Episode 120: FOSS Backstage 2022 with Rich Bowen & Paul Berschick

Guests Rich Bowen | Paul Berschick Panelist Richard Littauer Show
Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! On this episode, Richard is at
the FOSS Backstage 2022 that is held in Berlin every year. This
conference focuses on open source sustainability. He had the
opportunity to interview people who were there in-person and talk
about software sustainability, what they hope to find in FOSS
Backstage, talks they did, and a bunch of other good stuff. Our
first guest is Richard Bowen, who’s been doing open source stuff
for over twenty years, most recently at Red Hat, and just started
working at AWS in the open source group. We also have another
guest, Paul Berschick, who is one of the organizers of FOSS
Backstage, and does Open Source Events at Plain Schwarz. Go ahead
and download this episode now to find out more! [00:00:58] Rich
tells us what he’s doing now since leaving Red Hat. [00:02:13] We
hear about Rich’s talk he did on, “Delivering Bad News: Helping
your community through a rough patch.” [00:04:45] Rich shares his
thoughts on what happens when incentives don’t align. [00:07:40] If
you want a great read, Rich tells us a fantastic book to look into
called, The Art of Community: Seven Principles of Belonging by
Charles Vogl, as well as sharing advice to hang out with other
Community Managers and to listen to his talk if you want to learn
something. [00:10:25] How does Rich sees the role of Community
Managers going and how does he think of community? [00:14:25] Find
out where you can follow Rich online. [00:15:47] We now have Paul
Berschick joining us and he tells us about Plain Schwarz.
[00:17:02] Paul explains how much FOSS Backstage has grown since
2018, including the pandemic and how that changed. [00:21:35] How
is Paul working to recreate and enable the amazing connections that
he makes with people through FOSS Backstage for people who are
remote? [00:25:28] Richard wonders how Paul has noticed, given his
place of an event organizer, that his particular clientele
influences how he builds these spaces, and if it changes how he
views things because he does open source stuff. [00:27:52] Paul
shares how he feels he’s helping the ecosystem as a whole besides
just having a one-off conference. [00:30:47] Does Paul feel FOSS
Backstage could do better at accessing the rest of the long tail
open source developers? [00:33:31] Paul shares ideas with having
satellite events in other places where there’s a more diverse
listenership and how would that work. [00:35:24] Find out where you
can follow Paul online. Links SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/)
SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/)
podcast@sustainoss.org (mailto:podcast@sustainoss.org) FOSS
Backstage 2022 (https://foss-backstage.de/) Rich Bowen Twitter
(https://twitter.com/rbowen?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Rich Bowen Blog (https://drbacchus.com/) AWSOpen (Amazon Web
Services)
(https://aws.amazon.com/opensource/?blog-posts-content-open-source.sort-by=item.additionalFields.createdDate&blog-posts-content-open-source.sort-order=desc)
Paul Berschick Twitter (https://twitter.com/thepb) Paul Berschick
LinkedIn (https://de.linkedin.com/in/paul-berschick-97a18aa8) [The
Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging by Charles
Vogl](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Community-Seven-Principles-Belonging/dp/1626568413/ref=sr11?crid=XBXLH1BG3UTB&keywords=the+art+of+community&qid=1650740766&sprefix=the+art+of+community%2Caps%2C85&sr=8-1)
[Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools
for Healthy Relationships by Marshall B. Rosenberg
PhD](https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Life-Changing-Relationships/dp/189200528X/ref=sr11?crid=1YXJA0NG2J775&keywords=nonviolent+communication&qid=1650741239&s=books&sprefix=nonviolent+co%2Cstripbooks%2C98&sr=1-1)
[The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation by
Jono
Bacon](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Community-Building-New-Participation/dp/1449312063/ref=sr12?crid=2U4XTDFW1MRO1&keywords=jono+bacon&qid=1650749628&s=books&sprefix=jono+bacon%2Cstripbooks%2C72&sr=1-2)
Sustain Podcast-Episode 84: Jono Bacon on Building Sustainable
Communities (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/84) Plain Schwarz
(https://plainschwarz.com/) Open Source Collective
(https://www.oscollective.org/) Credits Produced by Richard
Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) and Charlotte Tienes
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-tienes-88038a18b/) Edited by
Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound
(https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guests: Paul Berschick
and Rich Bowen.