Episode 90: Logan Kilpatrick and the Julia community

Guest Logan Kilpatrick Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman Show
Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about
sustaining open source for the long haul. We are very excited to
have as our guest, Logan Kilpatrick, who is the Community Manager
for the Julia Programming Language, a graduate student studying
Software Engineering and Technology Law, and makes an exclusive
announcement of another position he recently has taken on. Today,
we are talking to Logan about the Julia Programming Language. We
learn more about the role Major League Hacking played in the MLH
Fellowship with Julia, why Logan is most interested in doing open
source non-technical, his experience working at NASA, and the
challenges he has with research papers. He also tells us about why
the Julia community should not be using Slack, but maybe using
Discord and Zulip in the future. Logan shares some parting advice
about reaching out to people if there’s opportunities that are
interesting to you. Find out more and download this episode now!
[00:00:22] Logan gives us a brief introduction of who he is, what
he does, and what this new position is he has recently taken on.
[00:01:52] NumFocus is the topic and how this all came to be for
Logan, and why Julia as a programming language is so unique and
special. [00:05:48] Justin brings up ML Hacks and Logan explains
more about this. [00:08:04] Logan fills us in on what his Julia
day-to-day tasks that he works on and his non-technical tasks so he
can influence the next non-technical open source contributor.
[00:11:51] Find out if the Julia Programming Language is using any
tools to monitor their community engagement. Justin talks about
something he uses called Orbit, which is a framework for building
high gravity communities. [00:16:00] Find out the experience Logan
had working with NASA! [00:18:49] Logan has so much going on in his
life and Justin wonders how he finds time to do anything.
[00:20:10] We learn why Logan has a bunch of challenges with
research papers. [00:22:47] Eric wonders if people are not sharing
the code for reasons that they don’t want to give up intellectual
property or that it’s not completely well-formed and they just want
to own it, but still want to share it. Logan gives his perspective
on this. [00:25:17] Logan explains the different places you can
find the Julia community and why they should not be using Slack.
Eric wonders what is out there that we can use that people would
adopt, and Logan talks about Discord, Zulip, and Forum Community.
[00:29:09] Logan covers one more thing, going back to the convo
they had about open source contributions and non-technical
contributions. He also brings up Jono Bacon’s book, People Powered.
Quotes [00:04:46] “The estimate right now is something like a
million developers or something like that, which is at a million
users.” [00:05:53] “So, Major League Hacking is an incredible
organization and they were sort of generous enough in the first
iteration of the MLH Fellowship, which is just an opportunity for
students to contribute to open source and get paid to do it by
Major League Hacking and a bunch of peripheral organizations who
support Major League Hacking.” [00:08:33] “I think my sort of
general goal that has just come out recently for me is to make
people understand that a non-technical contribution in open source
is a viable way of contributing.” [00:08:58] “And the reason for
that is I feel like there’s more opportunities to do those
non-technical contributions and there’s more sort of missing pieces
in the non-technical space.” [00:10:21] “Again, I think there’s so
much non-technical work that if someone doesn’t step up and do it,
it doesn’t get done.” [00:20:21] “One of which is a lot of times
folks don’t release their code, which is sort of one of the
missions of NumFocus and in a sense, “Open code equals better
science.” [00:26:16] “To me, it’s 100% evident and perfectly clear
that we should not be using Slack.” [00:26:23] “Slack is a tool
that is built for corporations to communicate with one another...
It is not a tool for open source projects to be using.” [00:28:46]
“In my personal opinion, Discord and Zulip will probably be the two
that are fighting each other in the future with respect to places
that communities go and meet.” [00:29:22] “I think something that
is perhaps might be obvious to some people, might not be obvious to
some people, but really, non-technical contributions in my opinion
are the pathway to making a code contribution.” [00:30:58] “I think
my parting suggestion for people that I always try to instill
whenever I have the opportunity to talk to people that I don’t know
through the internet is take the opportunities to reach out to
folks that you don’t know if there’s opportunities that are
interesting to you.” Spotlight [00:31:55] Logan’s spotlight is the
tool Julia’s visualization package Makie. [00:32:29] Eric’s
spotlight is a suite of tools called Setapp. [00:33:03] Justin’s
spotlight is Kid Pix. 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/) Logan
Kilpatrick Twitter (https://twitter.com/officiallogank?lang=en)
Logan Kilpatrick Linkedin
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/logankilpatrick) Julia Programming
Language (https://julialang.org/) NumFocus (https://numfocus.org/)
Major League Hacking (https://mlh.io/) Orbit-GitHub
(https://github.com/orbit-love) [People Powered: How Communities
Can Supercharge Your Business, Brand, and Teams by Jono
Bacon](https://www.amazon.com/People-Powered-Communities-Supercharge-Business/dp/1400214882/ref=ascdf1400214882/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=385492364860&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6800069154212988263&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9052206&hvtargid=pla-903833266237&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=79288121435&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=385492364860&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6800069154212988263&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9052206&hvtargid=pla-903833266237)
Sustain Podcast- Episode 84-“Jono Bacon on Building Sustainable
Communities” (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/84) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 79-“Leah Silen on how NumFocus helps makes
scientific code more sustainable”
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/79) Zulip (https://zulip.com/)
Discord (https://discord.com/) Forum Community
(https://www.forumcommunity.net/) Makie
(https://makie.juliaplots.org/dev/) Setapp (https://setapp.com/)
Kid Pix (https://kidpix.app/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer
(https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree
Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at
Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest:
Logan Kilpatrick.