4/16/2012 UPDATE: Slides from the talk are now included below.
I’ll be presenting on this topic at Indiana LinuxFest on April 14th:
http://www.indianalinux.org/cms/schedule2012
If we pay close attention, our interactions with Open Source projects and communities — whether as consumers, contributors, integrators, or enthusiasts — can be catalysts for our own personal development. The insights we gain into ourselves can increase our capacity to handle stressful situations, reframe and expand the way we see our work, increase our leadership capabilities, and make us more effective in general.
In this session, we’ll explore a number of growth areas that we can experience in connection with open source, including:
- How open source confronts us with an explosion of abundance, where we may be used to scarcity. How we can tap into the flow of giving freely and taking mindfully, shifting our mental model from idea bank to idea mint.
- How open source helps us unify some of our fragmented identities (such as those we may experience in workplace roles and elsewhere), which improves clarity and makes more energy available to us in all spheres of our life.
- How open source enables us to progress from dependence, to independence, and then interdependence in our interactions with others. Interdependence is one of the greatest force multipliers of our capabilities.