Learn about open source project health metrics and tools used by open source projects, communities, and engineering teams to track and analyze their community work. This conference will provide a venue for discussing open source project health, CHAOSS updates, use cases, and hands-on workshops for developers, community managers, project managers, and anyone interested in measuring open source project health. We will also share insights from the CHAOSS working groups on Diversity and Inclusion, Evolution, Risk, Value, and Common Metrics.

chaoss.community/chaosscon-2020-eu/

This is my second time attending CHAOSScon. I attended on behalf of RIT LibreCorps to represent our engagement with the UNICEF Office of Innovation and the Innovation Fund. For CHAOSScon EU 2020, I arrived hoping to learn more about effective metric collection strategies for open source communities and also get a deeper understanding of the technology behind GrimoireLab.

Sessions: Play-by-play 🔗

Event reports take many forms. My form is an expanded version of my session notes along with key takeaways. Said another way, my event report is biased towards what is interesting to me. You can also skim the headings to find what interests you.

Also, I live-tweeted several sessions of CHAOSScon EU 2020, so some sections include tweet excerpts with pictures.

Ethics: What You Know & What You Don’t Know 🔗

Metrics give us a lot of insight into what’s going on with our projects – but only if we have enough context. The catch is that personal biases and pre-conceptions are extremely hard to filter for so no one person can see everything. Those gaps means that even the most well-meaning of us could end up doing more harm than good. In this talk, I’ll share a few examples of the ways human brains make assumptions, some of our typical blind spots and how incomplete data can cause harm when deployed without any checks. For folks who collect, analyze and ultimately make mission critical decisions with metrics, the challenge is to constantly maintain a bit of healthy skepticism of what the numbers seem to be telling us.

Deb Nicholson

Deb’s session was a great opener to a day focused on metrics and automated reporting. Her talk underscored unconscious bias and the ways poorly-designed metrics fail us. We should take an active approach to questioning our perspectives and take suggestions with grace.

During Q&A, my colleague Mike asked for advice on pushing back on management when they ask for bad metrics. Deb suggested a clever strategy to respond in these situations:

1. Provide the metric asked for
2. Provide a metric that contradicts what was asked for
3. Provide the metric they should have asked for

Heat, Light, and Love: Telling Twitter’s Open Source Program Office’s Story 🔗

Making it simple to trust, ship, and grow open source at Twitter demanded visibility into contribution trends that were not readily available. Twitter’s open source program office and the Augur project collaborated with CHAOSS using student interns from Google’s Summer of Code, Twitter’s intern program and the University of Missouri. First, this talk describes Twitter’s engaging interface design and its fit to the needs of Open Source stakeholders within Twitter, but also outside the open source program office. Second, we describe how an open API and data collection tool, Augur, evolved in close collaboration with Twitter.

Sean Goggins & Remy DeCausemaker

This one inspired me. It represented a dream of mine for many open source communities. Sean and Remy presented on three years of building an automated metrics visualization site with GrimoireLab and Augur. The visualization was powerful to communicate the value of open source engagement, participation, and investment to internal and external stakeholders.

The work was based on a philosophy familiar to me from working with Remy years ago in the Fedora Project community:

If we are speaking in metaphors, one way to extend Remy’s “light” metaphor is tying in a theatrical concept: stage lights and backstage lights.

Stage lights are the metrics and insights to present out to the world. They are front and center! These insights validate your mission to an external audience.

Backstage lights are for an internal audience. These metrics and insights illuminate the inside of an organization and build understanding of who and what is there. These are useful to validate work and efforts to funders, or perhaps your CFO.

This talk served as inspiration for something I hope to explore later in 2020.

Measuring Culture 🔗

They say you can’t be certain of anything unless it can be measured – so what about culture? We know it exists and can be passed on to others, so there must be a way to measure it. Using Apache Kibble we attempt to look for cultural indicators at the Apache Software Foundation, set a cultural benchmark then match real Apache projects against it. In theory we would expect a perfect match but as the results show, culture isn’t that simple.

Sharan Foga

Sharan introduced five factors to measure culture: bus factor, contributor experience, contributor retention, sentiment analysis, and key phrase extraction.

Sharan defined culture as what we believe and what we do. So, she introduced five indicators for open source communities to measure culture. These came from learnings at the Apache Software Foundation’s Kibble project:

• Pony (“bus”) factor:
  • “Committership”
  • Authorship
  • Meta factor (# of organizations involved)
• Contributor experience / contributor retention:
  • People who (re)joined
  • People who quit (why?)
  • People retained
  • Active contributors
  • Cross the above over time (e.g. # of months/years involved)
• Mood, or sentiment analysis: Look for these moods…
  • Trust
  • Surprise
  • Neutrality
  • Sadness
  • Positivity
  • Anger
  • Negativity
  • Joy
  • Anticipation
  • Disgust
  • Fear
• Key phrase analysis: Understand community jargon (e.g. if “+1” is used to indicate agreement)

I had two key takeaways. First, nothing matches completely, so don’t over-rely on one factor or metric. Second, identify your baseline indicators and iterate on those. For the above indicators, maybe these are specific to Apache projects. Maybe they apply to your projects too… or maybe they don’t!

Meet Cauldron! Your SaaS Software Development Analytics solution 🔗

Cauldron is a brand-new free open source SaaS able to analyze software development community and processes. It relies on CHAOSS GrimoireLab to collect and process data from different tools used in software development such as git, GitLab, GitHub and/or social platforms like Meetup, and Open Distro for ElasticSearch to store and to display the project data. The talk shows how Cauldron can be easily put into action to analyze the software projects that matter to the attendees, and to get some CHAOSS metrics about them.

Jose Manrique Lopez de la Fuente

I had no written notes other than “wow!”

Finally, Bitergia built a hosted GrimoireLab service, called Cauldron. Cauldron takes the pain out of hosting your own GrimoireLab infrastructure. It is in early alpha and does not support all the data sources available in GrimoireLab yet, but it is promising.

In the FOSS@MAGIC community, we want GrimoireLab to understand our open source community at the Rochester Institute of Technology, home of the first academic minor in free/open source. But as I go deeper, I realize GrimoireLab is very complex. Since my contract with RIT ends in a month, I want to leave something sustainable for my successors. Cauldron seems like a valid option.

I have some homework to do!

Language barriers for open source contributors 🔗

While open source development is common across the world, projects from countries outside North America and Europe, such as China, have difficulties attracting international contributors. One major reason for this is language differences. The presentation provides an overview of the diversity of non-native English speakers in different open source ecosystems. Furthermore, we will provide results about whether or not those contributors face a language barrier when contributing to open source projects. The presentation concludes with a discussion on how we can create metrics to assess the spoken language diversity in open source communities and how to include those people in the community more easily.

Isabella Vieira Ferreira

Fascinating work from @isaferreira_57 on language barrier in #opensource. #choasscon

Contributing + participating in a project operating in a language (technical too!) that's not one's first always require more effort– a useful reminder to be kind and empathetic 💖💖 https://t.co/3cJ6qWWSsH

— Emmy Tsang (@emmy_ft) January 31, 2020

Isabella’s talk was insightful and challenged my unconscious bias. An interesting insight from two case studies was translators did not transition over time to software development contributions.

I believe a bias exists in open source projects with active localization communities. I have seen project leaders invest in localization efforts as one way to bring new people into a community. While it does bring new people in, there is a subtle implication that “bringing new people in” means bringing software contributions. That’s not always the case. Instead, the value of translation work needs to be quantified beyond just software contributions.

This is especially true for supporting grassroots advocacy communities. Localization may not build your developer community, but it can support stronger local communities in regions where English is not the first language.

Metrics are more than the sum of their parts 🔗

We are in a state of Community building that maps success to metrics like lines of code and GitHub stars. I would like us to explore where these metrics fall short on capturing the most significant value of a community, and how we can use other metrics to show the much larger impact Community organizations like Developer Relations (DevRel) can have on a business. This improved process begins with mapping value to business need, pairing it with a community need, and back to the business opportunities. There will be practical advice on how to pitch and position Community, whether you’re a Community Manager, Developer Advocate, or other Developer Relations professional.

Matt Broberg

Matt’s CHAOSScon EU 2020 session pitched strategy on communicating the value of developer relations to our organizations. He covered a lot of material and left me many thoughts to reflect on. I look forward to seeing the video recording of this talk to reflect further on integrating his ideas into my day-to-day. The themes of Matt’s talk struck a chord with me for challenging advocacy work ahead for me in 2020.

Emerging Tech Open-Source Scoring System (ETOSS) 🔗

This is a framework used by the UNICEF Innovation Fund, to evaluate and track the strategic position and growth potential of the early stage startups in its portfolio. The focus is on startups building open source frontier tech: Blockchain, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality. It classifies the startups into four quadrants, based on two dimensions: the software developed (technology), and the financial sustainability of the project (business sustainability).

Cecilia Chapiro & Justin Wheeler

.@jflory7: The UNICEF tech KPIs are quite similar to @CHAOSSproj metrics - there are also business sustainability metric to measure, placing organisations / tech projects on a sustainable and tech scale... #CHAOSScon pic.twitter.com/e3M440FMS4

— yo yehudi stays away from humans! 🏳️‍🌈 (@yoyehudi) January 31, 2020

Interested in getting involved? Contact details for @jflory7 and @ceciliachapiro here! #CHAOSScon pic.twitter.com/jMsfiCK9Rg

— yo yehudi stays away from humans! 🏳️‍🌈 (@yoyehudi) January 31, 2020

@jflory7 thanks for the great talk, great to hear @UNICEFinnovate is actively funding OSS for the greater-good! #CHAOSScon pic.twitter.com/g81koSI4Ov

— Farbod Saraf (@farbodsaraf) January 31, 2020

#opensource rubric mentioned by @jflory7 at #CHAOSScon https://t.co/U2pIZsgrMz

It helped me evaluate the last proposal we received at @eLifeInnovation 🙌🙌

— Emmy Tsang (@emmy_ft) January 31, 2020

Hey, it’s me!

My colleague Cecilia Chapiro proposed a session for CHAOSScon EU 2020 on how the UNICEF Innovation Fund evaluates the health and success of funded open source projects. However, due to travel complications, she was unable to attend. I presented her slides and work on her behalf at CHAOSScon EU 2020.

Many people were excited, if not also surprised, to hear that UNICEF funds humanitarian open source. In Cecilia’s evaluation framework, there are two key areas: business sustainability indicators and technology indicators. There were good questions about how UNICEF measures on business sustainability. I hope to further explore GrimoireLab/Cauldron to better automate how we measure sustainability with industry-standard tools from the open source ecosystem.

I also gave a shout-out to RIT LibreCorps and the resources we maintain to help UNICEF and the Innovation Fund cohorts build and support sustainable open source projects.

Open and Reproducible Research with Community-driven Research Software Metrics 🔗

What do artificial neural networks, images of the black hole, and SETI@home all have in common? They all trace their roots to research software. In this session, we hope to explore metrics and best practices for evaluating open research software. Research software engineers are evaluated largely based on the numbers of publications and citations. However, metrics based on the number of publications encourage re-creating ‘new’ things or re-implementations instead of reuse, and there are huge variations in existing practices to cite software, meaning software isn’t always cited or citations aren’t always captured. Better metrics that reflect the health of research software is crucial to avoid gamification, incentivizing research software engineers to follow best software development practices by recognizing and rewarding their effort appropriately, and ultimately advancing open science and improving the reproducibility of research.

Yo Yehudi

Yo teamed up with Emmy Tsang and Mateusz Kuzak to deliver this session. I appreciated the audience participation in the second half, which was a creative idea for a session later in the day. It helped revive the conference energy!

Yo and the team captured excellent notes from their time across Brussels, so look there for a deeper dive if this is interesting to you.

Diversity & Inclusion Badging Program 🔗

Within IT, open source software exhibits some of the worst D&I. The open source survey run by GitHub states that only 3% of contributors to open source software are female (GitHub, 2017). While open source has made strides in some aspects of D&I, such as event inclusivity (Irwin, 2017) and community engagement to support organizational diversity (Alexander, 2019), work remains. The proposed is aimed at contributing to this positive growth through the development of a D&I badging system. In open source, badges are available for community leaders to publicly display, providing a way for projects to signal their attention to such things as community health and software security. We can draw from this badging work to improve D&I in open source. In this talk, I will discuss complexities associated with D&I metrics and propose a D&I badging system that provides open source communities the ability to make diversity and inclusion within open source projects more transparent.

Matt Germonprez

First, I must pay my full respect and gratitude to Matt for digging into this topic. It is hard. It is tricky. Nobody I know of is working on this. So, my feedback comes from a place of love because this is an important topic to me too, and I appreciate Matt’s work! Thank you Matt and the CHAOSS D&I Working Group.

Critique: Is a badging system how to do this? 🔗

Matt presented a strategy to incentivize organizations and projects to follow best practices for diversity and inclusion (D&I) through a badging system. Organizations embed a badge on their project website or README when following best practices. This provides an easy way for new contributors to understand if a project community is inclusive and values equality before contributing. Since best practices are defined not by a single organization, there is a way to measure if an organization is living up to their commitment to D&I.

However, a badging system seems like a difficult way to practically measure an organization’s commitment to D&I. There is a risk for manipulating trust of the system at the expense of open source novices. Novices have the least context and direct experience to see through an unauthentic commitment. Also, ongoing compliance seems difficult to enforce over time with a badging system. Maybe initially an organization or project is “checked off” for D&I best practices. But if project leadership or management changes, community culture can also shift. How do you account for change?

Instead of badges, perhaps a central, inter-organizational certification body makes more sense to achieve this goal. A certification body acts as a central authority for validating accountability. They also have an authority to assign (or revoke) public recognition of organizations and projects with authentic, ongoing commitments to diversity and inclusion.

There is potential here, but I don’t think gamifying D&I best practices with a badging system is the way. We need a long-term, human-centered process in evaluating D&I. We need to build in human-centered evaluation as a “feature” to truly hold projects accountable to their commitments.

Addendum: Events and inclusivity 🔗

There are a few things I’m genuinely proud to have contributed to open source. Most of them aren’t code. International candy swaps at conferences are one of those things.

Time for the international candy swap! There are so many things to love about #DevConf_CZ but the geographic diversity of attendees might be my favorite part. Thank you for organizing, @jonatoni & @jflory7! pic.twitter.com/rU1ETp5aTa

— Mary Thengvall (she/her); mary-grace.bsky.social (@mary_grace) January 25, 2020

DevConf CZ 2020 candy swap, mentioned in a previous blog post

Candy swaps are fun, informal events hosted during a conference. Attendees bring local candies, sweets, or snacks from their hometowns to the conference. For an hour or so, folks gather together to swap candies. Before sampling the sweets, everyone introduces themselves, where they are from, and anything special about what they brought with them. When everyone introduces themselves and their candies, the floor is open to sample from the collected assortment.

This is a fun and engaging way to get to know other attendees beyond the conference’s context. Conferences collect people around a specific context: be it technology, metrics, design, engineering, or something else. But beyond that specific context, we are also people! We have families, we have friends, and we eat food. We have things we miss about home when we travel hundreds or even thousands of miles from home. Events like candy swaps help us connect to other people not just as conference attendees, but as people. You learn something new about each other, and if you’re bold, you try something new too.

While it is not a metric in itself, it would be cool to see things like this included as practical examples of how to evaluate “family friendliness” or inclusivity at events.

True Confessions: The Seven Deadly Sins of Open Source Communities 🔗

This talk would take a humorous approach to explaining what really no one should do when managing and measuring open source community best practices, with the primary goal of instilling positive open source development practices to the audience. Such ““don’ts”” include not documenting anything, establishing no clear paths to success, and not bothering to communicate.

Brian Proffitt

Brian explained what to avoid in building healthy open source communities. While I was already familiar with most of them, the most interesting “sin” for me was the last one: “not seeing ourselves in others.”

Brian offered mitigation strategies and metrics for the first six sins, but he acknowledged “not seeing yourself in others” is hard to mitigate and measure. However, I think things like candy swaps (explained above) are one possible way to do this. They connect us to others in an authentically human way, beyond the specific context of a conference we traveled for.

This is more challenging when interaction is virtual. Virtual systems often take away communication cues that make us human! I’m still thinking on how to mitigate “not seeing ourselves in others” if interaction is mostly virtual. (For what it is worth, I don’t think running open source project meetings in V.R. is the answer either.)

Beyond CHAOSScon EU 2020 🔗

An event report wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the hallway track. It was great to see familiar faces and also meet new folks at CHAOSScon EU 2020.

I had a great lunch conversation with Erik Albers from Free Software Foundation Europe. It was cool to meet a facilitator of the Public Money? Public Code! campaign. Hopefully there are future opportunities to collaborate with RIT LibreCorps and AI freedoms.

As always, face time with Mike Nolan and an OG mentor of mine, Remy DeCausemaker, is appreciated and fulfilling. I wish I could get more of it around the year.

Thanks folx! 🔗

To wrap up this CHAOSScon EU 2020 report, a few thank-yous are in order:

• Cecilia Chapiro: Thanks for putting your work forward to the wider open source community!
• Stephen Jacobs: For always being supportive for yet another trip abroad and helping me push my career forward in a number of ways (and footing the bill!)
• Mike Nolan: My co-conspirator, partner in FOSS, and comrade in arms

I hope to continue conversations started here later into 2020 and keep talking with folks doing great things for the ecosystem. Until next time!

The entry is lifted out of my journal with minimum edits. I thought about fully revising it or updating it before publishing. Many parts I would write in a different way now, but I decided to let it be. It reflects my perspective at that particular moment and time at 19 years old. It is more personal than other posts I’ve published and maybe it’s a little uncomfortable for me to share, but I felt like it was worth doing anyways.

entry002: 2017-02-12 🔗

Picking up the pen to write in this is always difficult because it feels like there’s too much to say. Part of the problem is that I don’t write frequently enough, which I’ll try to improve. Not everything worth saying needs to be publicly lambasted.

I left the apartment for coffee after again reading the story of Seth Vidal, a founding developer of YUM and a one-time Fedora superstar. Seth was killed in a hit-and-run accident while cycling in 2013.

What strikes me so much about Seth isn’t just the work or code he left behind, but his legacy. There is no shortage of blog posts dedicated in his memory, with many written by folks I see regularly in Fedora. He is held in a high respect and regard not only because of his work, but how he worked with people. He was clearly a sincere friend of many in the community and always knew how to use and share his brilliance to bring out the same brilliance of those he worked with. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, but he always did so courteously and in a way where there was a next step or improvement. As one memoir quoted him as saying with a cocked head and a smile, “Are you sure that’s what you want to do? Because I’m pretty sure it’s not.”

It’s odd for me to read about Seth and how connected to him I feel, despite his death occurring well before I was anywhere near where I am now. Maybe it’s because I, like [thousands] of others, use his software. But more likely is because I see the type of impact and legacy is something I wish to share. Not having so many people write memoirs of my passing, but more about how many lives, communities, and people he touched. I see a man you could approach with anything, whether he knew you or not, and he would give you his honest opinion to help drive or motivate you to success. It may not be what you want to hear, but it will be what you need to hear. Again, delivery of that message is critical, and Seth seemed to be pretty good at it.

I may not know Seth, nor will I ever, but his legacy gives me a strong reminder about what I hold important and how I want to carry out my presence in the projects I’m involved with. If more people want more Seth Vidal’s in the world, then we need to [understand] his values, compare them to our own, and build those values into our own being. This is part of the idea of actively shaping and adapting our values, and never settling with the way we are because we think we know these things. If the mind is open and willing, we are always learning, and thus, always changing.

In summary? Seth’s light fades out and burns into embers, but it never dies. His legacy will always be there, for friends to remember and strangers to learn from. Amidst all of this panicked writing I have to do after DevConf and FOSDEM, Seth’s legacy levels me and reminds me of what’s important. Sometimes what’s really important is logging off and going for a bike ride, or a coffee with notebook and pen, or sharing precious time with loved ones. Seth, you may be gone and have no memory of me, but I have your memory, and I hope you are with me too.

Justin Wheeler

Across this spectrum of bold headlines and addicting scrolling, I began to wonder about identity. What determines how we choose to identify where we originate from? What makes us decide to disassociate from our birthplace? What parts of our culture make us proud and content and what parts are like fresh wounds withheld from time and space needed to heal? I started to wonder about my own identity and what it means to me to be defined as an American.

I fight a growing sense of dissatisfaction and disbelief of what I read happening each day. As I read about the United States and how its citizens are represented on a global stage, a feeling of repulsion sinks into my stomach. Society greatly shaped my perspective of what it meant to be an American as I grew up. What is around me now is contradicting: the qualities of inclusiveness and diversity espoused to the identity of being an American are the same qualities I feel are under attack.

One afternoon as I walked back to my Chicago apartment, I passed a Mexican restaurant. As I walked by, I searched for a menu to measure how authentic it would be compared to offerings in Atlanta (I’ve notoriously had a difficult time finding authentic Mexican food north of Virginia). However, I was disappointed, as the choices fell into the category of American-Mexican food and not the authentic dishes I craved.

But even though I continued on and left the food behind me, the restaurant didn’t leave my mind. As I continued to ponder on what it means to be American, I couldn’t get this restaurant, and countless others like it, out of my mind. One of the most unique observations of my travels is how culturally homogeneous so many countries are. From my experience living in Europe and visiting India, the difference of cultural diversity from my American experience was impossible to miss. Each country was mostly shaped by its dominant ethnic group. To see a Nicaraguan in Croatia or a Swede in India would be a memorable encounter because it was outside of preconceived expectations. But in America, I board a New York City, Chicago, or Washington DC subway, and I always remain pleasantly surprised at how unique and different all the passengers are.

But what of the Mexican restaurant? If my train rides reflect this unique cultural identity, what is the significance of the Mexican restaurant and why can’t I forget it?

Suddenly, I realize perhaps American culture is several shards of all other cultures that assimilate here. Instead of the restaurant being an imitation of the real thing, what if it is as real and independent of an experience as the original? Instead of being a clone or a derivative, what if they are their own original craft and subculture? In a way, they are mostly unique – many of the fusions of culture, from food to celebrations, and architecture to film are only found in this sort of combination here.

These pieces of foreign culture are transplanted seeds, taken from their native soil and planted into a new environment. It requires adaption and perhaps creativity too. But these pieces of culture, whether they are motivated to be imitations or not, are created from a place of love and genuine human connection. They stem from a desire to celebrate who we are and where we come from. Furthermore, they offer an opportunity to share these things with others and to pass along the memories and experiences to others in the hopes that they too will see the world from a different perspective, if only for a passing moment.

As I continue to read past another day of headlines, I feel hopeful knowing this spirit of America, although challenged today, remains and exists. In a city like Chicago, it would almost be impossible to miss this range of diversity. While some choose to wrap words of hate and fear around the red, white, and blue stripes of the American flag, I try to remain mindful to keep this flag closer to me too, and wrap it around my values of love and compassion for others, and what it means to me to be an American in this political era.

This article explains changes I made to how I use social media and my smart phone since deleting my accounts. Hopefully you find these tips useful too.

1. Social media on-the-go is a no 🔗

Today’s world is full of content. Videos, friend requests, likes, comments, memes, notifications. We are always connected and online. An endless amount of media, pop culture, and content is at our fingertips. Sometimes this is helpful and convenient, like a quick message to a friend.

But a constant connection can be a drug too. When a convenient escape from a moment always exists in your pocket, this encourages a default reaction of opening the phone and scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, or anything that offers a momentary distraction or something “more interesting” than whatever we are currently doing. Ultimately, we turn to social media on our smartphones for a short blast of dopamine.

Remove the “convenience” factor 🔗

I took two steps to break this habit. First, acknowledge there are negative effects to social media usage. I also had to acknowledge that self-discipline and self-moderation is hard. I knew the negative effects of social media usage, but despite knowing this, it was still hard to avoid. So, the second step is to make the self-discipline easier: drop the apps from your phone.

When I deleted Facebook and eventually Instagram apps from my phone, they were no longer convenient. To check either one, I had to use a mobile web app or a computer. The mobile web apps were tedious and slow, and a computer was not always accessible. When the “convenience” factor was gone, it became easier to disconnect from the online world because it simply wasn’t there.

Anything that required me to use social media could wait until it was convenient – usually when I am sitting down at a computer.

Soup is on, phone is off 🔗

I also took steps to increase my awareness of my usage. If having a dinner with friends or colleagues, I turned my phone off before entering the restaurant or meeting the group. My phone is off at the moments I turn to it at the dinner table. Powering it back on is inconvenient. Whatever distraction I was looking for would have to wait five minutes for the phone to boot.

“Right, it’s off for a reason,” I would think as I slipped the phone back into my pocket.

2. Data-driven observations: Scientific method for phones 🔗

After deleting my social media accounts, I wanted to understand: how often do I use my phone? What applications steal most of my attention? How much is too much? I decided to take a scientific approach and run an experiment.

I took a quantitative approach. I measured my usage by application to understand how much time I spent on different apps. I discovered QualityTime, an application that met my requirements. QualityTime measures your total daily screen usage, how much time you use on all applications, and how many times you unlock your phone screen in a day. [Note: Since this article was written, both iOS and Android introduced phone usage metrics. No app is required for this anymore, but QualityTime still offers some useful features.]

After installing QualityTime, I used the default quota of two and a half hours a day as the suggested maximum daily use. I was surprised I came close to or past 2.5 hours every day. Now, I see what applications take most of my time. Then, I make adjustments based on the feedback I see. I started to think things like…

Is this application worth the two hours a day? What am I getting out of this?

I need to cut back here, over four hours is way too much.

Now, I had data to inform my lifestyle changes or alert me when I need to make changes. When I saw my daily usage by the numbers, I better understood my own habits. It increased my awareness into how I use my phone and manage my digital life.

And often, awareness is the best foundation for making incremental changes to our life and how we manage our time.

3. What you see is what you find 🔗

What and who do you allow in your social media life? Your “feed”, for any application or app, is powerful. Your feed is a daily dose of perspective and thoughts delivered directly to your phone. What you see in social media is what you will find reflected back in the world around you.

In my case, I still use Twitter as my primary social media presence. Since deleting my Facebook and Instagram, I also become more aware of my Twitter timeline. I never followed many people by some standards – 200 people or so. First, I realized I missed content from half of those people because of how Twitter tailors what I see. Second, I become more aware of the actual content from the people I followed.

Change configuration settings of your mood 🔗

Since the November 2016 elections, social media is a “black box”. You will find many different things. You find empowering optimism, cynical pessimism, and some things between the two. As I found out, content on my timeline has a tangible, noticeable effect on my daily perspective. If someone I follow launches a cynical Twitter thread about a current event, that cynicism translates into my own view.

We cannot pretend that what we read on the screen has no effect on our real lives.

Less is more 🔗

So, I became a “jerk”. I reduced who I followed on Twitter to about 50 people. Then I sought out people from various aspects of my life—technology, spirituality, friends and family—that have a positive impact to my daily outlook. I put a filter on what I filter in my feed: I looked for inspirational wisdom, people who would motivate me to enlightened action. I turned away from anger, angst, hate, and cynicism.

However, there is a balance between naïvety and cynicism. We can choose optimism without being naïve. Additionally, we can choose skepticism without being cynical. The point is not to drown out reality or hide away in a bubble. We must be realistic about what is happening in the world and stay hopeful. To stay motivated. To not wake up, read through your feed, and curl back depressed into bed.

My best advice is be conscious of what you filter in your social media feed. Your feed is close and personal. It is powerful. And what you see digitally is often what you find reflected back at you in non-digital life.

Considering Facebook deletion? 🔗

Considering to cut the plug? Check out this excellent article from Recode about how to responsibly cut down on Facebook. Even if full deletion is not what you are after, it suggests helpful tips on spending less time there.

Good luck! 🔗

These lessons are fundamental to me and changed how I manage my digital life. Beyond the digital world, I notice the beginnings of change. I am more present in the things I do and spend my time with. Now, when I go out with friends and family, I appreciate the time spent with them without a hole burning in my pocket.

I hope these lessons are also helpful to you too. Additionally, if you have any other tips or comments for others, please drop a comment below!

Featured image arranged by Justin Wheeler.

friends by Ilaria. Bernareggi, thumbs up by mikicon, Facebook by Saloni Sinha, and more by Ilaria Bernareggi from the Noun Project.

The next album to spotlight in Tergiversate is Abysma by Los Angeles-based Geotic, a.k.a. Will Wiesenfeld. Abysma is the ninth studio album released by Geotic. It debuted on March 31, 2017. The album could be described as a cross between an electronica and indie pop. For Wiesenfeld’s first début on a record label with his side project Geotic, he makes a bold and eccentric presence with Abysma.

Why Abysma? 🔗

Abysma was an accidental discovery during a significant experience of my life. At the time, I subscribed to Google Play Music and I would sometimes receive recommendations for new music to listen to. On March 31, 2017, Google Play suggested Abysma as a new release I might like.

At the time, I was living in Dubrovnik, Croatia on a study abroad exchange. The album quickly became one of my favorites for the remaining two months I spent abroad. After returning to the US, I chose not to renew my subscription. Since I never purchased the album, it was conveniently forgotten after I returned.

Months later, in October, I reviewed some of my top albums from 2017 on Last.fm. I came across Geotic on the list and remembered Abysma. I decided to buy the album and add it to my library. Since then, the album returned to a regular spot on my listening queue.

Thus, perhaps it makes sense that I strongly associate this album to my time living abroad. Frequently, this album was the backdrop to afternoon walks near the Old City of Dubrovnik, long bus rides to Bosnia or Albania, or for studying the week before final exams. Regardless, this album rekindles my imagination for some of my own unique experiences. Therefore, it made sense to include this album in a Tergiversate column.

Themes 🔗

Deciphering Abysma is a challenge. Most of the record is ambient, with some songs featuring brief, synthesized, and heavily modified vocals. The album artwork is the next biggest hint to themes and meanings of the album.

The following are two themes I identified in Abysma:

• Own worst enemy
• Overcoming hardship

Both themes play a supporting role in each other,.

Own worst enemy 🔗

One of the primary themes of the album is recognizing our least desirable qualities of ourselves and letting them overpower our other positive qualities.

Artwork 🔗

The album artwork sets the foundation for this theme, combined with various hints from song titles and mood from each track. The artwork features a sun-bathed, empty room with a rainbow-colored body lain across the floor.

The body appears lifeless as it peers outside the bright window. The body is a metaphor for the bright and wonderful qualities we own, but the room represents a trap. Despite the wonderful qualities inside, we lock ourselves into boxes or rooms where we are unable to see past the walls. We only have a window into the great wonders of life – yet somehow we are not in that picture.

Songs 🔗

The mood of the album contributes to that idea. Sunspell, the opening track, creates the initial view of the album. The album is reminiscent of a bright, cheery atmosphere, but it seems remote and disconnected at the same time. The sunlight captivates us and puts us under a spell – in the spell, the bright lights of others and the world we see strike us and blind us.

The following tracks continue to build this atmosphere, leaning towards an introspective and oblique feel. Echoing words of “it all makes sense” on Nav feed this idea of deep, intrinsic wonder to ourselves. As the album grows in its mysterious nature, so does the feeling of mental isolation. As Abysma progresses, Geotic puts on a lens of closer and closer self-introspection.

Admittedly, not all the qualities in this lens are the best ones. The theme reaches its climax in Perish Song. The song title leaves little room for second guessing. In the long, drawn-out waves of the synthesizer and delicate piano keystrokes, a listener is left with understanding of a type of depression. It’s reminiscent of the days when our thoughts are self-destructive and harmful.

What it all means 🔗

Whether by design or by accident, Geotic forces the listener to find a level of acceptance of their own mind. Throughout life, we sometimes make ourselves our own biggest enemy and showstoppers. Even though we are all filled with a natural bright and illuminating nature (like a child), we can lose sight of that version of our self. This theme is present because we become aware of ourselves when listening. Everyone has been their own hardest critic, and Abysma is a gentle reminder that sometimes we are hardest on ourselves.

Lingering thoughts remain whether the harsh self-criticism is worthy or not, but this is quickly answered at the close of the record.

Overcoming hardship 🔗

In a quick turnaround, the last song of the album, Valiance, introduces the second theme and integrates into the different pieces of the previous theme.

The second theme builds on the idea that even in our worst qualities and lowest moments (e.g. Perish Song), we are able to overcome the battle with our mind and find our own peace. After all, the body on the album cover reflects light and echoes the colors of the rainbow – we always possessed the qualities, but perhaps did not recognize them within us.

Valiance 🔗

The high notes and intense energy of Valiance are a contrast to some of the introspective atmospheres earlier in the album. While Valiance is also introspective, it changes the lens. Instead of looking in at our worst qualities, it’s a change in perspective to look at our better qualities. The song almost seems to externalize the hidden energy inside the body on the album cover.

Valiance is a reminder of our ability to find peace with our mind and create our own happiness. It tells and affirms that we can overcome our hardships, whether imposed on us by ourselves or by others.

What it all means 🔗

One line from the lyrics of Perish Song are significant. It plays back into the second theme:

The heat of the sun,

Is there if you want.

We decide whether we want to feel the warmth and heat of the sun in our life. We are the ones that make a choice to how we receive the world and our experiences in life.

As a whole, this theme plays into the previous theme because it takes a stark change in direction. But it plays together beautifully. The negative and difficult recognition of our own self as an enemy is challenging. It reminds of our shortcomings, our regrets, our missed opportunities. It becomes easy to pin the blame on ourselves. Not only that, but the awareness can introduce a concern of not being able to overcome our failures.

Yet, the album ends elegantly, brightly, and brilliantly. The closing reminds us that we should always choose the heat of the sun in our life. When we shape our perspective of the world and the people around us, we make a choice for how we receive and interact with it. To make a positive impression of the world and those around us, we must become comfortable with ourselves first. We have to find peace with our own mind before we can find peace with any others.

The closing of Abysma reminds us of that, in a layered progression from recognizing our worst qualities to acknowledging they can always be overcome. Recognizing our worst qualities is challenging, but it’s a challenge we can overcome when we live in the light and warmth. When we choose happiness, love, and compassion, these qualities reflect and echo back to us in life.

Where to find Abysma 🔗

Most albums reviewed in Tergiversate focus on the complete album, not each song. Consider making your first listen from top to bottom instead of picking single songs. My experience in music is that great albums offer the most when enjoyed in a single, immersive experience.

• Bandcamp (preferred, directly supports artist)
• Spotify
• iTunes
• Google Play
• Amazon
• SoundCloud

Curious where the name “Tergiversate” came from? Check out the dictionary definition.

Why Demon Days? 🔗

Demon Days has a sentimental value to me. When I was younger, a close friend gifted me a copy of the album on CD, marking the first physical piece of music merchandise in my collection. Ever since the first CD, my collection has expanded across many artists, genres, and mediums, from CDs, to 7" and 12" vinyl records, and even a signed brick (a story to save for another time).

More importantly, Gorillaz represents a distinct departure in my music listening habits from my youth. Gorillaz opened my perspective to new sounds and genres, and the diverse range of sounds that Damon Albarn uses in the Gorillaz albums helped me discover new music. Gorillaz is the root of my independent music discovery, when I began to explore the rich palettes of sound, passion, and insight that music offers.

Even though Demon Days was the first album that felt like my own finding, its meaning and purpose have grown with me over time. Every year, there’s a period of my life where I find the album on repeat, or I’ll suddenly realize that I need to listen to a very specific song from the album immediately. I departed from other artists and albums from my youth, but Demon Days is one that clings on with a contemporary relevance, captures my imagination, and fills my heart with hope.

Thus, no other album felt worthy of receiving the title of “first” in this series.

Themes 🔗

The album sits at a pivotal moment in human history: the dawn of the 21st century is still breaking. A world of technology begins to immerse our culture, the world is at a war with questionable purpose, and an air of suspense hangs above for the thoughtful philosopher.

Damon Albarn attacks this moment in a poetic and creative genius that addresses four themes, but doesn’t paint a picture of despair. The four themes, as aptly detailed by the Demon Days Wikia page, are…

1. Desensitizing children / the innocent
2. The Iraq war
3. Environmental damage
4. Defacement of mass culture

New direction 🔗

Unlike the earlier album, this album marks the beginning of a new era for Damon Albarn and Gorillaz. Albarn’s music reaches a new level of maturity that was not as present in previous works.

Another analysis of the album from Reddit pins a deep insight into the meaning of the album. One exceptional excerpt from that thread:

Within this album, which is a popular music album, Damon spins a soundscape which explores the world in true existential crisis and tries, genuinely tries, to instruct the listener towards a positive outlook. It is unflinchingly hateful and rejecting of the forces at work which prevent personal growth and one by one exposes the Orwellian nightmare of living under a violent government and an apathetic society.

One piece 🔗

Perhaps the most powerful part of Demon Days is its composition as a singular unit. While many of the songs stand up on their own as mainstream singles, the album is best received as the sum of its parts. Albarn described the album in an interview as a story that takes the listener through the night. Intro sets the tone at the beginning of the darkness, and the self-titled track at the end paints a bright, luminescent color for the album.

Powerful ending 🔗

The ending of the album remains the most powerful part of the album for me, particularly Don’t Get Lost in Heaven and Demon Days. The album deals with themes of a world in decline. It is not discreet in its implied meaning and Albarn offers his perspective on the pitfalls that humanity sets for itself.

Yet, the ending of the album isn’t a reflection on the hateful, spiteful, and damaging parts of society and culture.

The ending reminds the listener of the breaking rays of sunlight, cutting through the darkness of the night. In line with its storyline of journeying through the night and facing different demons, the album closes itself with a positive picture of hope, love, and inspiration. I believe Albarn was aware that the message of urgency and themes of darkness in other songs from the album were difficult to swallow. But he was acutely aware that the embers of hope and love should never be extinguished if these demons of the world are to be overcome.

The ending of the album is what took me through 2017. One of the highlights of my year was seeing Gorillaz live in Chicago in July, as they started their international tour for the Humanz album. I was speechless and filled with a boundless joy when the concert ended with Don’t Get Lost in Heaven and Demon Days. These two songs aged and were reborn with new meaning and passion for the world we explore in 2017 and beyond. I’ve felt that for some time, but seeing Gorillaz perform at their first show in years and also ending with these songs? It only confirmed this resolve in meaning to me.

Where to find Demon Days 🔗

If you only know some of the singles from the album, or if you have never listened at all, please consider a full listen from top to bottom. Some albums can be enjoyed in pieces, but Demon Days is a package deal, and it offers the most when it’s listened to in a single, immersive experience.

• Spotify
• iTunes
• Google Play
• Amazon
• YouTube

Curious where the name “Tergiversate” came from? Check out the dictionary definition.

Tergiversate: New articles in 2018 🔗

Tergiversate takes the form of a column on my blog. New posts will appear in the Music category. Since this is a personal undertaking, I did not want to commit to a publishing schedule, but I hope to cover one to two albums a month.

The album columns will not always be a review or an analysis, but rather a spotlight or highlight on albums that have a special or intrinsic value to me. I hope to cover both new releases from current-day artists as well as introduce older albums from some of my favorite artists.

The first articles in the series will appear in January 2018.

Recommendation swapping welcome 🔗

I plan to start with music that I’m familiar with. However, if you want me to consider an album, I’m happy to swap recommendations. I’m always looking for new music, so if you want to point something out to me, you’re welcome to leave a comment or reach out to me somewhere else.

I’m excited to launch Tergiversate. Music is an important part of my life and I’m excited to extract the best highlights from a world polluted by noise.

Curious where the name “Tergiversate” came from? Check out the dictionary definition.

Music by Sandy Priyasa from the Noun Project.

How to be hacker 🔗

You may ask yourself, how does one become a hacker? How do you become 1337? The answer might be simpler than you think. Old traditions, cheesy ’90s movies, and the information era.

On April 17th, I joined up with hacker Brendan Whitfield (beWhitty) and wannabe hacker Mike Nolan (nolski) to enjoy in a traditional viewing of 1995’s Hackers. The movie is described as the following.

A young boy is arrested by the U.S. Secret Service for writing a computer virus and is banned from using a computer until his 18th birthday. Years later, he and his new-found friends discover a plot to unleash a dangerous computer virus, but they must use their computer skills to find the evidence while being pursued by the Secret Service and the evil computer genius behind the virus.

Among the students of the FOSS@MAGIC program, the movie is like a cult classic. Within my first semester with the group, I became familiar with many notorious quotes and lines from the movie. Other students, now alumni, also encouraged a viewing.

There was no better time than the present.

Why be hacker 🔗

The cultural influence of the ’90s is clearly present in the movie. When we were viewing it, the movie was clearly written by a writer with as much experience with computers as the actors playing the parts. The stereotypes were laid thicker than molasses with the crossing of the “high school troublemaker” and the “tough punk” to define the hacker “mentality” of the characters. The director probably used a nephew, niece, or other cousin who “sat in front of a computer all day” as the inspiration for driving the characters and plot forward. It would be surprising if anyone who had ever used a computer or knew anything more than just using them for text documents and spreadsheets was involved in the creative process.

So, why bother seeing the movie at all? For all of the reasons mentioned above. Anyone in the technology or a digitally-oriented field would cringe at how the movie portrays the hacker mentality. And that’s why it’s so great. It is hard to imagine a viewing of the movie taken seriously. For our viewing, there were severe outbreaks of laughter and countless moments of cringe-worthy comedic relief, all wrapped up in a good time for a Friday night.

Now we are hackers 🔗

After listening to many references of this movie during the past year and wondering what it meant exactly when “the pool is on the roof”, I have graduated to the status of full hacker along with fellow FOSSboxer nolski.

To demonstrate our understanding of the movie, we had a brief showing of our own in the #rit-foss channel on the freenode IRC network.

[23:00:52] <nolski> jflory7: beWhitty and I have decided that we are dropping out of college and starting a bar themed after the movie hackers
[23:45:26] <nolski> jflory7 and I are now official hackers.
[23:45:39] <nolski> We have experienced the movie Hackers
[23:46:17] <CrashOverride> nolski, beWhitty: Mess with the best
[23:46:20] <CrashOverride> Die like the rest
[23:47:28] <Guest81889> u on my turf CrashOverride?
[23:47:47] <CrashOverride> Guest81889: you are not 1337 enuf
[23:49:56] <Nikon> You're in the butter zone now, baby.
[23:50:11] <ThePlague> Never fear
[23:50:15] <ThePlague> I is here
[23:51:21] <Acid-Burn> Never send a boy to do a woman's job.
[23:51:25] <CrashOverride> I don't play well with others.
[23:52:12] <CrashOverride> Hack the planet! Hack the planet, nolski!
[23:52:23] <nolski> Hack the planet CrashOverride!
[23:52:46] * nolski is finally 1337 enuf
[23:54:50] <nolski> scp god@gibson:/.workspace/.garbage. ~/1337h4x0rsfilez/
[23:54:53] <ThePlague> THEY GOT THE GARBAGE FILE!
[23:55:50] <nolski> beWhitty++
[23:55:56] <nolski> jflory7++
[23:56:02] <nolski> hackers++
[23:56:09] <ThePlague> nolski: Type "cookie", you idiot.
[23:56:17] <nolski> cookie
[23:57:14] <CrashOverride> HACK THE GIBSON
[23:57:16] <CrashOverride> ThePlague--
[00:02:41] <CrashOverride> My crime is that of curiosity. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.

I am submitting this blog post as my Meetup #3 for the Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development course at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I hope to help spread the hacker culture perpetuated by this film by possibly planning a late night screening of Hackers at the NASA Space Apps Challenge 2016 at RIT, if possible.

I am a user of open source software. My earliest experiences with open source software was with the Minecraft server software Bukkit as a kid, when I was attempting to make a cool game server for friends. I started using Fedora in December 2013 with my first laptop, ending a lifetime of using Apple devices. I like to believe that I am familiar and experienced with open source software as an everyday user.

Open Source Contributor 🔗

I am a contributor of open source software. Despite using it so often, I am still new to contributing and I am learning new things every day about free and open-source software communities. These past three months have passed by seemingly faster than light. And yet, despite being new as a contributor, I am passionate about what I am doing and what others around me are doing. I believe that open source goes beyond just software - it is a culture, a way of thinking, maybe even a way of life. There are reasons why I love open source as much as I do, and while it was challenging, I narrowed it down to three of my favorite things.

Freedom 🔗

Since I started using free and open source software, I gradually became educated about what software freedom is and what makes it so important. An open source project is one thing on its own. But is it free? And this not the traditional meaning of free, as in “no cost”. But does it protect your freedom? Do you control the software or does it control you?

This is something that is probably one of the most discussed parts of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), yet it is without a doubt one of the most important. At the end of the day, the people who work behind major FOSS projects such as Linux distributions (like Fedora), major software programs and languages, and even Minecraft server software share a core set of beliefs: the software you and I use needs to place value in freedom to manipulate and distribute as we see fit. It is within our right to do with our software as we wish. This is something that I sincerely believe will help bring the world to a better place.

Seeing as this is one of the most discussed elements of FOSS, I will not spend as much time on this. But it is important to realize that it is part of the foundation that everything else builds from.

Fun 🔗

There’s hardly a better way to put it. Working in open source communities is fun! Whether you’re the programmer or the writer, the designer or the maintainer, it’s incredibly engaging and rewarding to take part in an open source community that understands the value in community.

For developers, it’s a greatly satisfying feeling to write software and see it being used across several devices or systems, and then to get feedback about your software from users who think what you worked on is awesome. Does that mean all the feedback is always fun? No, but I believe the overall positive experiences always outweigh the few negative cases. As a FOSS developer, you can readily see your software’s impact on the world.

There is more that goes on for open source communities than just writing code too, so even if you’re someone like me who loves to write, there are ample opportunities to help in a fun and meaningful way. The articles I publish on the Fedora Magazine and Fedora Community Blog are enjoyable for me to write, and every thankful comment received makes it just the more worth it. For instance, I recently published an article about using an IRC bouncer software called ZNC and shared it across multiple channels of communication. Shortly after doing so, a user messaged me and asked questions about using the software I described in the article, and shortly after our discussion, he successfully tested and started using ZNC for his own IRC communication. How awesome is that?! Even just by contributing writing, I can readily see my impact on users.

At the end of the day, many of the people involved with FOSS do it out of their own time and effort. Most people aren’t paid or have the convenience of having their jobs allow them to work on their own projects. So why do it if there’s “no benefit” to doing it? To continue the previous point, it’s because software freedom is important, but it’s also because it’s fun. Usually, it’s not about the money or personal fame… it’s about making a difference doing the things that make us happy. Whether that is software development, writing about the software being developed, making awesome graphics for the community around the software, or any other aspect, we do it because we like doing it. There’s not much else of a way to put it.

Community 🔗

Finally, the third thing I love about free and open source software is community. This is my favorite thing of all, truthfully. In my experiences working and interacting with members of open source communities, I am always met with welcoming and accepting attitudes and people who want me to succeed in contributing. I have discovered this especially in the Fedora Project community, more than any other project I’ve contributed to.

When I first introduced myself to the Fedora Marketing mailing list as an interested contributor to the Fedora Magazine, I was warmly received and provided with the resources I needed to set up my toolbox for success. Quickly after drafting my first articles, the Magazine team happily reviewed and revised my work and set it on track for publication. Seeing my first article go out on the Magazine was extremely rewarding, and I felt awesome that I had helped write something that readers would find interesting and be able to learn something new.

Another experience I had this past week was entirely unexpected. Fedora Community Lead Remy DeCausemaker recently published an article on Fedora Magazine about Software Freedom Day at RIT, an event on my university campus that I attended and participated in. Part of the article talked about some of the tasks I worked on and included a short interview with me. Later that evening, the same day the article went out, I received an unexpected message from a Fedora contributor in Panama who had happened to read the article. In summary, she left me some encouraging words about what I did at Software Freedom Day and said it was good to have people like me in the project. It caught me off-guard and I wasn’t expecting that - and from someone who I had never talked with before! This only reaffirmed the thoughts I have had for a long time about FOSS communities, in particular Fedora. The community behind these projects is incredible and the friendships that are founded here make everything all the more worth it.

It’s hard to see a future for me now without open source being an integral part along the way.

Special Thanks 🔗

Special thanks to Michael, Cindy, Jordan, Remy, Paul, Ryan, Patrick, and Kiara for helping make my experiences in open source as amazing as it has been - I am looking forward to more experiences to come.