mastodon 4.7.3Open source strategy consultant, Governing Board member and WG chair at CHAOSS, OpenUK board, TODO Group Ambassador, runner, sci-fi, 3D printed designs, vegan, world traveler. Opinions my own.
The biggest thing that I wish people knew before starting their 1st tech job (probably most jobs) is that asking someone more experienced for the “answer” is what you should do as soon as you get stuck. It’s drilled into students that this is “cheating”, so this is a big change for new hires. The faster a new hire can unlearn that you’re not expected to do your own work without getting advice from others, the happier and more productive they will be in a team environment.
I feel pretty great for turning 55 years old today! We’re spending the day in London doing some of my favorite things. So far, lunch at Mildred’s, a walk through Regents Park, and now at the British Library to relax for a bit before we go out later for cocktails and Ethiopian food. 😁🎂🎉
I’m already enjoying #fossbackstage in Berlin so far! I have a bunch of CHAOSS stickers and a few pairs of CHAOSS earrings, so find me if you want some! 😁 I’ll be around all day today and tomorrow. #fossback
@FOSSBackstage@floss.social is one of my favorite conferences, and again this year, I had an amazing experience. I saw interesting talks, caught up with friends, met new people, and still missed talking to a few people! As with most conferences in Europe, digital sovereignty was a hot topic, but there were also great talks on other subjects as well. A huge thank you to the organizers and volunteers who make the event happen! Here's my short post with a few reflections from the event. #fossback https://fastwonderblog.com/2026/03/18/reflections-from-foss-backstage-2026/
I've been taking some time off over the past 6 weeks and loving that I have time to focus on learning more about 3D print design. Today's achievement was learning some techniques to remove jagged bubbly spots on the curved bits underneath a shelf I designed for our new IKEA Nordli Headboard.
We’re enjoying drinks in the sun in the outdoor garden at the pub on this 3 day bank holiday weekend. I know that talking about the weather is a British pastime, but I just heard a couple of 4 or 5 year olds at the next table having a long conversation about the weather, so apparently they start this very young 🤣
The #monkigras captioning (Breeze Translate) does a brilliant job of correctly handling technical terms and accents! The only thing it’s struggled with is the name of this conference. So far, we’ve seen MonkeyGraha, MonkeyGrawer, Monkey gras (so close!), Monkey graph, and monkey gra. 😁
As planned, my time as the CHAOSS Director of Data Science has come to an end, but I’ll still be around the CHAOSS community as a board member and Working Group lead. I’ll be taking April and most of May off before transitioning into open source strategy consulting starting in June. For more info: https://fastwonderblog.com/2026/03/31/transitions/
I enjoyed hanging out with the folks from CURIOSS who invited me to join them as part of their Deep Dive series where I talked about demonstrating the value of open source efforts. This is the first time I've given this talk focused on the university / academic context, which is a bit different from how we think about OSPO value in corporate environments. The slides and video are available.
https://fastwonderblog.com/2026/04/07/curioss-demonstrating-open-source-value/
