Talk Intermediate

FOSS and Curiosity: How I grew my career pursue my interests in Open Source

Approved

Session Description

This is an autobiographical talk. Despite being from the US, I hope that sharing my experience and career/life journey into the FOSS community can inspire people to continue to learn and grow and cultivate curiosity and creativity in solving problems.

I would like to talk about how I was unable to finish my degree, but still I was able to learn Linux skills on the job. Also about how I learned how to find and use FOSS projects to solve real-world problems at work and at home.

I'll describe how the intersection of my personal life and problem-solving broke me into a new turn in my career working and Beeper then at Element working to promote the use of Matrix, a Free and Open Source communication standard, primarily used for Instant Messaging.

I'd like to share about projects I'm still working on like Bluefin, a Fedora-based OS image using the new Bootable Container technology.

References

https://www beeper.com https://www.element.io https://www.projectbluefin.io https://cete.osu.edu

Session Categories

FOSS

Speakers

James Reilly On semi-sabbatical learning Hindi in Lucknow. Support, TAM, Sysadmin (or SRE or whatever it's called these days)

I've worked as a Support Engineer at Element and helped scale up support at Beeper, along with 6 years working at Ohio State University as a Sysadmin. In my younger years, I worked for a hospital, a cybersecurity startup, and pet store!

I'm currently living in Lucknow taking a semi-sabbatical to study Hindi and Urdu (trying to pick up that Lakhnawi Tehzeeb!). Very interested in connecting with others who are passionate about open source software.

Reviews

Felt a sense of passion and pleasure while reading the proposal. Approved!

Reviewer #1 Approved

Reviewer #2 Approved

Very interesting and relevant talk!

Reviewer #3 Approved

Reviewer #4 Approved