Open at Intel

In this insightful podcast, Katherine Druckman chats with marketing expert Swarna Podilla about the delicate dance of balancing open source community and enterprise interests. Swarna shares her rich experience in various marketing roles, emphasizing the importance of clear communication, understanding organizational goals, and avoiding common pitfalls like the "bait and switch" policy. This conversation offers valuable insights for anyone at the crossroads of open-source projects and enterprise marketing.   Guest: Swarna Podila (she/her) is a seasoned product marketer and marketing leader. She has been a successful technology product marketer for open source and enterprise products at various stages of product life cycle for over two decades. Hailing from an engineering background and with a strong penchant for communities, she drives people-first and community-first marketing initiatives to benefit communities and enterprises alike.

In this engaging interview, Katherine Druckman and Jono Bacon delve into the world of open source community building. They discuss the importance of bridging gaps, valuing non-code contributions, and pushing the boundaries of collective potential. Jono shares success stories from Blender, opensource.com, and the CNCF, while also highlighting the need for better collaboration and breaking biases within the open source community. With a touch of humor and a glimpse into pop culture, this conversation leaves you inspired and excited about the future of open source. Resources: The Importance of Community, Jono Bacon, Community Leadership Core Guest: Jono Bacon is a leading community and collaboration speaker, author, and podcaster. He is the founder of Jono Bacon Consulting which provides community strategy/execution, workflow, and other services. He previously served as director of community at GitHub, Canonical, XPRIZE, and OpenAdvantage. His clients include Huawei, GitLab, Microsoft, Intel, Google, Sony Mobile, Deutsche Bank, Santander, HackerOne, Mattermost, SAP, FINOS Foundation, The Executive Center, data.world, Creative Commons, and others. He is the author of ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’ and The Art of Community, a columnist for Forbes and opensource.com, founder of the Community Leadership Summit, founder of Conversations With Bacon, and co-founder of Bad Voltage. He is an advisor to AlienVault, Moltin, data.world, Mycroft, Open Networking Foundation, and Open Cloud Consortium.

Katherine Druckman and Ezequiel Lanza, Intel Open Source Evangelists, chat with Melinda Thielbar, Vice President, Data Science at Fidelity Investments. This lively discussion covers pressing issues in fairness evaluation to ensure that AI models work equally well for everyone. Resources: The Search For Transparency And Accountability In The Age Of AI-RAI & XAI As Essential Tools, Ezequiel Lanza, Intel Jurity: State of the Art Open Source Software for AI Fairnessevuation, Melinda Thielbar, Fidelity Investments Jurity: Fairness & Evaluation Library Guests: Melinda Thielbar is a researcher and statistical software developer with over twenty years of industry experience. Her career ranges from statistics education to developing algorithms for commercial software to Hollywood script consulting. She co-founded Research Triangle Analysts, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit focused on education and training for people working in analytics and data science in the Raleigh-Durham area. She works as a Practice Lead for Data Science in Fidelity Investments’ Workplace Investing business. Passionate about helping people discover the exciting world of artificial intelligence, Ezequiel Lanza is a frequent AI conference presenter and the creator of use cases, tutorials, and guides that help developers adopt open source AI tools.

In this episode of the Open at Intel podcast, host Katherine Druckman sits down with Nithya Ruff, the head of Amazon's Open Source Program Office. They discuss the importance of upstream contributions, improving collective security posture, and the fast-paced world of AI. Nithya shares insights on how Amazon embraces open source across the company, making it easy for developers to work with open source and ensuring the platform is open source-friendly for customers. They also explore the concept of ownership in open source and the responsibilities that come with it. Nithya emphasizes the need for companies to be good citizens of the open source community and highlights the role of organizations like the OpenSSF in coordinating efforts and creating standards. They discuss the challenges of prioritizing resources for upstream work and share practical advice on how to approach it. The conversation also touches on the importance of security in open source, especially in the context of AI, and the need for collaboration and standardization in this rapidly evolving field. Throughout the episode, Nithya and Katherine express their enthusiasm for open source and their optimism in its ability to solve complex problems and drive innovation.   Guest:   Nithya A. Ruff is the Head of Amazon’s Open Source Program Office. Open Source has proven to be one of the world’s most prolific enablers of innovation and collaboration and Amazon’s customers increasingly value open source innovation and the and cloud’s role in helping them adopt and run important open source services. She drives open source culture and coordination inside of Amazon and engagement with external communities. Prior to Amazon, she started and grew Comcast and Western Digital’s Open Source Program Offices. Open Source Program Offices are a critical part of a company’s digital transformation and innovation journey. Nithya has been director-at-large on the Linux Foundation Board for the last 5 years and in 2019 was elected to be Chair of the influential Linux Foundation Board. She works actively to advance the mission of the Linux Foundation around building sustainable ecosystems that are built on open collaboration. She is a passionate advocate and a speaker for opening doors to new and diverse people in technology and can often be seen speaking and writing on this topic. Nithya graduated with an M.S. in Computer Science from NDSU and an MBA from the University of Rochester, Simon Business School and is an aspiring corporate board director and governance enthusiast. You can follow her on twitter @nithyaruff and you can find her on https://www.linkedin.com/in/nithyaruff/

In this special bonus episode, Melissa Evers, Vice President in the Software and Advanced Technology Group and General Manager of the Strategy to Execution organization at Intel, shares valuable insight on open source citizenship, giving back to the community, her own open source journey, and what's on the horizon. Guest: Melissa Evers is Vice President in the Software and Advanced Technology Group and General Manager of the Strategy to Execution organization at Intel Corporation where she is responsible for a portfolio of transformative software capabilities including Intel’s open source strategy. Melissa holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA degree from the university’s McCombs School of Business. An active champion of diversity and inclusion, as well as a certified coach, Melissa frequently coaches leaders across the industry.

Microsoft Cloud Security Advocate, Sarah Young, joins us to talk about good security hygiene, security tooling, and how to think like a hacker.   Guest: Sarah Young has worked in security since before it was cool. She loves to connect and engage with security communities all over the globe. Security affects every single one of us and it is Sarah's firm belief that everyone can (and should) know things about security to keep themselves (both on a professional and personal level) safe from security threats.

Even as a developer or technologist, adopting a marketing mindset can help you create magic in your communities and projects. Open source marketing and community leader, Lori Lorusso, joins us to give us some tips for improving communication, getting the word out, and capturing that special sauce that leads to success. Guest: Lori Lorusso has a passion and enthusiasm for working with the developer community and has traveled across the globe speaking at and attending conferences and community events advocating on behalf of developers. Lori was elected 2023 Marketing Chair of the CNCF, appointed Chair of the CDF Outreach Committee, is the program chair of cdCon, and is active in the OpenSSF outreach committee. She is a co-organizer of VJUG and frequently volunteers to support other JUGs at virtual and in person events. She co-hosts the CD Pipeline on behalf of the CDF with TechstrongTV. She is committed to helping open source and other tech communities grow and adapt in our ever changing environment.

Whitney Lee, Staff Technical Advocate at VMware and CNCF Ambassador, appreciates the value of good developer experience and smooth app delivery. Whitney joins us to talk through Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs), and how implementation best practices and clear communication make platform teams and developers happy. We also explored evaluating products in the immense cloud native landscape, GitOps, and more. Resources ⚡️Enlightning by VMWare Tanzu You Choose - DevOps Toolkit Channel Cloud Native Live - CNCF Guest: Whitney Lee is a lovable goofball who enjoys understanding and using tools in the cloud native landscape. Creative and driven, Whitney recently pivoted from an art-related career to one in tech. She is active in the open source community, especially around CNCF projects focused on developer productivity. You can catch her lightboard streaming show ⚡️ Enlightning on Tanzu.TV. And not only does she rock at tech - she literally has toured playing in the band Mutual Benefit on keyboards and vocals.    

Ashley Wolf, Open Source Program Office Director at GitHub, joins us to share lessons learned at GitHub. As the home of so much open source code, GitHub has a unique view of the open source ecosystem. Ashley shares her own take on the role of an OSPO, trends in open source software development, and the tools her team gives back to the community. Resources: github-ospo repo on GitHub Stale Repos GitHub Action Guest: Ashley Wolf is the Director of Open Source Programs at GitHub. She runs initiatives and programs to empower developers to be successful with open source. She is also passionate about helping companies participate in the open source community. Prior to joining GitHub, Ashley led the Yahoo (acquired by Verizon) open source program office. Ashley also serves on the steering committee for the TODO Group.

Intel Ethernet and open source have been making history for decades. Doug Boom and Kevin Bross join us for a history lesson and a look toward future innovation. If you drive a car, use a phone, or travel to Mars, chances are you'll encounter foundational ethernet technology Kevin and Doug have helped foster. We take a deep and nerdy dive into the world of open source software and ethernet and learn how it impacts all our lives.   Resources: Westport Channel: Intel® Ethernet Network Adapter E810-XXVDA4T Logan Beach: Intel® Ethernet Network Adapter E810-CQDA2T   Guests: Doug Boom is a Principal Engineer at Intel Ethernet.  Heading into his 29th year at Intel Ethernet, Doug has done it all when it comes to Ethernet.  Driver writer, product technical lead, architect, people and project management, he has lately been doing custom implementations with Intel Ethernet partners.  His code is in everything from soda machines, enterprise ethernet switches, lottery kiosks, ultrasound machines, cars, planes, trains and even rovers on Mars.  He has over 20 patents, and has invented technologies used in billions of dollars of solutions.  He’s had code in the Linux kernel since the old 2.4 days, but for reasons he can’t explain, his favorite distro is Ubuntu.   Doug is an Ethernet evangelist, you can see him talk about Ethernet basics at this YouTube link and history and some product stories at this YouTube link.  Doug writes fiction, makes board games and plays video games in his spare time. Kevin W. Bross is an Intel Principal Engineer and modular systems architect in Intel’s Network and Edge Group (NEX).   Over the past 30+ years at Intel, he has held a variety of engineering and marketing roles at Intel, including defining bladed systems products, architecting Intel's first M2M/IoT gateway product, working on the development/trials of 64-antenna Massive MIMO cellular base stations, and architecting Intel’s first three timing-related network adapters.  Kevin is currently working on 5G infrastructure and system design for Intel reference designs and numerous customer systems. Guest Host: Chris Norman An avid promoter of open source ecosystems, Chris writes documentation and presents at open source events, helping developers better understand Intel’s contributions to operating systems, languages, and runtimes. He also moderates the Clear Linux community forum.