Embracing your weird: Community Building through Fun & Play
329 | Thu 01 Aug 4:30 p.m.–5:15 p.m.
Presented by
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Tom Callaway, "spot" to his friends, has been part of FOSS communities since he was in high school. He skipped his junior year "graduation" to attend a local Linux conference, and never looked back. He spent 19 years at Red Hat, before joining Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of their Open Source Standards and Marketing team. He's forgotten more about FOSS licensing than many lawyers will ever know, and believes in the power of community over code.
In his non-existent spare time, he enjoys traveling, games, puzzles, comics, hockey, blue, 3d printing, accidental time loops, traveling, games, and puzzles.
Abstract
I believe that the community that plays together, stays together. It sounds cliche (and it is), but the first rule of community building is to remember that communities are made of people, not code. Over the last 15 years, I've been experimenting with creating opportunities for the communities that I am a part participated in to play and have fun, at first subconsciously, but later, mindfully and intentionally. In this talk, I will share some of the ideas I have tried, along with some efforts that I have seen done in other communities. I hope to try to convince you to invest in creating opportunities for your communities to connect as people through laughter and play, and critically, and how that can help in growing the size, resiliency, and sustainability of open source communities.
I believe that the community that plays together, stays together. It sounds cliche (and it is), but the first rule of community building is to remember that communities are made of people, not code. Over the last 15 years, I've been experimenting with creating opportunities for the communities that I am a part participated in to play and have fun, at first subconsciously, but later, mindfully and intentionally. In this talk, I will share some of the ideas I have tried, along with some efforts that I have seen done in other communities. I hope to try to convince you to invest in creating opportunities for your communities to connect as people through laughter and play, and critically, and how that can help in growing the size, resiliency, and sustainability of open source communities.