Kickstarting an Open Source Culture: A Guide for Mentors

Many companies are understanding the value of having open source contributors and maintainers within their ranks. Growing that open source culture internally is not quite as easy as simply hiring developers to “work on open source” and pointing them at a GitHub repository. Martin and Phil both became open source contributors and, ultimately, maintainers in the past decade with the support of company efforts to increase contributors. They both learned a lot of open source lessons along the way and are taking that knowledge into leadership and specific mentoring roles at IBM and AWS today.

In this talk, Martin and Phil will provide guidance for both employees and technical leaders who are looking to invest in growing an open source culture where they work. We’ll help detail the ways that open source investment is valuable both for the company and for the employee’s own vitality and career advancement. We’ll share how our own open source journeys have unlocked career opportunities that may have been unavailable to us before, and how we are investing in others through various programs and career mentoring at our respective companies today.