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:
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.
- Weekly Community Meeting (summary, recording)
- DEI Working Group (summary, recording)
- University OSPO, OSPO++ Working Group (summary, no recording this time)
- OSS Scientific Software Working Group (summary, recording)
- OSPO / TODO Group Working Group (summary, recording)
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)
