Update: my talk has been moved to 1.30pm on Friday 19th August 2016.

Just a quick note to let you know that I will be zooming my way on the reddest of red eyes to Pittsburgh, PA to speak at Abstractions next week.

I first heard about Abstractions some time ago and I was pretty stunned by the speaker roster which includes Jeffrey Zeldman, Richard Stallman, Mitchell Hashimoto, Larry Wall, and others.

I absolutely love events such as Abstractions. The team have clearly worked hard to put together a solid event with a great line-up, professional look and feel, great speaker relations, and more.

Building a Community Exoskeleton

I am going to delivering a talk on Friday at 4.20pm called Building a Community Exoskeleton. The abstract:

Community is at the core of all successful open source projects. The challenge is that building empowered, productive, and inclusive communities is complex work that lives in the connective tissue between technology and people. In this new presentation from Jono Bacon, he will share some insight into how you can build an exoskeleton that wraps around community members to help them to do great work, form meaningful relationships, and help each other to be successful. The presentation will delve into success stories in open source and elsewhere, the underlying behavioral principles we can tap into, infrastructure and workflow decisions, and how we get people through the door and involved in our projects. Bacon will also cover the risks and potholes you will want to delicately swerve around. If you are running an existing project or company, or starting something new, be sure to get along to this presentation, all delivered in Bacon’s trademark loose and amusing style.

I am hoping I will get an opportunity to see many of you there (details of how to attend are here), and I want to offer a huge thanks to the Abstractions team for their kindness, hospitality, and service. I am looking forward to getting out there!