic meeting you!

Let’s Celebrate our CHAOTIC of the Week – Vinod Ahuja!

Vinod Ahuja

A little about Vinod:
I am an Assistant Professor, Computing and Data Science at the Department of Computing & Software Engineering at Florida Gulf Coast University. I received my PhD – IT and MS – MIS from the University of Nebraska-Omaha, MBA and Computer Science Diploma from Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, BBA from the Institute of Business Administration Karachi, and Banking Diploma and Associateship from the Institute of Bankers Pakistan. I have worked for 14 years in the banking industry, from junior officer to SVP, looking after the operations and business development of different bank regions. For the last seven years, during my master and PhD, I researched open source software development and have been involved with CHAOSS and AGL open source communities. My hobbies include camping, visiting different state and national parks, and being more in nature.

What Vinod works on at CHAOSS:
I am a charter member of the CHAOSS project and have been engaged with the project since the
beginning. I am engaged in almost all the working groups at CHAOSS and help develop metrics and models. Currently, I am actively working on revising our Knowledge Base.

Vinod’s advice for newcomers to open source:
My advice to newcomers to open source is to start with a clear purpose and identify your interests and goals within the community. Attend community meetings, explore their content, start engaging in discussions, and don’t shy from asking questions or providing suggestions and feedback. Open source journey is a continuous process that requires persistence and dedication. By consistently engaging and contributing, you will achieve your personal goals and make a meaningful impact within the community.

Special thanks from Elizabeth and the CHAOSS Community:
Vinod is one of the contributors who has consistently showed up to CHAOSS meetings and has offered his insight in helping develop 24 metrics and metrics models in several of our working groups. Vinod spends a lot of his time listening and formulating his opinions, so when he speaks he always has something interesting and productive to add to the conversation. Recently Vinod has been doing a documentation audit and update for our entire Community Knowledgebase, which is a huge undertaking and involves dozens of documents. We are so thankful for all Vinod’s contributions and for sharing countless hours and energy with us. You’re the best, Vinod! 🎉

If you would like to keep up with Vinod you can find him on Twitter, GitHub and LinkedIn.

Meeting Summaries

If you happened to miss any of our working group meetings this week, here’s where you can find resources!

You can subscribe to the #meeting-recap tag or the Meeting Summaries category to be notified of new meeting summaries in Discourse. Feel free to continue async conversations there or in Slack. We hope these summaries are useful! Let us know how we can improve them.

Upcoming Meetings

All calls use our CHAOSS Community Zoom link (https://zoom.us/my/chaoss). All meetings listed here are in US Central / Chicago Time Zone, currently on Daylight Savings Time (UTC -5). You can convert to your local time here. You can also subscribe to the CHAOSS Calendar or watch for meeting reminders that are posted daily in the #general channel in Slack.

Monday, July 17

10:00 am CHAOSS + All In DEI Project Badging Coordination (Minutes and Agenda)

Tuesday, July 18

4:00 am CHAOSS Africa Developers Sync

7:30 am Metrics Models Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

9:00 am Newcomer Hangout

11:00 am CHAOSS Weekly Community Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

Wednesday, July 19

10:00 am Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

12:00 pm New Badger Orientation

Thursday, July 20

10:00 am Common Working Group Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

1:00 pm Risk Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

CHAOSSweekly (July 3-7, 2023)

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CHAOSS at FOSSY in Portland, OR

Next week, CHAOSS will be at FOSSY in Portland, Oregon with our very first booth! If you’ll be at that conference, you should definitely stop by and get a CHAOSS sticker! You can also sign up to win a raffle by answering a few questions about how you think about metrics in your open source project. We’re giving away an awesome LEGO Globe so make sure to stop by!
We also have quite a few CHAOTICS who will be giving presentations at the conference. These talks won’t be recorded so you can only catch them in person!

And don’t forget to join our #fossy2023 channel if you’ll be there, so we can coordinate and connect with each other.

CHAOSS on Instagram

CHAOSS now has an Instagram account so make sure to follow for some amazing CHAOTIC photography. You can follow us at @chaossproject.

Next DEI Event Badger Orientation July 11

If you are interested in becoming a new Badger for our DEI Event Badging program, there is an orientation scheduled for July 11, 2023 at 12:00 US Central / Chicago time (right after the Weekly Community Call). You don’t have to register for this orientation and you can simply show up. If you’d like to be included on the invitation, so that it’s added to your personal calendar, just let Elizabeth Barron know or fill out our General Interest Form. This is a great way to contribute to the CHAOSS project in a non-coding way, and you don’t need to have much experience with CHAOSS to begin.

Meeting Summaries and Recordings

This was a light week for meetings because of the US Holiday. But here we are!

You can subscribe to the #meeting-recap tag or the Meeting Summaries category to be notified of new meeting summaries in Discourse. Feel free to continue async conversations there or in Slack. We hope these summaries are useful! Let us know how we can improve them.

Upcoming Meetings

All calls use our CHAOSS Community Zoom link (https://zoom.us/my/chaoss). All meetings listed here are in US Central / Chicago Time Zone, currently on Daylight Savings Time (UTC -5). You can convert to your local time here. You can also subscribe to the CHAOSS Calendar or watch for meeting reminders that are posted daily in the #general channel in Slack.

Monday, July 10

10:00 am DEI Project Badging Coordination (no agenda)

Tuesday, July 11

4:00 am CHAOSS Africa Developers Sync (no agenda)

8:00 am Getting Started with Augur Development (no agenda)

9:00 am Newcomer Hangout (no agenda)

11:00 am CHAOSS Weekly Community Call (Minutes and Agenda)

12:00 pm New DEI Badger Orientation (no agenda)

Wednesday, July 12

8:30 am Community Knowledgebase Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

10:00 am DEI Working Group Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

11:00 am University OSPO Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

Thursday, July 13

9:00 am CHAOSS Africa Community Call (Minutes and Agenda)

CANCELED 11:00 am OSPO Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

CANCELED 12:00 pm Scientific Software Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

CHAOSSweekly (June 26-30, 2023)

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Reminder: Upcoming Meeting Cancellations

The next few weeks are busy for some of our CHAOTICS and so there are a few meeting cancellations you should be mindful of:

  • No meetings July 4 for the US Holiday (No Metrics Models, Newcomer Hangout, or Weekly Community Meeting)
  • No Scientific Software Working Group Meeting July 13
  • No OSPO Working Group Meeting July 13
  • No App Ecosystem meetings July-August

These meetings have been removed from the CHAOSS calendar but if you copied any of the events into your own personal calendars you should make the changes there as well.

Next Badger Orientation July 11

If you are interested in becoming a new Badger for our DEI Event Badging program, there is an orientation scheduled for July 11, 2023 at 12:00 US Central / Chicago time (right after the Weekly Community Call). You don’t have to register for this orientation and you can simply show up. If you’d like to be included on the invitation, so that it’s added to your personal calendar, just let Elizabeth Barron know or fill out our General Interest Form. This is a great way to contribute to the CHAOSS project in a non-coding way, and you don’t need to have much experience with CHAOSS to begin.

Governance Document Approved by the CHAOSS Board

Last week, the CHAOSS Board met as a part of their regular meeting cadence. They unanimously approved a new Governance Document that outlines the structure and operations of CHAOSS in greater detail than our Charter. This document will be finalized and posted to the website and the CHAOSS GitHub organization, but in the meantime, you can see the draft version that was approved. Huge kudos to Dawn Foster for crafting the original version of this document and leading this effort!

CHAOSS at FOSSY

This year at the FOSSY conference in Portland, Oregon, CHAOSS will have their first booth for doing outreach into the open source community. We also have a few CHAOTICS giving talks at this conference:

If you will be out there we have a temporary #fossy2023 channel to coordinate staffing the booth and hangouts. Feel free to join us!

Let’s Celebrate our CHAOTIC of the Week, Enock Kassadha!

Enock Kassadha

A little about Enock:

Hey there! You probably know me or you don’t (I am not famous after all). I am Enock Kasaadha but just in case spellings get chaotic, you can go by my digital footprint, Enoch Kaxada. I have left traces of myself on MediumTwitterLinkedInGithub, and Gitlab. Surprisingly, on Shutterstock and Youtube too.🤣

I have been speaking with computers in languages they understand for now 5 years and have been a Chaotic for 2 years. If I am not speaking JavaScript, Python, or Shell Script, I am either reading music, playing the piano and guitar or speaking with humans in languages they probably understand too.

What Enock works on at CHAOSS:

As a Chaotic, I break, build and manage the technical aspects of the Badging Project. You’ll mostly find my username ‘kaxada’ tagged along with messages like, ‘The bot is messing around!’, ‘I am a developer, how can I contribute to the CHAOSS project?’, ‘Please review my PR’ and sometimes, ‘Will you be available for a call to look into the issue?’.  CHAOSS has turned me into a jack of all trades and a master of … (Well I don’t know the number either, but it is more than one).

Enock’s Advice to newcomers to open source:

My two pence worth in Open Source. Good work will always be noticed.  Every time you make an Open Source Contribution, you leave a mark on the internet and one day all the search results connected to your name will be a turning point in your life. Keep building in the Open.

Special Thanks from Elizabeth and the CHAOSS Community:

Enock arrived in CHAOSS a few years ago as a GSOC student to help with the Badging Bot, and CHAOSS has never been the same! His energy, humor, and technical know-how have been such a huge part of building the community around the Bot and CHAOSS Africa, too. As someone who works on DEI Badging daily, I am eternally appreciative of how much time that bot has saved in manual tasks. And Enock continued to own it and work on it long after GSOC ended, which we are all beyond grateful for. Besides helping run the CHAOSS Africa calls, Enock also serves as a Badger and regularly attends our CHAOSS Community and DEI working group meetings. He welcomes new folks to the community consistently and is key to making the CHAOSS Africa community what it is today. How lucky we are that GSOC brought our paths together and that Enock decided to stick around. We just can’t thank you enough, Enock! You are a one-of-a-kind that has left an indelible mark on the CHAOSS Community! 💖

Meeting Summaries and Recordings

As usual, our meeting summaries are posted on Discourse, and our recordings are posted on CHAOSStube.

You can subscribe to the #meeting-recap tag or the Meeting Summaries category to be notified of new meeting summaries in Discourse. Feel free to continue async conversations there or in Slack. We hope these summaries are useful! Let us know how we can improve them.

Upcoming Meetings

All calls use our CHAOSS Community Zoom link (https://zoom.us/my/chaoss). All meetings listed here are in US Central / Chicago Time Zone, currently on Daylight Savings Time (UTC -5). You can convert to your local time here. You can also subscribe to the CHAOSS Calendar or watch for meeting reminders that are posted daily in the #general channel in Slack.

Tuesday, July 4

No Meetings Today

Wednesday, July 5

10:00 am Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

Thursday, July 6

10:00 am Common Working Group Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)
1:00 pm Risk Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

CHAOSSweekly (June 19-23, 2023)

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No Meetings July 4, 2023

In light of the July 4 US Holiday, we have canceled all the meetings for that day. This includes the:

  • Metrics Models Working Group
  • Newcomer Hangout
  • Weekly Community Meeting
  • App Ecosystem Working Group

All other meetings will occur as regularly scheduled that week.

App Ecosystem Taking a Break July-August

There will be no meetings for the App Ecosystem working group in July and August, as this group has decided to take a break. Meetings will resume on September 12, 2023, and the future direction of the group will be discussed. Feel free to join if you would like to be a part of the group’s restart.

DEI Event Badger Orientation June 27

If you are interested in becoming a new Badger for our DEI Event Badging program, there is an orientation scheduled for June 27, 2023 at 12:00 US Central / Chicago time (right after the Weekly Community Call). You don’t have to register for this orientation and you can simply show up. If you’d like to be included on the invitation, so that it’s added to your personal calendar, just let Elizabeth Barron know.

Let’s Celebrate our CHAOTIC of the Week: Maryblessing Okolie

Maryblessing Okolie

A little about Maryblessing:

I am first Igbo (this is a tribe in Nigeria), but I am based in the western part of Nigeria, in Lagos. Before becoming a community manager, I was a Flutter developer. I tried it for a few months and figured I couldn’t deal with the bugs 😅. But most importantly, I realised I was just a people’s person and really loved to speak, make people happy in communities, and just have lots of fun while at it.

Currently, I manage the largest community for African women; we have members in over 22 African countries, and it’s been a joy supporting their growth in the community. My day-to-day work ranges from regular engagement, planning and hosting events, having strategies to effectively manage each working part of the community, and a lot more. I wear so many hats as a community manager, and I have to show up regardless of anything going on. It’s fun! If you’re looking to connect, we can do so on LinkedIn. I also do not mind a recommendation from you 😊.

When I’m not working, I see my favorite anime, read a novel, play video games or rest my head. I am a big fan of cats.

What Maryblessing works on at CHAOSS:

My work in CHAOSS is centered on creating metrics that help understand the health of open source communities. I majorly contribute through the DEI and communications working groups, spending most of my time in the DEI wg. Participating in the meetings, paying keen attention, and making meaningful suggestions. Also, badging open source events through the DEI working group event badging initiative. I have enjoyed working with everyone in these working groups, and I have learned a lot from these experiences.

Currently, I am honored to lead the CHAOSS Tour Guide program, a program where we hope to create a more engaged, welcoming, and supportive community where new chaotics feel valued and supported. The program provides new members with experienced members who can serve as guides, providing them with personalized support using community resources.

Also, I recently co-organised the CHAOSSCon Africa, where I played key roles like handling the event schedule, working closely with the speaker management team and the Chaoss Africa communications wg to create pre-event activities, and most importantly, having the privilege to emcee the event. CHAOSS has been an incredible community for me, and I am thankful for the warmth and enabling environment it has. I am going to write about my CHAOSSCon Africa experience soon; you should subscribe to my blog here.

Maryblessing’s advice to newcomers to open source:

  • First, you belong here, no matter how technical or non-technical you are. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. So, find something in line with your goals, something relevant to you, and get on it.
  • When you do find the ‘right’ project/community for you, pay more attention and show up more. Listen more and contribute slowly but steadily. 
  • Volunteer to take on tasks; don’t always wait for them to come to you.
  • Lastly, ask questions. It doesn’t hurt to ask questions. It helps understand the community and project better. Only then will you know how to come in and be more valuable.

Special thanks from Elizabeth and the CHAOSS Community:

Maryblessing came into this community almost a year ago, and from the very beginning was contributing to our community by welcoming other newcomers. She has consistently helped newcomers find their way ever since, and it’s been such a huge help to have her be that friendly face that says hello. When we were looking for someone to lead the Tour Guides program, Maryblessing was the first person to come to mind, because of all the work she had already been doing around inclusion and hospitality toward new CHAOTICS. We are so thankful she agreed to work on this! Maryblessing consistently shows up at the Newcomer Hangout, she attends several working groups and has been a very active part of the CHAOSS Africa chapter. She is also one of our Badgers, helping create more inclusive and welcoming open source events. Her work spans almost every piece of CHAOSS and we are so grateful to have her community management experience and expertise as an addition to all that we do here. Thank you for everything, Maryblessing! Your dedication to making our community a more welcoming place has been felt by virtually every new CHAOTIC since you arrived. ❤️

If anyone wants to connect with Maryblessing you can find her on LinkedIn or her personal blog.

Meeting Summaries and Recordings

Here are the summaries for this week’s meetings and links to the recordings. If we can make this easier to access or more informative please let Elizabeth Barron know!

Upcoming Meetings

All calls use our CHAOSS Community Zoom link (https://zoom.us/my/chaoss). All meetings listed here are in US Central / Chicago Time Zone, currently on Daylight Savings Time (UTC -5). (The exception to this is the CHAOSS Asia Pacific meeting which coincides with China Standard Time, so it does not change with Daylight Savings). You can convert to your local time here. You can also subscribe to the CHAOSS Calendar or watch for meeting reminders that are posted daily in the #general channel in Slack.

Tuesday, June 27

9:00 am Newcomer Hangout (no agenda)

11:00 am CHAOSS Weekly Community Call (Minutes and Agenda)

12:00 pm New DEI Badger Orientation (no agenda)

Wednesday, June 28

8:30 am Community Knowledgebase Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

10:00 am DEI Working Group Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

11:00 am University OSPO Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

Thursday, June 29

9:00 am CHAOSS Africa Community Call (Minutes and Agenda)

11:00 am OSPO Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

12:00 pm Scientific Software Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

CHAOSSweekly (June 12-16, 2023)

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CHAOSScon Africa was a Huge Success!

We are so happy to have connected with old and new friends at the very first CHAOSScon Africa this week. Huge shoutout to the entire planning committee who executed an absolutely amazing event:

  • Ruth Ikegah
  • Maryblessing Okolie
  • Kingsley Mkpandiok
  • Ihuoma Anosike
  • Precious Abubakar
  • ASAIJE Elozino Lopez
  • Davies Esogbue
  • Busayo Ojo
  • Faith Kovi

If you want to see the best CHAOSScon wrap-up video we’ve ever had, check this out! Thank you so much to everyone who attended and participated in CHAOSScon!

News Release From our Partner OSS Compass: The OSS Compass community thrives in the months since successful launch

The OSS Compass community thrives in the months since successful launch

In the Spring of 2023, the OSS Compass press conference was successfully held in Beijing. Representatives from the CHAOSS community of the Linux Foundation (online), OS China, Nanjing University, Huawei, Baidu, and Tencent, etc attended the event. Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of Huawei’s Open Source Software Management Committee, and CEO of OS China delivered the congratulatory speech.

The release of OSS Compass marks the official birth of China’s first open source ecological health assessment SaaS platform. At the conference, the theoretical research and practical results of OSS Compass were introduced, and the OSS Compass open source community governance architecture, evaluation model and development planning route were announced. OSS Compass is co-sponsored and collaboratively developed by the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, Open Source China, Nanjing University, Huawei, Peking University, OpenI, Baidu, and Tencent Open Source,it also has the support of multiple open source communities and enterprises. It is an open source practice that integrates industry, education, research and application. OSS Compass currently builds an OSS Eco Evaluation System including three dimensions of Productivity, Robustness, and Niche Creation, covering 14 metrics models.

At the beginning of the project, OSS Compass was committed to building an international open source ecological health assessment platform. On the one hand, OSS Compass follows the best practices of the CHAOSS project, including metrics models and metrics, with some backend components originally from Grimoirelab. On the other hand, OSS Compass is open to all open source projects on hosting platforms like GitHub, Gitee, etc.

Congratulations from Elizabeth Barron, the CHAOSS Community Manager. She said, “to date, CHAOSS has defined 76 individual metrics from a variety of viewpoints in a variety of areas, and has also developed many metrics models. We look forward to the future cooperation between CHAOSS and OSS Compass to help open source projects track and measure open source community health.” 

We believe that the advent of OSS Compass, can make the open source ecosystem develop in a healthier direction together with CHAOSS!

Let’s Celebrate our CHAOTIC of the Week: Neofytos Kolokotronis

A little about Neo:

Neofytos Kolokotronis

I come from Cyprus, and currently live and work in Athens, Greece. I studied medicine and got a degree in psychology, before my passion for technology and open source projects and communities led me into community management. I have been a founder and contributor to Open Source and Open Data/Government projects on an international and local level for more than a decade, serving from a variety of positions. In addition to CHAOSS, I nowadays contribute actively to KDE, where I’ve up to recently been a member of the Board of Directors.
Some notable projects I’ve been involved in the past include F-Droid, Chakra Linux and Kontalk. In my day job, I am the Head of Products and Services at Found.ation, a management consulting agency specializing in innovation, entrepreneurship and digital transformation. I work daily with teams from both startups and corporations to help them tackle challenges, adopt novel methodologies and build cultures that nurture forward-thinking mindsets. I enjoy working with both technical and non-technical contributors in getting things done, creating strong relationships and cultivating collaboration towards common goals.

What Neo Works on at CHAOSS:

I am a co-maintainer of the CHAOSS App Ecosystem Working Group, developing metrics that are focused on the needs of communities that are part of the open source application ecosystem. The goal is to help open source teams and contributors better understand their communities, people and processes, and support them in remaining healthy and open places, while growing their contributors and users base. I am also a reviewer of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Badging Initiative, that implements CHAOSS DEI metrics that address issues that are critical to making open source projects and events a safe space and inclusive for everyone. The initiative uses an open peer-review system to encourage projects and events to obtain badges and improve their processes and documentation to be more inclusive using the feedback they gain from the reviewers, contributors and participants. The goal is to increase the understanding of the open-source project and event practices that encourage greater diversity and wider inclusion of people from different backgrounds.

Neo’s Advice for Newcomers to Open Source:

One of the most satisfying parts of being involved in open source projects and communities, is that you can directly see the impact of your contributions in newer versions of the products and the community as it grows and develops. With this in mind, I urge you to join open source communities that develop software that you use and want to see improved, or are centering on a cause that you care about. When initially joining a community, take the time to understand what it is about and how it works. Each project and community is a living organism, with its own particular purpose, goals, microculture, values, norms of behavior and processes. Being aware of and respecting these will help you navigate your way into the community and gain the trust of your fellow contributors. In terms of contributing, take it one step at a time, start from the low-hanging fruit and focus on the areas where you can have an impact based on your particular set of experience, skills and personality. This will help you place yourself in the community and gradually figure out how you can be of further help. Maintain a spirit of collaboration and togetherness, be open to learning new things, listen to the feedback you will receive and try to make the most of it. 

Special Thanks from Elizabeth and the CHAOSS Community:

Neo has been a part of CHAOSS for many years, and has quietly been contributing since he joined. Neo has made a huge impact on CHAOSS. As our top DEI Event Badger, Neo has done more badging reviews than anyone. At 20 reviews and counting, Neo has badged almost 20% of our entire body of Event Badging applications. He has made a tremendous impact on DEI events large and small. As one of the core members of the App Ecosystem Working Group Neo has helped keep this group alive and has contributed to several opensource.com articles on the group’s behalf. Neo, we just can’t thank you enough for all your hard work and for your continued contributions to CHAOSS! We appreciate you so much! 🤩

If you would like to connect with Neo, you can find him on Linked In and Twitter.

Meeting Summaries for the Week

As usual, our meeting summaries are posted on Discourse, and our recordings are posted on CHAOSStube.

You can subscribe to the #meeting-recap tag or the Meeting Summaries category to be notified of new meeting summaries in Discourse. Feel free to continue async conversations there or in Slack. We hope these summaries are useful! Let us know how we can improve them.

Upcoming Meetings

All calls use our CHAOSS Community Zoom link (https://zoom.us/my/chaoss). All meetings listed here are in US Central / Chicago Time Zone, currently on Daylight Savings Time (UTC -5). (The exception to this is the CHAOSS Asia Pacific meeting which coincides with China Standard Time, so it does not change with Daylight Savings). You can convert to your local time here. You can also subscribe to the CHAOSS Calendar or watch for meeting reminders that are posted daily in the #general channel in Slack.

Tuesday, June 20

7:30 am Metrics Models Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)
9:00 am Office Hours for Newcomers (no agenda)
11:00 am CHAOSS Community Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)
1:00 pm App Ecosystem Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)

Wednesday, June 21

10:00 am Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

Thursday, June 22

10:00 am Common Working Group Meeting (Minutes and Agenda)
1:00 pm Risk Working Group (Minutes and Agenda)

Welcome Dr. Dawn Foster as the new Director of Data Science for CHAOSS!

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We are unbelievably excited to announce that Dr. Dawn Foster will be joining the CHAOSS project full time in August 2023, helping direct community data science efforts. To date, the CHAOSS project has been focused on developing software, metrics, and programs aimed at helping people and organizations better understand the health of open source communities they care about. While we are proud of our impact to date, with Dawn’s energy, we will be able to strategically focus on data-driven questions that are important for corporate OSPOs, university OSPOs, and scientific software communities among others.

Dr. Dawn Foster

Dawn joins us from VMware where she is the Director of Open Source Community Strategy within VMware’s OSPO. She is a Governing Board member / maintainer for CHAOSS, co-chair of the CNCF Contributor Strategy TAG, and OpenUK board member. She has 20+ years of experience at companies like Intel and Puppet with expertise in community building, strategy, open source software, governance, metrics, and more.

Dawn holds a PhD from the University of Greenwich along with an MBA and a BS in Computer Science. She has spoken at over 100 industry events, including many Linux Foundation events, KubeCon, OSCON, SXSW, FOSDEM and more. In her spare time, she enjoys reading science fiction, running, and traveling.

Developing a CHAOSS data science effort is intended to help organizations ask complex questions, identify data to address these questions, and effectively use the results to inform decision-making processes. We hope that you can join us in welcoming and supporting Dawn as she takes on these challenges to support all with an interest.