At NearForm, the Future is Open

Editor's note:   NearForm Field CTO, Paula Paul, will be participating in the 2022 Grace Hopper Celebration Open Source Day. Learn more about the event and getting involved with open source below.

I am so very excited to serve the committee and join thousands of women who will participate in the 2022 Grace Hopper Celebration Open Source Day, and am thrilled to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration this year again in person as a speaker in the Open Source Track. For me, and for everyone and anyone who is interested in technology and community, the future is open.

Since my first Grace Hopper  Open Source Day in 2015 I’ve loved helping women engage in open source software as a way to bring more women into the broader technology community. GHC Open Source Day has had an amazing impact on the community over the years. We expect a record breaking turnout this year, with an expanded list of featured  projects  and  workshops  not to be missed!

As a Field CTO with NearForm I’m grateful for the opportunity to share and amplify the bright future ahead for open source and for open and inclusive communities. I’ve had a rich and colorful journey in tech, from my mainframe and punchcard roots to the pull request that was merged last week; there were times I felt I was no longer welcome in my own profession but I was always able to find a community of people I could serve. The open source community is full of limitless opportunities to connect and contribute, and everyone truly belongs in that community.

Spoiler alert — I’ll be speaking about this during my presentation in the Open Source track during the conference. If you think you are not part of the Open Source community because you haven’t committed code to GitHub, please know that open source is about so much more than committing code. I’ve had the great honor to work with musicians, designers, scientists, artists, academics, storytellers, and so many interesting and diverse individuals to make an Open Source project come to life, and we need you.

For me, GitHub is a social network for good; it’s free, and anyone can join and contribute whether or not you commit code.

Join the community! It only takes a few minutes, and it is free and open.

None of the activities above require deep coding knowledge, just curiosity and perhaps just thinking of GitHub as a social media platform, not a technical barrier to your participation in making open source a more open, inclusive, and diverse community.

Welcome to the open source community! If you already contribute, thank you so much for your efforts. I hope to see you at the Grace Hopper Celebration and at Open Source Day for many years to come.