
CHAOSScast
This CHAOSS Community podcast features members who spent considerable time and effort to understand open source community health and how we can measure it through metrics, analytics, and software. We invite guests to this podcast to talk about how they use open source community health metrics and software in their own open source communities, companies, or foundations. This podcast fills the gap with open source community metric definitions and software on one side and their use on the other side.
Latest episodes

Feb 25, 2022 • 35min
Episode 53: Gathering Open Source Usage Data with Avi Press
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, we are super excited to have as our guest, Avi Press, Founder and CEO of Scarf. Avi tells us all about Scarf, Scarf Gateway, the tools that compliment it, and details how Scarf is helping open source software developers use data effectively. Also, Avi shares something he was surprised about early on with usage of open source projects. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues!
[00:02:18] Avi tells us more about his background, what brought him into open source, and what led him to start Scarf.
[00:04:13] We learn more how Scarf works and what the tool is collecting.
[00:06:44] Kate asks Avi if he’s looking at being able to generate out the software buildable materials and making that available at all or maybe something he’s contemplating.
[00:08:18] Avi explains their polices for maintainers and Kate tells us more about a census coming out with people doing scans code that Ari is interested in.
[00:14:55] We hear a story about a package that Ari first built called scarf-js on npm.
[00:18:00] Sophia wonders from a practical standpoint, how the user experience is so they know they’re interacting with Scarf.
[00:20:15] Another question Sophie asks Avi circles back to what a user is, knowing there’s a lot of overlap between activity, new user contributors, and everything in between, and she wonders how that’s handled and the tool.
[00:22:10] Avi explains how they encourage maintainers collect usage data.
[00:23:54] Avi had mentioned that having insights and data about the usage of open source can help an open source project become more sustainable, and he shares examples that he’s seen already put in place.
[00:26:46] Kate asks Avi how he sees what he’s sharing back to the projects differing from the clones out there.
[00:28:05] We learn something that surprised Avi early on being the middleman.
[00:29:24] Find out where you follow Avi online.
Value Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:30:12] Georg’s pick is having a proud father moment with his son.
[00:30:54] Kate’s pick is Log4j which is helping to really illustrate the need for SBOMs & tracking dependencies.
[00:31:26] Sophia’s pick is an electric tea kettle she just acquired.
[00:33:05] Avi’s picks are two open source projects that he uses: org-mode and org-roam.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Sophia Vargas
Kate Stewart
Guest:
Avi Press
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Avi Press Website
Avi Press Twitter
Avi Press LinkedIn
Scarf
Scarf Twitter
Scarf-GitHub
Scarf-js
Apache Log4j
Org Mode
Org-roam
Special Guest: Avi Press.Support CHAOSScast

Feb 11, 2022 • 36min
Episode 52: Understanding the Community through Metrics with Carina C. Zona [Part 2 of 2]
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, we have joining us again, Carina Zona, who is the Head of Developer Relations for Toolchain, which is the lead sponsor of Pantsbuild open source project. If you listened to our previous episode, in Part 1 we talked about the Pants community and how it’s been evolving over the last ten years, and there were conversations about some qualitative means of measuring and some culture around growing community. Today’s episode is Part 2, where we get more hands-on with what you can do with data with understanding the community. Also, Carina details about the tools they use to satisfy their data needs, how they organize all the data, and more about Savannah CRM and tagging. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues!
[00:02:37] As the Dev Rel person in the community, Carina talks and reports to stakeholders who need different data points, so she explains the data points she looks at and the tools she’s using to satisfy her data needs.
[00:06:00] Carina explains how she organizes all the data that comes in from the surveys.
[00:10:22] We find out some other ways Carina is using the data, as well as who she reports to and what she reports.
[00:12:21] Venia wonders if there are different dashboards and reports that Carina provides to the individuals with completely different key performance indicators.
[00:14:43] The topic of tagging in Savannah CRM is brought up and Carina explains what’s in Savannah.
[00:20:41] Carina tells us more about the tagging in Savannah and Venia wonders if she’s using the tags in order to bring up and study the comments on a customer sentiment.
[00:27:50] Carina shares some advice to other Dev Rels who want to understand the health of their communities and work towards making them more healthy.
[00:30:49] Find out where you can follow Carina online.
Value Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:32:19] Georg’s pick is designing and building a custom home.
[00:33:17] Venia’s pick is getting back into doing book clubs this week.
[00:33:49] Carina’s pick is having conversations with people that she’s fallen out of touch with during the pandemic.
[00:34:55] Armstrong’s pick is the beauty of family and seeing a very good perspective of life.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Venia Logan
Armstrong Foundjem
Guest:
Carina Zona
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Carina C. Zona Website
Carina C. Zona Twitter
Pantsbuild
Pantsbuild Twitter
Pantsbuild-GitHub
Pantsbuild Slack
Pantsbuild Blog
Savannah CRM
Airtable
SurveyMonkey
Special Guest: Carina C. Zona.Support CHAOSScast

Jan 28, 2022 • 44min
Episode 51: Understanding the Community through Metrics - Carina C. Zona [Part 1 of 2]
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, we are super excited to have as our guest, Carina Zona, who is the Head of Developer Relations for Toolchain, which is the lead sponsor of Pantsbuild open source project, as well as the Founder of CallbackWomen. Our discussions take us into Carina sharing her knowledge about some qualitative means of measuring and some culture around growing communities. Her passion has been trying to increase gender diversity in this industry as a side project on top of developer relations, and we learn what she’s been doing to help advocate this. We learn more about the Pants community, what this project is, and Carina tells us about adding the welcome channel on Slack and the quantitative work she’s doing on it using Savannah CRM. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues!
[00:02:27] Carina tells us her background and more about her project, CallbackWomen.
[00:05:52] The topic of data being self-reinforcing is discussed. Venia wonders how Carina approaches conversations with people who are so metrics focused.
[00:12:35] We learn all about the Pants community and what this project is all about.
[00:17:28] Carina fills us in on the who makes up the Pants community.
[00:21:29] Carina makes a clarification about Pants Build being written as an open source project in Python and the core engine written in Rust, and she speaks more about supporting languages and the effect it will have on who exists in your community.
[00:26:09] As the Pants community grows, Venia wonders what Carina has been doing to decide which aspects of that culture are working for the lurkers and silent majority in order to keep it when stakeholders choose to make decisions, and how does she make the decision between what to keep in the culture and what to let go.
[00:30:00] Venia wonders if Carina has considered using the welcome channel for purposes of direct measurement, and she goes in depth about how she’s doing quantitative work on it using Savannah CRM.
[00:34:19] Armstrong wonders if Carina thinks qualitative findings or evidence will challenge or support quantitative numbers she has. She also explains why the number is not important but what matters is the experience.
[00:39:01] Find out where you can follow Carina online.
Value Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:40:40] Georg’s pick is a new tea pot he bought.
[00:41:26] Venia’s pick is finding a therapist that is okay with being online.
[00:42:00] Armstrong’s pick is getting selected to be AI chair at OpenInfra Summit Berlin 2022.
[00:42:26] Carina’s pick is her new puppy that brings her so much joy.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Venia Logan
Armstrong Foundjem
Guest:
Carina Zona
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Carina C. Zona Website
Carina C. Zona Twitter
Pantsbuild
Pantsbuild Twitter
Toolchain
CallbackWomen
CallbackWomen Twitter
Savannah CRM
OpenInfra Summit Berlin 2022
Special Guest: Carina C. Zona.Support CHAOSScast

Jan 14, 2022 • 46min
Episode 50: Recognizing all Kinds of Labor in Open Source Ecosystems with Amanda, Katie, and John
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, we have three amazing guests with us, Amanda Casari, Katie McLaughlin, and John Meluso. Amanda is a Developer Relations Engineer and researcher at Google at the Open Source Programs Office, Katie is a Developer Relations Engineer at Google, and John is the OCEAN Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Vermont. They are with us to talk about Project OCEAN (Open-Source Complex Ecosystems And Networks), how it came to be, where it is now, and what they hope to accomplish going forward. We also learn more about what they see as an open source ecosystem, and they go in depth about contributions and taxonomy. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues!
[00:03:44] John, Amanda, and Katie tell us their backgrounds and how they got involved in open source.
[00:07:23] We learn more about OCEAN, how it came to be, and where it’s at now.
[00:11:25] Amanda and John explain a bit more about ecosystems.
[00:15:52] Georg wonders what they have realized early on or over time that they want to make sure everyone who looks at open source takes away from their work.
[00:19:59] Amanda brings up a question to the panelists concerning the idea of atomic information around software projects and balancing how much do they keep with a repo versus how do you allow for information to be distributed in many places that many people work, but it doesn’t get lost and you don’t lose somebody’s attribution for the work they do.
[00:28:58] Georg brings up the Types of Contributions metrics link CHAOSS uses that helps show how people can contribute to open source, and Katie shares her thoughts on it.
[00:32:13] Sophie talks about “Which contributions count? Analysis of attribution in open source” report and what this research explores. John explains how they balance things by varying the kinds of methodologies they use.
[00:38:49] Find out where you can follow Amanda, Katie, and John online.
Value Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:39:45] Georg’s pick is LifeTime wellness and fitness center.
[00:40:31] Matt’s pick is places to visit in Colorado: Rocky Mtn. National Park, Great Sand Dunes, and Gunnison National Park.
[00:41:08] Sophia’s pick is emergent property.
[00:41:57] Amanda’s pick is trading Vermont Golden Dome books with her oldest child.
[00:43:10] Katie’s pick is the book, CPython Internals by Anthony Shaw.
[00:44:03] John’s pick is the book, Data Feminism by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein.
Request from our Guests:
Open Source Folks: Take (and share!) this anonymous survey about receiving credit for tasks in open source! Conducted by researchers at the University of Vermont in partnership with Google Open Source.
[https://qualtrics.uvm.edu/jfe/form/SV_1zUs19oVcZJ0SPA](https://qualtrics.uvm.edu/jfe/form/SV_1zUs19oVcZJ0SPA)
Panelists:
Georg Link
Sophia Vargas
Matt Germonprez
Guests:
Amanda Casari
Katie McLaughlin
John Meluso
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Project OCEAN
Amanda Casari Twitter
Open Source Stories-Amanda Casari Website
Amanda Casari Linkedin
Katie McLaughlin Twitter
Katie McLaughlin Website
John Meluso Twitter
John Meluso Linkedin
John Meluso, PhD Website
John Meluso Email
ACROSS Taxonomy-GitHub
CHAOSS Types of Contributions metrics
Which contributions count? Analysis of attribution in open source-Jean-Gabriel Young, Amanda Casari, Katie McLaughlin, Milo Z. Trujillo, Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, James P. Bagrow
Open source ecosystems need equitable credit across contributions-Amanda Casari, Katie McLaughlin, Milo Z. Trujillo, Jean-Gabriel young, James P. Bagrow, & Laurent Hébert-Dufresne
Nadia Eghbal Website
Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure by Nadia Eghbal
Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal
A Place to Hang Your Hat- Leslie Hawthorn’s Hat Rack blog post
Octohatrack-GitHub
A tool for tracking non-code GitHub contributions-Katie McLaughlin
Recognize All Contributors
CHAOSScast Podcast- Episode 39: Leaderboards and Metrics at Drupal.org with Matthew Tift and Tim Lehnen
LifeTime
Rocky Mountain National Park
Great Sand Dunes
Black Canyon Of The Gunnison
What Are Emergent Properties?
Vermont Golden Dome Books
CPython Internals by Andrew Shaw
Data Feminism by Catherine D’Ignazio
Special Guests: Amanda Casari, John Meluso, and Katie McLaughlin.Support CHAOSScast

Dec 3, 2021 • 52min
Episode 49: CHAOSS Community Year 2021 in Review
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. We are super excited for today’s episode because we are doing a “Year 2021 in Review” with our panel of representatives from the CHAOSS community from all around the world. Joining us today are Georg, Sean, Matt, Willem, Dawn, Nicole, Elizabeth, and Xiaoya. Our panelists tell us their favorite episodes from this year, we hear about new advances in software for CHAOSS Project, things that happened around metrics in CHAOSS, and DEI Badging for Events that was built out this year. Also, we learn more about conversations that happened from this year with metrics models, dependencies, and ethics guidelines. And finally, the panelists share with us where they want to see the CHAOSS Project going in 2022. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues!
[00:04:35] Find out which episodes are the panelists favorites.
[00:08:15] The CHAOSScast Podcast is headed to China and we hear more about it.
[00:11:31] Sean fills us in on interesting new advances in software for CHAOSS Project, and Georg tells us more about some things that happened in the Grimoire Lab Project.
[00:13:30] We move on to metrics and we hear what’s happened in the CHAOSS community around metrics this year.
[00:17:36] Nicole and Matt explain more about the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Badging for Events that was built out over this last year.
[00:20:55] On the topic of DEI, CHAOSS community did some reflection over the past year and Matt tells us how it went.
[00:24:31] Georg highlights three conversations from this year which are metrics models, dependencies, and ethics guidelines. The panelists dive into metrics models and talk more about what they are and what CHAOSS is doing with them.
[00:28:59] Sean explains what they learned about the different types of dependencies that we have and the different ways that we can look at them through metrics.
[00:30:45] The third topic of ethics of data and metrics is discussed. Georg explains the data policy that was written this year that you find on their website and Matt and Elizabeth share some other things that have been going on with guidance to ethics in how people use metrics.
[00:34:45] Georg brings up the Pandemic and COVID, how they finally had their first in-person event this year, and the panelists chime in on how they think it went.
[00:37:10] We hear some closing thoughts from the panelists on where they want to see the CHAOSS Project going in 2022.
Value Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:44:06] Georg’s pick is taking seven weeks off and spending time with family.
[00:44:39] Dawn’s pick is Elekto.
[00:45:31] Sean’s pick is spending time with his Mother who will be visiting.
[00:46:34] Elizabeth’s pick is a Reese’s pie size cup that Hershey’s released.
[00:47:36] Nicole’s pick is the ClicBot programmable robot.
[00:48:16] Xiaoya’s pick is the CHAOSScast China Podcast.
[00:48:44] Willem’s pick is an article about “The social contract of open source.”
[00:49:52] Matt’s pick is his Border Collie dog.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Sean Goggins
Matt Germonprez
Willem Jiang
Dawn Foster
Nicole Huesman
Elizabeth Barron
Xiaoya Xia
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
CHAOSScast Podcast-Episode 34: Anniversary Episode with Georg, Dawn, Matt, Sophia, Elizabeth
CHAOSScast Podcast-Episode 37: The Orbit Model with Patrick Wood
CHAOSScast Podcast-Episode 43: Growing the CHAOSS Community Globally-with Xiaoya, Willem, King, and Clement
CHAOSScast Podcast-Episode 39: Leaderboards and Metrics at Drupal.org with Matthew Tift and Tim Lehnen
CHAOSScast Podcast-Episode 45: Fireside Chat: Metrics Strategy with Daniel, Sean, and Venia
CHAOSScast Podcast-Episode 38: Co.Lab and Increasing Diversity in STEM with Ruth Suehle
CHAOSScast Podcast-Episode 44: GSOC: M.A.R.S. Project- Metrics Automated Release System with Yash and Ritik
CHAOSScast Podcast-Episode 47: Writing the GrimoireLab Tutorial through the Summer of Open Source Promotion Plan with Veerasamy Sevagen
CHAOSScast Project-Episode 27: GSOD with Xiaoya & Jaskirat
DEI Badging for Events-GitHub
Elekto
REESE’S Pie
ClicBot
The social contract of open source-Tall, Snarky Canadian
Border Collie
CHAOSScast China Podcast
Special Guests: Willem Jiang and Xiaoya Xia.Support CHAOSScast

Nov 19, 2021 • 49min
Episode 48: Creating Appreciative Communities and Implicit Mentoring with Anita Sarma and Iftekhar Ahmed
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, we are very excited to have two guests joining us, Anita Sarma and Iftekhar Ahmed. Anita is a Professor of Computer Science at Oregon State University and Iftekhar is an Assistant Professor at University of California, Irvine. They are here to talk about creating appreciative communities and implicit mentoring. We learn more about what socio-technical means, metrics to look at or use to understand if we’re on the right track, and some important things they learned from their research. Also, Anita and Iftekhar share their thoughts on how they see implicit mentoring and creating appreciative communities fitting together. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues!
[00:01:55] Anita and Iftekhar give us a brief introduction of who they are and their backgrounds.
[00:04:10] Georg speaks about the importance of creating quality software and how there’s more to it than testing the software and having reviews, and we learn more about what socio-technical means.
[00:10:27] We find out some important things from Anita what they’ve learned from their research.
[00:15:15] With open source growing so much over the past five to seven years, Sean asks Iftekhar how that has influenced this socio-technical system of testing and quality assurance in open source software.
[00:18:49] Iftekhar and Anita explain the phenomenon behind projects that achieve a certain level of success which leads to additional demands on it.
[00:22:25] We learn more about what implicit mentoring means.
[00:28:39] Anita tells more about the research they did with pull request comments and what they found out in their initial work with interviews.
[00:31:14] Anita shares what she’s learned about implicit mentoring and she gives advice on metrics we could use to look at or use to understand if we’re on the right track.
[00:34:44] Sean asks Anita if explicit mentoring is trying to help people be successful, and if it’s a perspective of helpfulness compared to a perspective of critique.
[00:37:26] Anita and Iftekhar share their thoughts on how they see implicit mentoring and creating appreciative communities fitting together.
[00:42:34] Find out where you can follow Anita and Iftekhar’s work online.
Value Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:44:03] Georg’s pick is he’s going out of town with his family for a wedding and getting to explore Washington D.C.
[00:44:46] Anita’s pick is she is super excited to go on a sabbatical.
[00:45:34] Iftekhar’s pick is his three-month old son and the sounds he makes which is the highlight of his day.
[00:46:01] Sean’s pick is celebrating Thanksgiving and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and football.
Quote:
[00:12:13] “You have to be participating if you need to get reviews back, and I don’t remember the exact statistic, but I think the largest proportion of people stop contributing because they did not get the feedback. The feedback was very delayed and by the time they got the feedback that issue or task was already done by someone else.”
Panelists:
Georg Link
Sean Goggins
Guests:
Anita Sarma
Iftekhar Ahmed
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Anita Sarma-Oregon State University
Anita Sarma Twitter
Anita Sarma email
Iftekhar Ahmed-University of California, Irvine
Iftekhar Ahmed Linkedin
Iftekhar Ahmed Twitter
Iftekhar Ahmed email
Special Guests: Anita Sarma and Iftekhar Ahmed.Support CHAOSScast

Nov 5, 2021 • 28min
Episode 47: Writing the GrimoireLab Tutorial through the Summer of Open Source Promotion Plan with Veerasamy Sevagen
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, we have as our guest Sevagen, who worked with us on the Summer of Open Source Promotion Plan. We find out more about this program and more specifically Sevagen’s project, which was to revamp the GrimoireLab Tutorial, as well as an explanation of two major difficulties they faced for the project. We also learn how the mentors helped, the current status of the tutorial, Sevagen’s future plans, and what he’s learned from this program. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues!
[00:02:15] Sevagen tells us a little bit about himself.
[00:03:06] Xiaoya fills us in on what the Summer of Open Source Promotion Plan is and Venu tells us about the goal of the project.
[00:06:01] We hear how Sevagen heard about the Summer of Open Source Promotion Plan and how he became involved and decided to work with CHAOSS?
[00:07:30] Sevagen explains what his initial understanding of the project was, the tutorial, and two major difficulties they faced.
[00:12:47] Xiaoya shares her experience in the process of reviewing the tutorial.
[00:14:29] We learn more about how mentors helped Sevagen.
[00:16:47] Georg asks what the current status is of the tutorial and if there are any next steps that are still to follow.
[00:19:13] Sevagen shares his future plans and what he wants to do, as well as what he’s learned being in this program.
[00:22:18] Find out where you follow Sevagen online.
Value Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:23:04] Georg’s pick is the book series, Famous Five by Enid Blyton.
[00:24:01] Xiaoya’s pick is the Disney animation, Tangled.
[00:24:27] Venu’s pick is OpenSearch.
[00:24:46] Sevagen’s pick is the amFOSS Club.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Venu Tekula
Xiaoya Xia
Guest:
Veerasamy Sevagen
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Summer 2021 of Open Source Promotion Plan
Veerasamy Sevagen Twitter
Veerasamy Sevagen Linkedin
sevagenv@gmail.com
CHAOSS GrimoireLab Tutorial-GitHub
Famous Five Collection by Enid Blyton
Tangled
OpenSearch
amFOSS
Special Guests: Veerasamy Sevagen, Venu Tekula, and Xiaoya Xia.Support CHAOSScast

Oct 22, 2021 • 36min
Episode 46: Social Science Theories with Erin Staples
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. Today, our guest is Erin Staples, who works as a Community Advocate at Orbit. She is with us to talk about social science theories and what we can learn from other communities. Erin tells us the importance of making sure your contributors feel valued, creating a very inclusive, mindful environment online, and she explains how we can learn a lot from how Fandom communities measure health. She goes in depth about behaviors at gatherings such as conferences and she shares advice in creating online spaces. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:02:00] Erin fills us in a little on her background and about what they do at Orbit with building a healthy community in the online space.
[00:03:38] How did Erin get so interested in this topic?
[00:05:33] For the social science conversation and Fandom, Erin talks about how she started to explore this huge topic. She tells us about a journal article she loves from Rachel Winter, Anastasia Salter, and Mel Stanfill who wrote about the “Communities of making: Exploring parallels between Fandom and open source.”
[00:09:02] Erin explains more about the behaviors and how they happen at gatherings and in the Fandom world.
[00:13:30] Georg brings up how open source is changing and has changed over the years with more organizations getting involved in creation of software and paying employees to be in these communities and Erin shares her thoughts about how this may be changing the dynamic. The Founder of Linux, Linus Torvalds, comes up in conversation as well.
[00:19:47] Venia tells us about a website called Budget Light Forum and Erin talks about “the medium is the message,” which is a quote from Marshall McLuhan and how this relates to the way we think about online spaces and how we transmit information.
[00:24:44] Georg brings up a great point if you want to understand the community you actually have to talk to the community members and ask them how that makes them feel, if they feel welcome and included, etc., and Erin and Venia share their thoughts on this.
[00:28:11] As more people are working online, maintainer burnout in open source is discussed, which existed before COVID, with pressure to maintain the quality of code and for being responsive and they’re not feeling appreciated.
[00:30:41] Erin talks about some action steps to creating online spaces and shares an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
[00:32:04] Find out where you can follow Erin online.
Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:32:46] Georg’s pick is re-reading the Eragon series in English.
[00:33:38] Venia’s pick is a book called Systematic Methods for Analyzing Culture: A Practical Guide.
[00:34:22] Erin’s pick is a book called A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Venia Logan
Guest:
Erin Staples
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Erin Staples Twitter
Erin Staples Website
Erin Staples Linkedin
Orbit
Fandom
Communities of making: Exploring parallels between fandom and open source by Rachel Winter, Anastasia Salter, and Mel Stanfill
Fans, at their core, are producers. What does this tell us about the ethics of fan labor?- Fandom Communties 002
Budget Light Forum
Become a Tea Duellist By Austin Sirkin (Steampunk R&D)
Herbert Marshall McLuhan (Wikipedia)
Margaret Mead (Wikipedia)
Dunning-Kruger effect (Psychology Today)
Ted 2016: Linux founder not a ‘people person’ By Jane Wakefield (BBC News)
Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off (Hacker News)
The Inheritance Cycle Series 4 Book Collection Eragon, Eldestk, Brisngr Box set by Christoper Paolini
Systematic Methods for Analyzing Culture: A Practical Guide by H.J. François
Dengah II, Jeffrey Snodgrass, Evan R. Polzer, William Cody Nixon
A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences by Shannon Mattern
The Sims: A Retrospective, A Participatory Culture 14 Years On by Ludovica Price (Intensive: Cult Media Review)
Special Guest: Erin Staples.Support CHAOSScast

Oct 8, 2021 • 51min
Episode 45: Fireside Chat: Metrics Strategy with Daniel, Sean, and Venia
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen. On today’s episode, we are discussing the pitfalls of metrics since there are a lot of things that can go wrong when implementing your metrics from getting over the feeling of being lost in the data. Also, we’ll be talking about a variety of different communities from very small all the way to larger ones. Daniel and Sean share some frameworks they have found work really well for building and deciding metrics, and how metrics are assessed to make sure whether or not they are still relevant. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:02:43] The conversation starts by talking about what goes wrong when people start to build a lot of metrics, and what are some pitfalls or issues that we can maybe solve later.
[00:08:19] Daniel and Sean talk about the concept of commit and give a use case example.
[00:11:42] Venia brings up a common issue they tend to have following with gamification is not just the concerted effort to gamify the analytics and the stacks the second they become public and Daniel and Sean expand on that.
[00:17:55] Daniel and Sean share some frameworks that they have found work really well for building and deciding metrics, for building policies that ensure that those occur, and a good framework for benchmarking over time so that you can measure and change your metric strategy as you communities grow.
[00:23:00] The topic of goals is expanded on by Venia, and she talks about recognizing that sometimes simple is better and she mentions what goals you want to consider.
[00:28:25] We’re talking about the “M” in the GQM (goal, question, metric) process and Sean and Daniel give us their recommendations on how you go about based on one specific question, picking out a suite of metrics that might explain that, and if is there one specific key performance indicator and a few descriptors or if you just select three main metrics.
[00:33:21] Venia wonders how we navigate and start that conversation to wrap in the organizational aspects in the course of your metrics building journey.
[00:39:09] We learn how are metrics are checked to make sure that the metrics makes sense and the ways they are they assessed whether or not they are still relevant.
Adds (Picks) of the week:
[00:45:29] Daniel’s pick is a book called, The Culture Map, Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures by Erin Meyer.
[00:46:49] Sean’s pick is a book called, Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak by Travis Sawchik.
[00:48:54] Venia’s pick is building a small, intimate community of learning and creating her own information diet book club.
Panelists:
Venia Logan
Sean Goggins
Daniel Izquierdo
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Bitergia
The Culture Map- Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures by Erin Meyer
Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak by Travis Sawchik
Support CHAOSScast

Sep 24, 2021 • 35min
Episode 44: GSOC: M.A.R.S. Project - Metrics Automated Release System with Yash and Ritik
Hello and welcome to CHAOSScast Community podcast, where we share use cases and experiences with measuring and improving open source community health. Elevating conversations about metrics, analytics, and software from the Community Health Analytics Open Source Software, or short CHAOSS Project, to wherever you like to listen.
Today, we have with us Yash and Ritik, who are two students that worked with us this summer with the Google Summer of Code 2021, on automating the CHAOSS Metric Release. We are going to discuss the CHAOSS M.A.R.S. Project and learn all about what it is and what problem it solves. They also go in depth about the process of releasing the metrics, as well as how they went about doing the Translations of CHAOSS metrics. Yash and Ritik also share what their favorite part of the experience was participating in Google Summer of Code in the CHAOSS Project. Download this episode now to find out much more, and don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
[00:02:13] Yash and Ritik tell us a little bit about themselves and what they’re doing outside and within CHAOSS. We also learn how they heard about the CHAOSS project and how they got interested in the Google Summer of Code program.
[00:05:10] Find out more about the M.A.R.S. (Metrics Automated Release System) Project and what the connection was with the Google Summer of Code.
[00:08:43] Ritik goes into detail how they solve the problem with M.A.R.S., how it works, and the components involved, which now, it’s as simple as a click of a button! Ritik and Yash also tells us how they had to consider the work of the community and how the working groups within those repositories worked and the structures they had to follow, as well as the connection and technical components with the M.A.R.S. Project.
[00:15:16] Georg talks about the goals of Google Summer of Code, one of which is to bring in people to open source communities and show them the way this works. He talks about the strengths that Ritik and Yash had and why they were selected as students.
[00:16:30] Ritik and Yash let us know if anything has changed for them in terms of how they think about open source engagement.
[00:19:04] What are Ritik and Yash’s future plans?
[00:20:52] Kevin brings up a point about through the M.A.R.S. Project and how the work helped define the process with translating the metrics into different languages. Matt and Yash share some thoughts on this as well.
[00:22:27] Georg tells us about the community handbook you can look at if you’re interested in the process, and the CHAOSS Metric Quality Checklist as well. Yash tells us how this checklist came about, the hurdles along the way, and what he’s learned.
[00:26:10] Ritik and Yash tell us their favorite part about the Google Summer of Code experience in the CHAOSS Project.
[00:29:18] Find out where you can follow Yash and Ritik online.
Value Adds of the week:
[00:30:06] Georg’s pick is bark.us.
[00:31:38] Kevin’s pick is listening to music.
[00:32:31] Matt’s pick is helping with his son’s college recruiting trips.
[00:33:12] Yash’s pick is to enjoy your work and take breaks!
[00:33:52] Ritik’s pick is Snooker tricks.
Panelists:
Georg Link
Matt Germonprez
Kevin Lumbard
Guests:
Yash Prakash
Ritik Malik
Sponsor:
SustainOSS
Links:
CHAOSS
CHAOSS Project Twitter
CHAOSScast Podcast
podcast@chaoss.community
Yash Prakash Linkedin
Ritik Malik Linkedin
Ritik Malik Blog
CHAOSS M.A.R.S. (Metrics Automated Release System)
CHAOSS Community Handbook-Translation
CHAOSS Metric Quality Checklist-GitHub
bark
Snooker
Special Guests: Kevin Lumbard, Ritik Malik, and Yash Prakash.Support CHAOSScast