foreign
[Music]
welcome back everyone it's my very great
pleasure now to introduce to you all
Donna Benjamin a passionate advocate of
free and open source software over the
last two decades they've seen how open
agile hybrid and distributed ways of
working thinking and organizing human
Collective Endeavor have literally
changed everything in today's talk Donna
will explore these ideas and how we
might continue to pursue positive open
and inclusive change for the future
please welcome Donna thank you Fiona
[Applause]
I would like to acknowledge the
traditional custodians of the land on
which we live and just
take a Beat
feel
deep time
but we're all here now so let's move on
if you have a device handy please feel
free and don't if you don't want to grab
that QR code and and it will take you
straight there or go to slido.com and
enter in that number I'll have a little
bit of audience participation and a
little bit of audience feedback so
um
oh
what I want to do before I get into it
is of the three talks that you could be
in right now
why this one
and what do you hope to get out of it
today
why did you come to my talk and what are
you hoping to get out of it today now
this is not a test of you this is just
to give me a bit of a sense of of what's
going on it also I apologize in advance
if I totally fail to meet your
expectations
which is highly likely so this is about
expectation management please lower them
no no not low enough lower
a little bit lower
okay good all right we're all good so
yeah just feel free to you know jump in
there put in a few thoughts or
completely ignore it you are free agents
so with that
um
I made this promise to the conference
and to you about what I was going to
talk about today my title open agile
hybrid and distributed and that's the
abstract that I wrote
and then I got accepted and went um yeah
so let's see where we end up right
we live in Revolutionary times that's
the assertion that I made but what do we
mean by Revolution I don't want you to
think about the nasty ones like where
people
lost their heads don't think about that
think about
um scientific revolutions and how
knowledge has changed I found this great
article by this chap called Thornton May
who's apparently a futurist always an
interesting term but I.T and the forever
Revolution that actually the world of
technology is in constant change and
constantly having an impact right so I
think that was interesting but also just
understanding Revolution and not just
the kind of big bit that kind of makes
news headlines or the history books but
the before
and more importantly the after what
happens after a revolution when
everything has changed and we're living
in a New Normal a phrase We may have
heard a little
too often of late
so we live in Revolutionary times
what does revolution mean and is that do
we really so this is more about
questions than answers so a few
different things to think about that I
like this radical idealism
and its tragic consequences hmm
so when we started our tools will play
things
Hobbies
again an assertion that I made in my
abstract so hopefully you managed to get
into
slido and now I'd like you to join the
quiz so I just want to test a couple of
those ideas in that assertion oh that's
gone one too far
one too far where did it go
all right everything goes heavily okay
people hello great so what were our
tools I'm missing one of my questions
here
oh well well we're our tools say when
when we started our tools we'll play
Things Hobbies what were our tools
give you a moment
I'll get a sign I'll kind of Intuit a
sign from the audience when a majority
of you have completed the task
people still mostly heads down or
they're Tweeting or they're going this
is rubbish why am I here
laughs
all right let's see are we ready is
anyone like no no I'm not done
all right okay
oh I must be going in the wrong
direction let's try that again
up
Gremlins
no it's not giving me the answers all
right fine I'm just gonna continue on so
when we started our tools we'll play
things and hobbies and what we missed I
the first question I had was well when
did we start we'll do this by hand I
said was it 1983
was it 1998
or was it one and a half million years
ago
or D all of the above
medieval I mean pineapple slime becoming
uh what we are today love it to repeat
for the for the camp for the live stream
and the recording it wasn't just play
things it was when we crawled out of the
midi out of our medie evil not many
Prime Evil Prime Evil slime yes lovely
okay so yes when did we start well
probably when we became human
but with open source
there's this idea of The Accidental
revolutionary of Linus Torvalds and he
named his book
just for fun
so there was this sense of
experimentation and fun and just kind of
learning and figuring things out at the
start but we've moved on and now
okay
oh
so
this idea of fun
how and why was it fun what was fun
about it
who was it fun for
was it fun for everyone was it equally
fun for everyone
so this idea of Open Source and like
lennis's kind of Almost Famous words
when he released it is that you know
this won't be big and famous or anything
it's just a hobby it's just for fun as
his book was titled
but it was it was the seed that you know
that that was planted which has grown
into something which consists stay in
conferences like this this week but
conferences like this all around the
world
and that was sustained even when things
got difficult and we couldn't meet in
person you know there were online
versions so a seed was planted which
created this this thing which has led to
everything open which we've been talking
about this week
give me some thoughts how and why was it
fun
always connected
and the linkages are so clear beautiful
Kat has said we learn through play and
the linkages
and the linkages are clear between play
and fun although not always nice yes yes
we learn
yes
yes so working in like Enterprise kind
of set up
um Linux and open source or fast was
just kind of fun in the sense of this is
something I did after hours and it was
slightly subversive
slightly subversive I like that
especially in the context of we live in
Revolutionary times
okay thank you
so from fun to fundamental
infrastructure our tools open source now
Powers the planet it is it has become
kind of almost ubiquitous
and with that comes a level of
responsibility that perhaps
we didn't necessarily sign up for at the
beginning when we released some code
into the commons for people to use
so I started I got these four words in
my title open is the first one and we've
been at a conference or well not most of
the week called Everything open this is
from you know this is from the free
software project talking about the
different kinds of open the the contrast
with free software non-free software
released private software but open
source is probably you know one of the
the kind of fundamental opens in
everything open but we've heard about
others this week and our lovely keynote
yesterday from Seb Chaney had this slide
up and I thought I've gotta I've got to
add that in open collections open
curation open source
one of the other opens and I just kind
of trolled the program trying to kind of
summarize some of the different opens
we've been talking about
um over the past three days they were
some that I could clearly see but are
there others I want to you know shout
out are there other opens that we've
talked about we've heard about we've
learned about we've puzzled over
open Hardware big one Monday there was a
whole whole kind of stream a whole
activity about open Hardware
any others
it's one that I haven't heard about but
I've heard about in other context of
Open Leadership and how that differs
from just leadership and I think that
that little phrase I just used how that
differs
how do any of these differ from the
thing without open in front in some
cases
open is becoming the default in others
it's still woof like cats just spoken
about with open education resources and
how difficult it is for some of the
people in the academic space to accept
and understand
what open means and what open means for
them I think it's really interesting
I'm so delighted by you know when this
conference was announced oh yeah
everything open okay let's go let's rock
so yeah open thinking about that from
open I want to move into agile and the
agile Manifesto coming back to
Revolutions right the agile Manifesto
now hands up if you have heard of the
agile Manifesto and the bunch of blokes
who hung out in a ski chalet 22 years
ago and came up with this and put up the
world's worst website
manifesto.org has not changed but it's
really you know the individuals and
interactions working software customer
collaboration responding to change these
things have become
very common
and I like to say that I think about
open source
and agile methodology as the twin
Revolutions of technology and together
they have both had this massive impact
and if we compare what we think of as
the world of technology today with what
it was in say the 1970s and the 1980s
and the way software was created then
it's a bit different and I think that
these two kind of threads uh you know
have a
are responsible for that change maybe
that's a bold statement but it feels
right to me but get they have a lot in
common but the communities
are completely different like if you go
hang out at agile events they're real
different to open Saucy kinds of events
and yet so much of what we do and where
we you know the the worlds that we work
in are similar so I think it's I think
that's another interesting thread so
we've impacted each other but perhaps
indirectly rather than directly
so from agile
I wanted to acknowledge that it's also
become a really dirty word
used and abused and misused
a lot
ah a lot so I went back to the etymology
and this I always love this right you
get into it oh Old Norse says to drive
middle Irish to battle but the bit up
here it's probably too small for you to
read but to set in motion
and to keep in movement movement also
back to Revolution to keep in movement
and I think
also to keep in movement you have to
have some degree of sustainability you
can't be you can't Sprint all the time
maybe that's a bit of an anti-agile
right in some ways but to keep in
movement you have to have some element
of sustainability let's also think back
to that
picture of planet Earth and how we power
our planet and how some things are kind
of killing our planet like fossil fuel
driven climate change but how open
source open code and communities are
also tackling those kinds of challenges
anyway I digress agile the etymology
back to the what does that word really
mean
there's also
another meaning Maria the Doberman does
agility training it's just a very
physical thing about having you know
being agile in agility training and what
does that mean right this is only kind
of pull these words apart before we put
them back together
but there was a before the blokes at the
ski chalet came up with the agile
Manifesto
found this article some time back and I
absolutely loved it talks about the work
of sister Karina Kent talking about
um an art room and rules for art and
Octavia Butler these these women
um wrote about creativity collaboration
in ways that sort of very much echoed in
in the the values and the principles of
the agile Manifesto much further like
much further ago in the past
and there was this one line at the end
of the article they they talk about
opening doors
rather than selling keys
and I think that's one thing I talk
about agile being a bit of a dirty word
it's become this kind of
agile industrial complex
of Frameworks and certifications and
paying lots of money to people to get
get your tick
but there's something in it which goes
back further
in history and
is useful I think
so from that buzzword to the next
hybrid
my current employer and fabulous sponsor
of this conference talks about the open
hybrid cloud
what does that mean
I drive a hybrid car what one of them
it's actually that color too
I'm really interested in how we're going
to do hybrid events and hybrid workshops
you know talking about you know the
online versus the in person and that
kind of messy in-between this hybrid but
but and hybrid you know ways of working
we've got team members who are
my next word
distributed remote virtual I don't like
using the terms virtual or remote remote
makes it sound like they're far away and
something wrong with them and virtual
makes it sound like they're not real
but distributed I think is a good is a
good word to describe when we have
people who are
scattered through time and space whether
it's time zones whether it's geography
but they are distributed distributed is
also a word we've used in the Linux
Community well a version of distribution
distributions of Linux so this idea of
distributed is uh is one that I think is
also kind of becoming part of our new
normal
I'm not actually expecting any of you to
read all of those little words it was
kind of like a brain dump of stuff that
I was gathering together so open
agile hybrid and distributed
ways of working
I love this picture
telegraphists in Melbourne
in the olden days this very specific
time the olden days but ways of working
you know all of those four words right
they're some of the things that have
changed and part of the revolution is
we've kind of there were some people who
were have all you know have always
worked in a distributed way but then
there came everybody
through covert and lockdowns and
figuring out how to work together online
through time and space but also adopting
agile ways of working as opposed to
whatever it was that you were doing
before the waterfall or very
prescriptive here were plans that came
from on high like Moses's tablets and
now you go through iterations to
implement them you know the ways of
working is something that has also
changed that open
and agile have impacted
but not just ways of working
also ways of thinking
and I was a little bit inspired by
Edward de Bono with those four words and
using them as a provocation against each
other he has a thinking tool where he
introduces a random word in association
with whatever the topic of the day is
throw in a random word to just sort of
you know startle your your brain kind of
firing in a different way and it can
spark new ideas when you just introduce
a different
um a different word so that's part of
what Poe is and this idea of going
Beyond yes and no beyond the binary
what else and
but ways of thinking is also also
challenged by what open source has done
and what agile brought when it sort of
started to change the kind of dominant
way of doing things right so we have to
also interrogate the way we use our
brains
in our day-to-day work and not
necessarily go for the obvious answer
look for a second or third or fourth
answer that could help us move forward
so all of those things add up to
how we organize ourselves to
get stuff done
or
fancy way human Collective Endeavor gets
stuff done I think the open source
community and movement and
um and all the Ever all of the openings
that we've been talking about are an
example of human Collective Endeavor
right we do it together and that's what
makes it so successful
but it's not the only thing like that so
I wanted to kind of find a few other
examples of
human Collective Endeavor or getting
stuff done or changing the world
ending apartheid in South Africa
there is obviously a pretty famous kind
of figurehead for that but there was a
real Global effort to support that work
a recent one the United Nations has this
historic agreement on the law of the sea
and preserving the rain biodiversity in
international waters so much of the the
seas are you know associated with
particular countries like you know the
certain a certain distance away from our
shores as Australian Waters but in that
space in those in-betweens in the
International Space they've made this
historic agreement to treat it a bit
like Antarctica I think it's 30 percent
of international waters must now be
conservation zones it's huge
so much time and effort and goodness
knows how much bureaucracy
to get that done
human Collective endeavor
the Green Revolution in India
in the 60s 1960s
made a massive impact on on India and
their ability to to feed the you know
the growing population but not just feed
but go from a net importer to a net
exporter huge
but also huge negative impacts
they've lost entire native species of
food crops
um it's been you know the industrial
complex of of Agriculture has come in
and done away with the livelihoods of of
many farmers in India and there's been a
real downside so it's kind of like again
talk about revolutions and what came
before and what needed to change the
revolution but then
what comes afterwards
again the word hybrid different context
here
hybrids also the result of
two things coming together and then the
progeny not being able to have any
future right that sort of hybrid's not
necessarily always
perhaps the positive buzzword that some
might want us to think of
also this is really stupid now but a
liger I think a lion and a tiger anyway
hybrids
and this was an example of a human
Collective Endeavor out of covert which
I just thought was fantastic open
Hardware collaboration the start of the
pandemic in Australia there was no you
know it was very hard to get
um
protective gear impossible in some cases
and some enterprising humans got
together and said how could we like make
some of this stuff and and did laser
cutting and design all this kind of
stuff and came up with this which was
really cheap and really fast to create
the rapid shield from space tank very
cool
and then all of that coming together
into ways of thinking ways of working
and the ways of organizing all that
effort right I wanted to call this out
because Rusty Russell you know the
founder of carlu a conference before the
conference before this
um talked about the two this he had his
role as the trivial patch monkey and all
these little patches that were going to
the Linux kernel but they were so
trivial that and and unimportant and low
priority that they they could get missed
so he said all right I'll gather them up
and get them into the kernel tell me if
I'm wrong here people who know but
anyway
um the thing I like about this is when
many people do one small thing those
minis add up to a whole lot of work
that contributes but also saves the
effort of the people doing the heavy
lifting and allows them to focus on what
only they can do
so I think why I wanted to bring this in
is we start to Think Through open agile
hybrid and distributed ways of
working thinking and organizing is that
there is a role for all of us think more
like bees and ants you know we can all
pick up a little piece
and add to it it doesn't have to be the
big
earth-changing thing from the start but
little things add up and and make a
difference
and I also asserted that this had
literally changed everything
and my partner said really Donna
okay maybe just metaphorically maybe it
hasn't changed everything
but not everything
is open
and not all change is good
and then we shared this on the socials
and I just went oh yeah
that tells a whole lot of stories of
bad stuff just
not very good things
and there's some books over on the left
about
what goes into the technology that we
use and its impacts
and its biases
I've always found the title ever since I
heard of algorithms of Oppression as a
very
um visceral kind of reaction to that
it's like oh yeah there's some that's a
good way of putting some nasty framing
up some of that nasty stuff
algorithmic Siege on our Humanity that
seems very dramatic but it kind of is
right
just saying the
Royal commission into Robo debt
I think that's sums that up pretty well
so not everything is open
and not all change is good
so
they're the threads that I was trying to
kind of pull together that
abstract at the start and this is where
I'm going to stop doing the work
and ask all of you to do some of the
work
let's examine some of these threads
or maybe these threads
or these threads
so get your devices again
and let's explore where and how these
threads intertwine so open
agile hybrid distributed ways of working
thinking and organizing right that I've
kind of set the scene for you to kind of
have a mess in your mind
about these things hopefully we will get
to from mess to really nice Celtic knots
instead of mess
so
bring up that
um
tool again
and hopefully this time nope back
hopefully this time it'll work
tell me if it's not
one participant typing okay good that's
a signal that's a signal so how do you
see the threads of open agile hybrid and
distributed intertwine and how am I
going for time
I'm good so I'm also going to just
encourage you to
and I don't don't get frightened
Talk Amongst yourselves
so you can go straight into just
answering the question but also huddle
like you know just turn around the
person next to you the person behind you
start saying some words God I'm going to
give you a couple of minutes and I'm
just gonna
hear the Zeitgeist of the room
no talking
typing
all typing
acceptance of things people places that
are different human behavior
you know I think I'm doing this by feel
I see you
do they intertwine am I like is this
just Madness on my part
like are they are these completely
disconnected random things or is there
commonality between these threads do
they intertwine do they interconnect how
do they impact each other
yeah
oh I mean it depends on its context you
put all of the words together and then
yes they correlate that because
they're disgust in a way that means
nothing
or agile or hybrid
yes nice
do a summary of that
um the context matters so all the words
coming together have an impact and
essentially make them a messy
intertwined Thing by saying them all
together looking at agile individually
or distributed individually don't
necessarily mean anything connected to
each other but when you put them in a
sentence together or in a context
together or in a workplace together or a
presentation or working online together
then your brain links all of the things
yeah the brain sort of does the magic
doesn't it when by just by putting two
things side by side it's going to try
and make a connection yeah thank you
it's like showing that behind the
curtain there yes
really nice all right
I'll give you just a minute more to
finish off if there's still kind of
fingers tapping and thumbs thumbing
thumbs thumbing sort of thing
agile is something of a subset of lean
Foss is terrific at aspects of leans
such as eliminating waste yes and doing
everything just in time
humans generally work better with
distinct rules instead of how they
naturally would it's an interesting
maker framework and we will follow it to
a certain extent I like the caveat built
in there but corporations will
definitely enforce it and sell
revolutions
nice
oh I like this
the thread made me made me think how all
our Tech a modern society still depends
on a lot of very old proven and basic
Technologies yes nice
oh this is great thank you please feel
free to keep going I am going to move on
though because we're going to run out of
time
um
I really
I really wanted to
spark some ideas and thinking and maybe
a little bit of
maybe a little bit of friction
right there's there's
a lot of assumption at something like
this that Tech is good
we keep hearing where it's not
but I think we also all have
privilege as Lindsay said this morning
to to do something about it when it's
not
and I like to think that you also have
agency
to embark on
doing good stuff
so I want to leave you with
a question
and it was in the abstract all along
how might we
not think about the problems and the
Badness and the not everything is open
and not all changes good but how might
we
continue to pursue
positive open and inclusive change how
might we ensure that the work we do
is a net
benefit to humanity and not doing bad
stuff and
making us cringe
how do we do that how might we how might
we engage in that I don't know
but I am
optimistic
well I'm more than optimistic I am
convinced that collectively
we have the skills the values
the capacity
to do it
and with that
I want to invoke
the great Jane Goodall primatologist
that's famous images of her working with
the gorillas
um and chimp no sorry chimpanzees I'm
going to read this I don't generally
like reading slides but you cannot get
through a single day without having an
impact on the world around you
what you do makes a difference
but here's the important bit you have to
decide
what kind of difference
you want to make
thank you
[Applause]
feel free to ping me if you want to but
we've also got a little bit of time if
you've got any com like not just
questions but if you've got any comments
if you want to say Donna you're a mad
woman what have you just put us through
for the last half an hour that's okay
too but like I said at the start I
wanted to kind of get a sense of why did
you come to this and I'm going to learn
from that and understand that and and
hopefully I manage to lower your
expectations at the start so that you're
not all really sad now
are there any questions I would be very
surprised if anybody in this room was
sad after having been so challenged and
engaged but are there questions and
comments and engagements and
provocations for Donna now
[Music]
um that was fantastic Donna thank you I
was really excited when I read this
abstract and reviewing it and
but expectations met and exceeded
fantastic thank you
um uh you mentioned like ways of
thinking and coming up with different
answers and continuing to try and think
of answers but I also think and this
presentation is a really good example of
this is coming up with different
questions yes framing right is also
about ways of thinking and applying
different people's perspectives to the
work you're doing or the problem you're
trying to solve is just as important if
not more so than just coming up with
different answers to the same old
question
yes and and what you've just said also
makes me think about how too often we
don't think enough about the problem
before we start to solve it and
sometimes we assume we have an answer or
a solution and some of my colleagues are
really good at like we've got the
solution to all your problems
didn't I shouldn't I was recording I
should be careful should be careful but
but do we actually understand the
problems that we're trying to tackle do
we spend enough time I think Einstein's
got a really famous kind of um quip
about you know spending you know you're
going to spend 95 of the time on the
problem or something before you try and
find the answer but I think like you say
you've got to ask more questions to
uncover what it is that we're actually
trying to solve and not go chasing a
solution to the wrong thing yeah thank
you you David nice one
Tatiana
and Fiona running with the mic
um I had a lawyer ask me this so and in
a way I quickly gave an answer but then
I really really thought about it
afterwards so I I'll just
so we were basically proposing a
solution to someone
you know and she said well in what way
is it better than a lawyer sitting down
with them and going through their
problem with them and then you know
giving them you know like an appropriate
kind of response and maybe a legal
remedy to go with it and my quick answer
was you know well you know nothing can
replace that individual human attention
you know but you can scale that with
technology but then I thought no maybe
there are other answers to this so I
would love to hear from you or from
anyone in the audience like what those
answers might be
wow so for the recording what's better
than individual human retention
for providing a technical solution
yeah good it's a good question I in some
ways I think
there it's not that it's better
um you know Tatiana and I were talking
um so I had a bit of insight into the
system that she's sort of talking about
and creating
um like uh creating an application an
app that can help people get some very
basic legal kind of
um guidance through various processes
and and stuff rather than having to call
a helpline to get that individual
attention right so that's the context
that I understand you're sort of
referring to there and I think it's like
is it better not necessarily but does it
free people to do other things
then yeah so it's not that it's it's
better for that person but it's maybe
giving them a quick response and saving
resources in in other ways so I think
that also speaks to the have we
understood the problem like if someone
said well how is that better than it's
like well is that the best question to
tease out what they're trying to you
know how they're trying to understand
what it is you're working with I think
that's a really interesting question yes
yeah please
um I was just thinking about this from
our context we get um people come to us
with uh uh I I want this technical
solution and maybe um we have to have
those one-on-one conversations and I'm
like but what are you actually trying to
achieve I get that you want a virtual
machine and you want 12 gig of RAM and
someone's told you that you need 100 Gig
of space but what are you actually
trying to do because maybe that's
technology is not the best solution for
you and just extrapolating out on what
you're thinking about with the lawyer
having the one-on-one I feel like the
growth and asking the questions and
discussion and conversation is the best
way of getting a response to things
because everybody has a different point
of view so I would challenge that better
than having the one-on-one with the
lawyer would be a community or a group
conversation where you're going to get
diverse views and diverse perspectives
and diverse information and knowledge
sets so that it opens up a conversation
so that maybe the information or the
problem that they're trying to solve
would be more well informed from
different people within the group as
opposed to one specialized lawyer in
this instance
um thank you yes
but extending from that is the that's
still a human resourcing it's bringing
together a community of people in the
same space at the same time and having
experts in that time and space it has
limitations whereas the technical
solution broadens the equity of
accessing that same information more
quickly maybe not as strongly or as
understood way but I think the equity
element is so important in that space
yes nice well said the equity like it's
again not better but is it is it you
know broadening access and giving more
people the ability to to to get the
benefit of that service or offering yeah
nice one
thank you Donna for you know what I feel
like you got the best slot of the
conference because this is like this
thread is just winding it all up and
bringing in so many different kinds of
open so I mean nice work with the
programming and
[Laughter]
so um also this is going to be a bit
more of a comment than a question
um or perhaps it's a reflection
um it it pinged in my mind when you
started that first question about when
did this start was it you know in the
70s or the 80s or way back in the
primordial soup or all of the above I
really like the olive the above part
because
um that's true like we're always
beginning we're always becoming and and
that actually is a um from my experience
is a thread in queer theory about like
identity is not static it it is always a
process of becoming and that's what I
think that we're we're doing here even
though we like to shy away from that
idea of reinvent let's not reinvent the
wheel
by putting attention into that sort of
that Center of where our values are you
know that that kind of pulling look at
attending to that gravity I think that
can be a really useful kind of magnet
around you know what our
what our attention orbits nice gravity
magnets and attention orbiting very nice
but not I I I it's not a question and a
comment but I I really I like the way
that you've kind of brought those
elements together because
you know too much of what we do at a
conference like this is is just a sort
of wind like a like the play school
Windows into a particular world
and I am I was kind of glad that I got
the last slot to be able to kind of draw
on
what I've seen through those windows
um yeah so no thank you I think that's
that's really nice thank you
well we are at time
um so I hope you will continue all of
these conversations over afternoon tea
but please join with me in thanking
Donna one more time
thank you
[Applause]