The bait and switch of open source
Open source sells itself as being about technical problemsdelightfully thorny technical problems at that. However, successful projects are filled with people, which introduces a whole different set of problems. Katrina Owen illustrates the many ways in which things went wrong for Exercism because she didnt treat people problems as first-class citizens.
| Talk Title | The bait and switch of open source |
| Speakers | Katrina Owen (GitHub) |
| Conference | O’Reilly Open Source Convention |
| Conf Tag | |
| Location | Austin, Texas |
| Date | May 16-19, 2016 |
| URL | Talk Page |
| Slides | Talk Slides |
| Video | |
The story of Exercism is one of chaos, confusion, and surprising successes. The site started out as a workflow optimization tool intended to be used by 25 people, but within a short amount of time, thousands of people were using the site, and hundreds of people were contributing to it. This sounds wonderful, except that it wasn’t really clear who all of these people were, why they were there, or what they needed or wanted. The questions that had me stumped were not about automated tests, continuous deployment, or architecture but rather about mentorship, motivation, and communication. I thought I was solving technical problems, but the truly difficult problems were all inherently squishy. I illustrate the many ways in which things went wrong for Exercism because I didn’t treat people problems as first-class citizens and attempt to answer some, if not all, of the following questions:
