Open Source Summit North America 2018

One facet of successful movement building is embracing a multi-generational community. The good news is that there is no age requirement for using, promoting and contributing to free software. The bad news is that we aren’t always doing a great job of facilitating a diverse, inter-generational movement. Using examples from other movements and inter-generational communities, we’ll identify tactics that aren’t being used to build the free software community and see what we can collectively port over. We plan to inspire the audience to find ways to recruit and retain young people, inspire older people to participate, and maintain an unbroken thread of free software conservatorship.

Then we'll expand the conversation to include gender issues and whether the FOSS community is effectively taking advantage of talents outside the software field. Are ‘bros’ and trolls really driving women away? Are non-programmers with skills important to the open source cause made to feel welcome and valuable? How can we better communicate what's special about open source, to pull a wider variety of people into our movement? Let’s celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Open Source Initiative by getting your input and discussing this as a group!