The speaker will share his journey of building, growing, and maintaining a project used by hundreds of people worldwide.
Speaker
James Read
Agenda
Please note earlier timings:
5:30pm - Refreshments and networking (at venue)
5:55pm - Zoom meeting starts
6:00pm - Start
7:00pm - Questions and answers
8:00pm - End
Synopsis
The Open Source ecosystem is vast—ranging from massive projects like the Linux kernel and Kubernetes to critical single-maintainer projects like cURL. Join this session to learn what it's like to "learn as you go" from a developer of a mid-sized Open Source project (OliveTin (https://olivetin.app)).
I'll share my journey of building, growing, and maintaining a project used by hundreds of people worldwide for many weird and wonderful things. What started as a personal tool evolved into a project supporting diverse use cases, forcing me to navigate AI-slop, marketing, support, documentation, and other less obvious challenges of Open Source maintenance.
About the speaker
James Read has been passionate about the Open Source ecosystem for over 25 years, and is outspoken about the value of self-hosting, homelabs, and using open source technology. He has had success building open source projects, ranging from small apps used by a few people to OliveTin, which has 3,800 stars and many global users.
He has participated in larger projects and is a member of several tech communities. Learn more at jread.com (https://jread.com). Outside of open source, he is a 24/7 Dad and a 9-5 Senior Principal Solutions Architect at Red Hat looking after Microsoft across EMEA (Linux, OpenShift, and Ansible).
He volunteers as a Scout Leader and in the school PTA.
Our events are for adults aged 16 years and over.
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Photography: by attending this event, you may be photographed or filmed. Please speak to a member of staff if you do not wish to be included.
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This event is brought to you by: Kent branch
Supported by: Dorset branch and Hampshire branch
