In 2019, I accidentally stumbled into the world of open source, and little did I know where this journey would take me. I started as an event planner for an open source conference and now I am program staff at COSCUP. What can a non-coder do in the open source field?
What a world it is! To have me spending weekend nights at a house party hiding in a friends’ flats attending meetings.😅👩🏻💻
This project is the longest relationship I have ever had in my life.🤣
What keeps me going? How do I even explain open source to my friends? No one in my friend circle is in this field, and so they don’t understand why we need to promote the open culture.
I often find myself a bit shy and uncomfortable when I talk about this because it’s a bit too geeky and nerdy. Or the altruism embedded within itself makes me feel like such a fool.
The range of advocacy for open source is quite broad. This can include progressives who don’t even use Gmail. And someone like me, an open source promoter, endorse open tools and culture that are more universal, friendly and easy to access to share.This can make me feel like an imposter in the open source community.
The Working Culture
COSCUP and my program team walk their talk. They live and breathe the Open Source ethos. They prioritize autonomy and empowering leadership within the organization. This gave me enormous freedom and agility. Having such a liberating working space, I got wings to fly, colors to my canvas.
Trust is the fuel that keeps me going. My multiple engineer teammates will inevitably (unsolicited 😜) ground me with their meticulous approach. (It’s a love-hate relationship. 😂)During which there are many heated conflicts, misunderstandings, and tough talks.
Luckily, it’s just the right amount of push and pull to help us challenge each other and move the team forward. I am finally getting the gist of how to balance my very distinct backgrounds. I understand and know how to maximize my strengths while polishing my skills sets to better fit into the culture where the coders are the majority. We arrive at the place where we marry creativity with analytical rigor.
What is Open Source Design?
I’m not a designer, just an amateur open source promoter. So, I won’t define anything. Let’s find some definitions online. In a nutshell, designers in open source software want to make the design process and the final product more inclusive and public.
Why host this workshop?
We aim to empower designers to join the open source community. We want to break down barriers and dispel the myth that open source is only for developers. We want to dispel the myth that coding is the only valuable skill.
About the workshop
The workshop will focus on 3 existing OSS projects: Ceno, a censorship-free mobile browser; Session, a privacy-focused messenger; and Cofacts, a chatbot that fights misinformation.
During the workshop, we examined existing issues for these projects on GitHub. We used user research from our co-hosts at Superbloom. We focused on usability and product design challenges that designers would excel at.
At the end of the workshop, each group makes solutions to the issues they picked, which you can find here, and here.
Workshop Attendees
The workshop is for designers who want to make an impact. It is for those curious about contributing to the open source world.
COSCUP
Conference for Open Source Coders, Users & Promoters in Taipei, Taiwan
Superbloom
Make digital design more human-centric. Address socio-technical issues like privacy and internet freedom.
Until next time my beloved #opensourcedesign #workshop #project 🙂
