In two short weeks (OMG!!), I’ll be attending All Things Open. The 3 main reasons why I’m excited:
I will connect.
All Things Open has an incredible line up with passion and experience from across the Open Movement. The attendees of such a conference are bound to have some commonalities with yours truly. Others will have insights and beliefs that might help me push my work forward. Still others might be working on things that excite or challenge me. I am looking forward to meeting new people and learning from them. I’m also looking forward to reconnecting with some Mozillians and meeting Opensource.com contributors, Red Hatters and Open Ambassadors IN REAL LIFE.
Connecting in a place where the main theme is all things open (lowercase!) is bound to be beneficial in a multitude of ways. You never know who you’re going to meet and how that person might alter your path.
I will learn.
Together with thousands of open enthusiasts, I will explore the depths of open technologies and culture. I’m bound to learn a great many things. In particular, I’m looking forward to challenging my own perception of what the open community looks like.
I’ve spent my career working at the crossroads between technology and other industries. Technology + Media, Technology + Education, Technology + Activism. Spreading the beliefs, processes and culture of open from the tech community and into other sectors is part of the reason I am a founding member of the We Are Open Coop.
Having been involved in the open community for a number of years, I like to think I know what the community looks like. But open principles and practices have gone mainstream in the past few years. Different organizations have very different communities. I’m eager to understand how the collective open community has grown and what kinds of open communities (beyond those that I hold near and dear) exist.
I will advocate.
At All Things Open, I will advocate for our planet, for humanity, for building bridges and for the benefits of open.
Over the past year, Greenpeace gathered insights from tens of thousands of people – community members, the public, volunteers, donators, staff. The data went through a tiered distillation process, and a ten year plan was developed out of it. The Greenpeace “Framework” is a reflection of the hearts and minds and diverse experiences of a global community of people. This ten year plan lays out the direction that Greenpeace wants to move in.
What hasn’t changed is the Greenpeace mission. Greenpeacers protect the planet in all its diversity and promote peace and nonviolence. But the community needs to broaden its perspectives. Greenpeace is not just about the environment, as many tend to think, it’s about recognizing that the environmental issue is deeply connected to many other issues.
What changes through the 10 year plan is how Greenpeace will frame the environmental issue. We need to draw connections between environmental issues and societal issues. We have to help people understand how our planet and the way we live on it and how we treat each other is all related. So fundamentally, the new Greenpeace Framework is about systems change.
I’ve been working with Greenpeace to engage staff and volunteers around the practices and principles that will help Greenpeace be the organization it wants to be. I believe that openness is a keystone in Greenpeace’s evolution because Greenpeace is made up of people. People act. People document. People give. Our work isn’t possible without the people power that drives it. And it’s people who are the keystones of open.
Where I’ll be
I’m honored to be participating in a featured session “How to be more collaborative and inclusive at work”. There, I’ll talk about remixing for context, the Open Decision Framework and the Greenpeace Planet 4 project. On the second day, I’ll be running a session in the community track where I’ll talk about things that happen behind the scenes that help contributors gain trust, take ownership and begin to help distribute leadership to the edges of a community. I’ll talk about behaviors that spur cultural shifts. I’ll talk about designing for participation and how to show love to your contributors.
I’m also looking forward to talking about sustainable tech, how technology activists can support the environmental movement, why connecting with industries and sectors outside of technology is so important, privacy, security, identity, being intentional about diversity and a million other things I expect will come up in all the random conversations.
Come find me at All Things Open.