foreign
[Music]
laptops at the moment
I would like to introduce here who is a
really good friend of ours and a really
good friend of mine and he was so nice
to say yes because I was like oh my God
I need someone awesome to speak it
had everything open so I won't actually
introduce him because he is going to do
a significant amount of introducing of
himself I think
um but he is awesome and he will give us
a little treat at the end hopefully
fingers crossed he is the engineering
director leading grafana labs and I
would like to introduce you
[Applause]
thanks Sarah
um thank you for that gracious
introduction from uh humbled and quite
honored to be doing the keynote today
for our first ever everything open and
my thanks to the organizing team for
putting it on I have to say looking at
the program with Rebecca Lindsay and Seb
later in the week I'm kind of glad I'm
on first because they do Bloody hard
acts to follow
I'm curious and
um who was at Sydney for Linux conf 2018
and saw my keynote there
a few of you okay so this is going to
seem eerily familiar in places and
unfortunately the jokes will be much the
same so my apologies there
um my initial titles or subtitle for
This was um some observations for 35
years in Tech but I think this byline is
probably a little more accurate I
learned from my mistakes that thus you
might avoid repeating them
I don't make any claims that my story in
the various anecdotes I'm going to share
or anything particularly special but
I've been really fortunate over the
years to work with and for some of the
best people I think in our industry and
while their Brilliance may not have
rubbed off I certainly did notice a few
things along the way and I'll try and
impart those today a lot of that time a
lot of that time in my career has been
working in the the overall open
technical Commons
uh one way one way or another but before
digging into that I'll uh I'll go back a
little bit in in time my life story is
probably only of interest to my mum
lesser but there's a few things I think
that are relevant for the to set some
context I'm largely self-taught
started to pulling things apart doing
Electronics ham radio that kind of thing
for about eight years of age
but school was always a bit of a
struggle I wasn't very good at maths and
it's interesting as you talk to people
you work in Computing you must be really
good at math and I actually I'm not a
really really struggled with it and a
lot of my school reports were along the
lines of blemings would do better if he
applied himself and this um this also
set sets the scene for some of the stuff
I'll talk about a little bit a little
bit later that's me with that was my
pride and joy well I guess technically
the family's Pride enjoy a Commodore
4016 with a massive 16 kilobytes of ram
it was an eight megahertz once eight
megahertz sorry
one megahertz 6502 CPU I showed this
same the same photo in 2018 and I told
them the story how wonderful it was when
we got the upgrade to 32k and I've since
found a kind of a cool photo just
recently the this is a shorter part of
the the motherboard of that particular
particular system and this shows you the
lengths that the manufacturers would
then go to to make it hard for you to
upgrade the memory of course that that's
showing for the eight memory chips in
the in the system of course the
enterprising Hardware hackers of the day
simply sold the chipset anyway and used
blue wires to link them across now that
sort of hack is pretty easy to do at a
megahertz it's fair to say you're not
going to do that on a ddr4 or ddr5
system
that computer was also formative to me
um I guess in a different way because
through it I also got my first exposure
to electronics electronic music and I
guess what would thinking back to it now
would broadly be the precursor to
chiptune sort of sort of stuff and this
is even before Sid chips but it was um
that was to create some surprising
opportunities for me later and also put
me on a path to buy my first of many too
many synthesizers and from that a
lifelong love of music
they're not going to talk unfortunately
too much about microprocessors on this
keynote but I couldn't resist the
temptation to put at least a die photo
in this case this is a night back in
1975. this is a 6502 with about 3500
transistors a modern power 10 CPU from
IBM power the open power Eco system has
got 36 billion that's seven orders of
magnitude more
um we really have come quite a long
quite a long way but to finish up those
finish up the intros I guess through
rather unexpected series of events
including me working in a music shop and
having a particular customer asked me a
question about media twitch I replied oh
it's 31 2.25 kiloboard 8 Bits And it's
five milliamp current Loop up to
isolated it's like why are you working
in a music shop sort of thing why don't
you go and explore things professionally
which I then did went off worked in
engineering firm
doing some Electronics design and
embedded programming in particular got
my start doing C in December and I think
that's quite it was quite a useful way
to start a lot of twists and turns since
um including a wonderful time at the
open power Foundation which I'll touch
on briefly later on but now I'm at
grafana and now leading a particularly
wonderful bunch of people and back to
what I've realized is on my real perfect
real passions in a professional sense
and that is um is people management I
should say too and while grafana is
supposed to support him in getting here
today I'm speaking for myself only for
the most part in this in this session
anyway I'm starting a bit more topical
Linux Australia
so I've done a few retrospectives in the
past of Linux value the uh the
conference itself but this time we're
going to try and focus a little bit more
on Linux Australia proper the two are
obviously quite inexorably linked but I
think it's it's time we used to gave
gave La it's due in these sorts of sorts
of events
courtesy of the Wayback machine we have
the uh La website I know right
[Applause]
so to set the scene it's 1997.98 around
there around that severe and pretty much
all the Australian States and
territories have a Linux user group for
some of some kind and we need to
remember back at that particular point
in time installing Linux was quite
difficult it was by name as a given that
it would work on your Hardware that sort
of thing so lugs played a particularly
important role in just bootstrapping
that initial uh that initial experience
for people Terry Dawson and Gary allpike
who are two members of the Sydney Linux
users group got chatting and they
figured that well we're starting to see
all these estate-based Regional
state-based
uh user groups maybe we need some sort
of umbrella organization so we can share
share the load where it makes sense to
do so and and have a common voice to
government and those sorts of things
um some logs are in favor others were
less so which sort of sounds familiar
with to this day to some extent but this
is um this is certainly the conversation
kind of got kicked off and bear in mind
all this has been done and everything
actually I'm going to talk about today
for the most part is being done by by
volunteers
but around the same time there's a
certain Linux kernel developer from
Adelaide is making some Rumblings about
running
an open source conference this is this
is Rusty Russell Rusty's aim is to bring
together the Australian and
international Linux communities and and
sort of this being in these early days
it was not a given that a lot of these
contacts had been made so he approached
the organizers of um the still under
formation Linux Australian said look I'd
really like to run this conference do
you think you could help out with the
insurance sort of be the the body that
sits behind us and as Terry tells the
story this has prompted them to take
their conversations and yeah we should
do something to do we better get
something something done so they
Incorporated Linux Australia in New
South Wales in order to facilitate the
in myself things to facilitate the
running of kalu Terry was the first uh
first president of the organization
the apocryphal story is about rusty
rusty funding Kelly on his credit cards
are actually true they did actually get
his money back on whatever was left over
I think he then donated back to Linux
Australia this is an era where we had no
networking no Wi-Fi and slash dot was
kind of at the heights of its power so
people actually printed it off each
morning so people could get their their
slash dot fix
this is the um where are we now 2000 so
it's a little bit later this is the LA
website in the in November 2000 Terry
tells a nice story about the jobs board
which you can see on the left there
about three three down the jobs board
has kind of been a feature of links
Australia pretty well since 2000 Prima
and to this day he tells us Terry tells
the story that he um
he was looking for a job and he saw a
post on there from this company called
Dolby Labs pretty well known right who
needed a system administrator come
programmer come General Linux Guru and
he's in fact there to this day some 23
years on so something to be said for
that
the
uh still running in stool Fest is still
a common thing to give some quick
context there as I mentioned earlier
sort of installing linux's binomial is
Trivial but even downloading the isos or
more likely the floppy images you needed
to install was was not not
inconsequential task on a slow modem
connection slowing stall Fest were
particular popular
um that you can't see but it's down the
bottom you can see that don't have a
look on the uh the Wayback machine if
you want more but this at that point
legit links Australia is sponsored by
digital who now sadly defunct became
Compact and was assumed into into HP
around the um same time we had the first
Linux
confirmary and the Sydney crew ran what
became the first event and that kind of
first links can't fight you and that
kicked off what's become the the normal
was the norm I suppose for um lcas to be
a roving conference
uh Rusty sword never run another
conference again but he did still stay
involved and he auctioned off a couple
of t-shirts and it was quite a nice
Synergy from this to what Sarah was just
mentioning with the raffle at this this
concept of fundraising has been the
important part of the overall Linux
Australian makeup particularly with our
events for many many years now with
thousands and thousands of dollars going
to various good causes both within the
tech sector but also external external
to that but this was to the point where
Linux Australia really started going
some momentum in the 2000s saw two
excuse me
2002 Anand was voted from the Civics
users group was voted in as president in
2003 we saw Peter Andrews elected as
president and this sort of starts a
period which in my view and I think that
had been in in indeed Terry was also
this view this is really where Linux
Australia as we now know today really
started to kick into gear when we had
this the PowerHouse that was peer sort
of driving driving things along
2004 a little bit of a website revamp a
new logo for for Linux Australia but
back in 2003 was a somewhat significant
event for us for this the um for Linux
Club value and I guess the the overall
open source ecosystem in Australia it's
the first time lennis tool showed up to
um to one of the sessions he actually
appeared in a penguin suit at LCA in
Perth which was kind of funny but
perhaps rather foolishly learned to say
well look I'll come back but only if you
organize a dunk tank which of course the
Adelaide team were more than happy to
have you to oblige
2005 install Fest are very much a thing
La website from that period knows the
AGM those sorts of things and trigger's
talking about Andrew trich or Andrew
Trudeau is talking about
interoperability with Version Control
Systems at LCA in 2005.
it's one of those kind of funny if
you're there you know but for those of
you that won't weren't present to wrote
a tool that was allowed interoperability
with a particular proprietary version
control system which at the time
somewhat controversial is being used to
manage the the Linux Source Linux source
code versioning and so forth it's fair
to say I think that that was a catalyst
for Linus to actually go on and write
get the the source code management tool
that we all know and mostly love to this
day and it was interesting talking to
Linus when we're in New Zealand ferocio
a couple of years ago and he put He
explained that these days he's actually
better known for his work on git than on
the Linux kernel itself
on LCA for a moment this is also the
first time we crossed the ditch over to
and ran an LCA
in New Zealand we've always enjoyed a
very Collegiate relationship with our
lovely cousins across the across the sea
and this is the first time we had an LCA
in 2000 and I think the gentleman
pictured um
is perhaps not as well known as he
should be but as van Jacobson who is the
author of The TCP header compression
algorithm a deep underpinning of
everything that in the mod even to this
day in the modern internet The Story
Goes that van Jacobson is wandering
around so he'd no one was really quite
sure who he was but he offered to help
and I said well sure can you crimp
network cables
sure okay so off he went that's um
that's links Australia the other thing I
wanted to pull out on this particular
side 2006
um we see Linux Australia being very
active in advocacy to government and
that's something that's continued to
this day as La has sought and I think
been quite effective in being one of
particular voices to the the Australian
public sector around open source policy
and that sort of that sort of thing
someone else is a Linux Australia
they've done or glad you asked well it's
fair to say that LCA or Lynx coffee has
been a big part of what La has done over
the years but it's by no means the only
thing that's done much more than just
facilitating LCA it's auspiced many
other conferences as we've listed there
we were talking at dinner last night
with a few friends from the open
community and we reckon all told the
number of attendees for La run or
auspiced events over the years must be
well over 10 000 people by now which is
quite impressive for a small
volunteer run organization
La also has a grant scheme I think still
do we yes I think yes um please please
enroll please apply there's um there's
money there for good causes to
facilitate open source related projects
LA's run various different awards at
different points along the way done
member surveys and generally looked at
engagement but all this is um very much
on the as I said being run by run by
volunteers
yeah there's a little bit of audience
participation at this point if you may I
was going to have a quick drink of water
thank you I'm done um
so can I ask if you've been involved in
a voluntary capacity with Linux
Australia or any of the conferences or
other activities in Australia New
Zealand and you're comfortable doing so
would you just take a moment to stand if
we can so we can seek all these
wonderful people are
I think a bit of a show of appreciation
for
[Applause]
[Music]
fix it thanks for that
thanks for that so speaking of
volunteers and that sort of stuff
this is going to be my one rant
for the dot for the or proximately you
know most people know not really the
ranty kind of a kind of a type
I was reflecting on
links Australia and the whole volunteer
the concept of volunteering in the open
source Community as a whole and and
particularly with some events
over the last 18 months and I'm actually
Choosing My Words a little carefully
here I'm not just pausing for dramatic
effect
but one of the things that I continue to
be amazed by is the simple absence of
kindness in many of our interactions uh
when we when we're dealing on
particularly on demanding lists and
particularly the thing that's a
nearly got me getting really really
ranty was some some discussions on the
Linux Australian mailing list indeed
sometimes the vitriol
that we have on these lists you just saw
a bunch of people standing up who
volunteered in links Australia these are
the people that when the protagonists of
people who could perhaps pause and not
sent that email or thought a little bit
more deeply or phrase it in a different
way or perhaps even phrase it as a as a
private inquiry rather than accusatory
why the hell are you doing sort of thing
these are the people you're attacking
I'd encourage all of you you're all fine
I'm sure it's no one in this room but
those that are watching online
um
but I would really
deeply encourage all of you to think
about approaching
your future interactions on the links
Australia mailing list and indeed
anything in the in our overall open
technical Commons with a bit of kindness
and remember that you're dealing with
Volunteers in every case
[Applause]
thank you
right that's the rant over
uh there was one more but that's
involves so don't you know when you're
writing applications please don't over
commit memory because in virtualized
environments it's really really hard to
sort of fake that but I'll um we'll wait
for some let some expert actually to
talk about it at some point in the
future but it's anyway and I have one
bad joke speaking of programming
languages I have an assertion to make
all right okay
so I don't normally read my slides but I
will in this case I would my assertion
is between Australia and New Zealand we
have for our population one of the most
wonderfully vibrant free and open source
communities in the world it's not
without its flaws and Wobbles to be sure
but we have a positive impact out of
proportion with the modest population of
the two countries in question yeah
now I'm not saying this to be
nationalistic I'm just making an
observation about
um the population density in population
size but all of us here and all and
those watching are part of a wonderful
technical Commerce so I thought it might
be nice to take a moment to ignite some
of the people projects and companies
from Australia New Zealand have been key
to that success and to just to
illustrate how rich that Heritage we
have
so this is a bit of an eye chart if
you're in my 2018 talk you would have
seen a similar thing it has been updated
but basically what I sought to do here
was saying well who are the people that
I've admired and projects both people
projects and companies over the years
and then I talked to a few of those and
pulled out a few few names and a few
projects this will be available online
so you can look later and but it's
clearly not exhaustive that would be a
much denser slide and I'm sure I've made
emissions in any in errors in which case
they're minor I do do apologize but I
thought I'd just take a few minutes to
call out a few that come to mind just to
give some examples of the wonderful
contributions that the Australia New
Zealand free and open source software
Community has made to the broader open
technical open technical Commons the
first one which I nearly missed
is um and embarrassing I actually
brought the John Lyons text to be able
to hold up which of course is in my bag
so I'm not going to jump off stage but
maybe we'll pass it around
so the the Lions commentary on Unix
in 1976 included source code which was
at the time the only real documentation
available on Linux on Unix I should say
outside Bell labs and of significance
was the fact that the sixth edition
allowed classroom use of the source code
the seventh and subsequence editions did
not which made it the book spread sort
of made basically the book spread like
wildfire on the photocopy machine
because you couldn't buy it once you
couldn't buy the new edition the the
older copper version became quite quite
valuable but it's commonly held to be
one of the most copied books in computer
science which I think is not bad for an
australian-based computer scientist and
John uh John Lyons cursed me too it's
almost 50 years ago so I guess in 2026
we should probably think about some sort
of appropriate commemoration or
recognition of that of that milestone
Peter Andrews will lead need relatively
little introduction I suspect to this at
this particular group but as I mentioned
earlier P was instrumental in kicking on
Linux Australia in 2003 she's since gone
on to do gov hack open data normalizing
open source basically just just about
everywhere
everywhere she went in the process
vicoliver from across the ditch
house from New Zealand he's instrumental
in the development of the device called
the reprap which is considered by most
to be the cause as it were of the 3D
printing Revolution and Vic actually
demoed an early incarnation of the Rat
prep I think at LCA in 2005 and I
remember being there it's just like oh
my gosh I am seeing the future kind of
thing because the whole concept of 3D
printing at that time while it was easy
to understand intuitively it was quite a
different thing to actually seeing it
happening in front of you
uh New Zealand is the clear current did
a lot of work in driving openness in New
Zealand government perhaps slightly less
so in politics more broadly but another
great contributor to the the open
technical Commons from from New Zealand
so that's obviously only a snapshot you
get the get the um the general idea but
it's I think a great Community to be a
part of and all of us here are part of
that but also a good one to to work in
it's going to touch a little bit about
working on free and open source software
and open hardware and as I said I've
been fortunate to work in in the field
on and off for quite a while I'm going
to mostly avoid in these next few slides
in the general remarks
talking about General work related
things and try and confine my remarks to
open source specific
it's a piece and if you haven't already
guessed this talk is going to jump
around a little bit and it'll be the
reasons that become apparent in about
six flights six slides a Time
so first of all you thought how do I
find a role in open source and I think
the obvious well it's tempting just to
go into one of the job search engines I
think often even to this day you do do
better just reaching out through your
own human networks your local user
groups we're at a conference networking
the hallway track
that's the thing are all opportunities
to just find out about what's there on
the ground because often the interesting
jobs aren't advertised or are only
lightly advertised because they're such
they're in such demand the Linux
Australia job section is another good
place to work if you're working in a
free and open source project already
then reaching out through the network
you have there
the one thing I would encourage you to
do though is think about where would be
a fit for you I think it's we're in a
pretty tricky job market at the moment
it's fair to say and I think some large
companies have made some particularly
foolish decisions in recently but um
that that aside well it may seem there's
not a lot of choice out there at the
moment I think it still makes sense to
take the time to try and find somewhere
that's actually going to align with you
does their Core Business align with your
values for example what are your views
on whether you want to be working local
versus remote versus some kind of hybrid
and importantly what's corporate what
does the corporate culture sort of feel
like what's the reputation of the of the
company so keep all these sorts of
things
do you mind
I had a bit of a chat with our
recruiting team and just got some
current sort of best practices I suppose
from them just to make sure these were
still still relevant be visible in the
projects are relevant so if you're
applying for a job in and saying of a
lead developer on such and such a
project or I've contributed such and
such a project you can be sure that the
recruiters in the modern recruiting
process will look at your LinkedIn your
GitHub and all those other places and
just see what your profile is online if
you don't have one it doesn't matter but
just don't talk it up unnecessarily just
be honest because it will be it will be
checked be yourself
um but be business friendly so be
mindful that your people in the part of
the modern recruiting process people are
going to look out there and just see
what um you know what your what Your
track record looks like particularly
from the employment standpoint and have
an accurate LinkedIn presence while
um LinkedIn may still be slightly
controversial some of the reality is
that recruiters do do look at it and
it's better to have even just a basic
entry so you at least appear the none
the none at all
you get to the application negotiation
process so do your homework on the
organization know what your what what
who you're approaching or what they do
and talk to the people that work there
if you possibly can on that you know
that's often not too hard to do spend
some time on interview prep if you don't
know your stuff it's okay but don't
don't knock your water bottle over onto
the electronics on the floor
know your stuff but if you don't but
don't sweat the interview process and
one of the things I would contend I
actually feel kind of strongly about
this one
is that I think all modern
sensible companies nice places places
you'd probably actually want to work
structure their interview process so
they're trying to help you to shine not
trip you up and I've been
through both and the latter is certainly
a much more pleasant way to be but I
would assert that most of the most
companies
if you likely to want to work will end
up being more in that sort of more in
that sort of vein think about your
salary expectations and stick to them
Valley of Roy had a really brilliant
page on this and I looked earlier in the
week and I could no longer find it but I
could find someone linking to it which
has a simple similar sorts of ideas but
there's some some excellent ideas there
and the basic premise there is that have
a real have realistic expectations not
too high so not too low not too high but
also not too low when it comes to
negotiating your salary because once
you're in the role it's very very
difficult difficult to get a step change
so you kind of want to get that right
and you don't want to be in a job and
then finding a I could have asked for X
percent more
asking about keeping copyright for your
code that should be pretty much a
no-brainer for most modern open source
open Hardware related companies
so you've got the job now what this is
one
that um I thought was was important to
point out in particular because now back
in them have painted there back in the
fortune position and managing a team
once again and I've had a bunch of new
people start working as part of our part
of my team over the course of the last
12 18 months and there's been a
consistent thing I've noticed is that
people worry about getting into the
groove too quickly most companies will
expect you to take two to three months
possibly more to really get established
so please don't come into a role and
feel oh gosh it's the second week I've
got to be know everything you don't it's
almost certainly a complex code base
they probably don't want you playing
with production just as yet until you've
really found your feet and know know
what you're doing so don't sweat that
that initial
that initial few weeks of getting into
the into the groove
do get out and do some exercise
particularly if you're working from home
which these days of course is a far more
common common way to be and be
particularly mindful of your work-life
balance and that can be tricky to do if
you're passionate about the tech and I
think that's one of the few downsides
for many of us who are working in an
industry which is very closely linked to
help he's another other interests is
it's far too easy to just have a poor
work-life balance
know when to jump this might seem a
little bit of a strange thing to say
just after you've got the job but if you
land
this is actually not for me
sometimes trust it makes sense to trust
your trust your Spider Sense and pull
the pin earlier rather than stay stay
longer because I think again because of
that we're often working in our own
hobby we do end up in a situation who
stay longer than we we should
so a little bit of a digression just to
talk about the some of some health stuff
I'm obviously not a doctor I was a
psychologist a psychiatrist or anything
like that but but our physical and
mental well-being are obviously very
very important and
inexorably linked to I should not use
words that are hard to pronounce in
slides
but if you think about our profession
ours is in the main are pretty sedentary
and often quite a solitary Pursuit so do
get out do some exercise spend some time
with your friends sitting and staying in
front of your computer all day is
probably not the best thing to do for
your body if you find it difficult to
take breaks get a time all the modern
operating systems have variations on
this week instead of times so only
working for 50 minutes they're not all
either force you to get up for 10
minutes and go for a walk or do some do
something eat more vegetables no really
beer isn't in fact a vegetable country
to popular belief but um
but no do try to eat well and mental
health is at least as important as the
physical as I said depression is a real
thing for many of us and this is where
I'm going to subdue a digression on a
bit of a
digression here and talk about my own
Journey a little bit so this is a photo
I took
of squirrel for reasons she'll become a
parent in a moment but I mentioned
earlier that my a lot of my school
reports along the lines of blemings
could do better if you applied himself
I had a reflection about eight years ago
nine or nine years ago a lot of my peers
seemed a lot more organized than I was
and perhaps more successful or whatever
that might be I think of a couple in
particular ctOS are quite successful but
they're also smarter than I am I think
but
I was like okay that's that's
interesting
so while I was fortunate to have landed
some more senior roles myself I was
still disorganized I'm always doing
everything at the last minute and sort
of just you know seemingly getting
getting anxious because I've got to get
this done in time and those sorts of
things the chance conversation with a
dear friend of mine in the states they
mentioned they had ADHD and we got
talking about it okay and so I looked
into this a bit
it didn't but it did and it actually did
a basic set of Diagnostics with the GP
the general practice general doctor that
I was working with at the time for usual
Health stuff that the results kind of
came back a bit inconclusive so I kind
of parked it okay maybe maybe it's I'm
just lazy as it turns out or just
disorganize some kind of
gave up I guess a little bit on that
a few few years ago three years ago I
moved down to the South Southwest
Victoria about four four hours drive
from here and working with the new GP
just on boring stuff like cholesterol
and all the rest I asked a quite pivotal
question and so what about your mental
health and so well I'm prone to it it
meant I'll get a bit blue and a bit
anxious and if I don't exercise enough I
feel pretty glum and I really sort of
scatterbrained and I find it really
really hard to do
to do stuff you know be organized and
that's the thing I mean a reasonably
senior role and I figure I should be
more organized she we've thought about
ADHD and so as a matter of fact I had
but I did the tests before and didn't
really come back very very conclusively
so so I think we should do them again
so I went ahead and did the um the more
more of the Diagnostics and all um some
more Diagnostics and sure enough they
came back quite um of uh yeah sorry time
yourself in that with a much more strong
sense that yes ADHD is probably going to
be a thing for me and a bit of imposter
syndrome or even trying to starting to
creep in at this point so
I feel that those are the best photo
author taken in a reasonable likeness of
my brain some days and I think my my
lovely sister for uh this we're all
kind of thing so everyone's ADHD is
different and I'm not purporting to
speak for anyone else anyway other than
myself in this case but I but I've what
I've come to realize is my brain is very
much like a squirrels like oh what's
that over there when I you know my sock
drawer was impeccably organized when
there's a deadline approaching
that's it I don't have the physical
aspects so much ironically like I can
just sit around and it's completely fine
but for other people
it's a very very different a very very
different part of the journey
the process of getting a full diagnosis
here in Australia is reasonably
reasonably evolved you actually have to
have a stands at the moment at least in
Victoria have an assessment through a
psychiatrist and they they run through
it and even that was kind of telling
because they're very capable and quite
warm psychiatrist but as we went as went
through the more detailed analysis that
they had me do is they said you know
what you you kind of actually on the
border a little bit in terms of what
we'd what we'd normally classes as ADHD
and this mostly has any implications in
terms of potential treatment regimes but
you said in your case I can tell you're
reasonably smart I tricked him
you've obviously you've probably had
this since you're a kid
you've probably you've developed coping
mechanisms over a period of about 40 or
more years to understand how to how to
work around this how to put sort of
Frameworks up and so forth
um to to sort of manage it and it was
one of those conversations that for me
is quite transformational so I thought
well that explains what any time where
I'm trying to get stuff done and really
I'm just bone tired because I'm using
all these extra Cycles just to keep my
brain on track on the tasks azure
so it was quite a it was quite a pivotal
conversation it's fair to say
confirmation bias is always a bit of a
difficult or dangerous sort of thing
that that sort of expression for you
have is a hammer suddenly everything
looks like a nail because of course
suddenly everyone who knew has ADHD
right but
more seriously I talked about it fairly
openly
um I guess very openly now
but I did mention it to a couple of dear
friends in the free and open source
community and ironically one it actually
had a very similar experience just
recently themselves and have found a
particularly good book on the topic and
and our friend who was also on the
course to say yeah that all sounds
eerily familiar I should probably go and
get that checked and sure enough as I
gather they've found a similar thing
themselves I was pretty candid about it
at work at grafana it's a pretty um
we've got a pretty caring kind of a
culture and transparency is important so
it's a pretty safe it's a safe place I'd
have to have to say but it was actually
quite um
quite empowering to be able to say look
you know if I think to base my team the
people I manage and and my peers so if
you if I ask you if you ask me to do
something I say I'm going to do
something I forget please remind me it's
not and it's not me being lazy or
forgetful it's actually just my brain is
sort of it why differently and I don't
always remember these sorts of things
another aspect of it which I thought was
worth um worth sharing is may or may not
be with ADHD is very hereditary and I
had the situation where once I found out
about this I mentioned it to my to my
broader family and a wonderful family
member has since found out that it's
part of their makeup as well quite a
little differently to mine but they've
now been able to get some
um they also help and maintenance to
work through that and it's been
transformative although already a super
super smart individual in the first
place but just going for these new
heights now that they've had that so it
was quite telling too that
as it turns out a common misdiagnosis of
ADHD is uh depression so and but
medications use the depression are often
exactly the wrong ones you want to use
for ADHD so I suppose
it's uh it's worth getting getting chips
I think the big relief for me was that
just to realize that I'm not and for
that matter we're not we're not broken
thanks
thank you
so I'm still working through the what to
do about it which is probably Apparent
from this talk
but it just simply knowing us there was
pretty pretty apparent oh one final
thing I did want to mention too
um just as a data point exercises
thought to be particularly important in
managing ADHD hence the linkage to the
exercise I mentioned earlier but what's
interesting for me is there's a growing
body of research that suggests in
particular exercise that uses the
balance part of your brain is
particularly helpful for ADHD as I
reflect on my own Journey the times when
I was most organized the most productive
have to be when I was fit and I got fit
by cycling so which is obviously fairly
balanced bounce wrong all right back on
the free and open source open hardware
and something for some people managers
do we have people managers in the room
oh please don't let me fold flat come on
throw it a few good okay hopefully the
rest all the rest of them busy watching
on tape
um so I'm back unfortunately back in the
Royal managing team of software
developers
um really really wide range of
backgrounds
time zones and geographies for that
matter but that's giving me a few few
perspectives and I've been fortunate to
be involved with some some stuff at work
where we've been identifying uh
technical organizational culture and how
we how we build successful ones there so
I'm sure I'm going to share a little bit
just based on those those observations
flow time
um there's something about we've
identified as enormously important and
I'd encourage all of you as individual
contributors but also the the managers
in the room to find or protect flow time
that is to say make sure you've got time
to work uninterrupted we encourage our
teams our everyone at grafana to block
out chunks of time in their calendar so
that people don't schedule meetings
there it may seem obvious but it's
transformative and as my wonderful
manager describes that it's okay for
managers to be interrupt driven but not
for individual contributors they should
be allowed to just not have to do tasks
or context switches continuously in
order to to accomplish what they need to
um you're probably managing introverts
you might even be one yourself but bear
that in mind when you're organizing uh
company events I continue to be
surprised amazed when I hear of company
events where it's all about loud music
for a crowd of people who probably don't
actually want to dance or would probably
rather just have somewhere quiet to
listen to some music softly in the
background and get on with their get on
their thing as a people manager
um I would encourage you to set yourself
the goal as being at least as good a
people manager as your individual
Engineers are Engineers or whatever the
individual contributor roles is that
they have and if you don't feel you can
do it well maybe don't do it I don't say
that to you anything disrespectful but
just simply that the people aspect of
the role is the most important part of
it and if you fail to do that well it
can have some pretty real consequences
for the people you manage so please
please take it do take it seriously
a bit about aggression learn cool tricks
from your colleagues and this was in the
context of say how you're in the role
how do you stay stay current
it's pretty hard to beat looking over a
colleague's shoulder now these days it's
almost going to be certainly going to be
virtual and I don't mean it in a weird
way obviously I'll get there get their
permission this isn't a hacking exercise
but um this is one tip I learned which I
only wouldn't have seen if I hadn't been
looking over trigger's shoulder that
morning I said oh that's a cool trick
and file that away for for a rainy day
do something in another part of the
stack I touch briefly on small memory
footprint systems embedded systems
that's the thing earlier on
do something that's part not that's not
part of your regular job and do it on
your own time if you need to be but do
it probably do it in another part of the
stack if you're a big systems programmer
look do something in the embedded space
or somewhere in between if you're a
similar if you're in a better programmer
write something that's much much further
up the stack to get some familiar
familiarity with those different parts
of the system play play around with
metrics logs and traces for example
um play around systems that are
somewhere in between our modern
microcontrollers things like the esp32
EXP 8266 would have been a circuit
supercomputer not so long ago but that's
still pretty still just a different
mindset for your programming start today
with security this I mean these are
pretty obvious sorts of things but take
the lid off or Tinker with old Hardware
or if you're a bit squeamish around
screwdrivers and soldering irons and the
pointy end is generally the hot one with
the soldering on
um just watch teardowns or those sorts
of things but my message here I guess is
just to take some time to understand the
full system because no matter what your
role is overall in the software
development or the the engineering life
cycle you'll be better at it for knowing
more of how the the system works overall
um Mike while the sunshines
unfortunately we're in a pretty volatile
job market now and so I'd encourage you
to at least stash a few Bob away for a
rainy day in case things don't go quite
as expected keep your people networks
ticking over I spoke about that earlier
as being a good way to find a job but
you want to kind of do it genuinely but
keep those those connections going
because you never know when you might
need to talk to torches through it or
soon say actually I need a job and if
it's the first time they've heard from
you for a couple years then that can be
a bit a bit rubbish
keep an eye out in a similar vein keep
an eye out for the for the next steps
where you might want to go next in case
you need to do so
unexpectedly I touched on learning new
skills earlier but when you when the um
should the unexpected occur
um just a few thoughts on that don't
panic
it's pretty rubbish if you've lost your
job unexpectedly to put it put it mildly
but going out in a Twitter store won't
help
it will it might make you feel better
for about 30 seconds but then it will
just work against you for the permanence
of the internet from there
it's not personal and this I've actually
been in this situation twice down myself
with a company restructures or whatever
has meant I've found oh I don't have a
job anymore it's a bit awkward
um
it's but it was put to me really really
well on the sessions that we did the
company I was working for at the time
had a particularly
gracious way of doing it was the first
time they'd done layoffs and so forth
and I handled it particularly well
the point they made in one of the
sessions sort of help us get back on the
wagon as it were was it's not personal
and it might seem like a strange thing
to observe but if you're affect what's
happening in the business has made a
decision the role you were doing is the
thing that has gone away you just happen
to be the poor bunny that was in it at
the time but it's not because you're a
good or bad person you're just a bit
unlucky on that day I don't say that to
minimize the distress it causes but just
to offer a different way to frame it if
you do find that yourself in that
situation it's not you
just
the company has done something so I
think it's the role that's gone away
and so forth
is it legal this is where you need a
lawyer I'm obviously not one but if you
think there's um it's a potentially an
unfair dismissal and that's something
you want to look at pretty pretty
closely because there are some fairly
short windows on on acting on that
the aftermath so
it's normal to feel a bit rubbish
obviously
um so self-care is even more important
than it ever was at that point start
reaching out don't assume people will
remember you but reach out and ask
people for what you know for
opportunities and just kind of keep
those those sorts of things going it's
okay to follow up periodically if you've
ever been in that situation yourself you
know someone might have asked you hey
Fred you got any work going and you
forget to get back to them it's probably
the same exactly the same for the person
you're talking to so do follow up with
them don't feel that there's a I haven't
heard back from they're not interested
they've got nothing for me just kind of
come back from from time to time
I'd suggest keeping a search discreet
for the first week or two you don't need
to immediately flip the bit on your
preferred job search engine or job
website to say that you're
um
you know looking for new work you might
be able to find something
um more more discreetly as it were and
just kind of keep things ticking over
that way
and beware of imposter syndrome and this
is this is a particularly telling one I
think a self-doubt can certainly creep
in and I remember having a conversation
with a with a dear friend of mine who's
a really well known really well
respected I'd almost say older about
open source community and they found
themselves in a situation where they
were out of work unexpectedly from quite
a senior role and this is something
you'd all know I'm obviously not going
to name them so I think that I'm sitting
there listening to my account they say
man if this person can get imposter
syndrome what what hope of
as many Mortals got sort of thing but it
really is it really is a thing but
you're all really good at what you do
and it's a part of this a broader thing
I think of just having a bit of courage
to to back yourself and I'm going to
spend the next few slides and pretty
much to wrap up with some thoughts on
on that
so something sunk in for me only really
quite recently is you can actually
accomplish a lot more than you you ever
thought sort of it's a funny trait I
think of a lot of people in the open
technical Commons and
a lot but sadly not all maybe Engineers
developed there's a fair amount of
modesty in there but sometimes that
modesty can actually work against you
know actually I can't do that rather
just saying okay you get into this funny
to headspace so he had this photo of the
shy kid back in 1984
a little earlier to kick things off this
is one sort of a similar one I guess
from around similar and this is me
doing Sound and Lighting at my my high
school we were doing a production of
what Orpheus in the Underworld I was
doing lights and I remember choosing
lights because if you messed up a
lighting queue it was far less obvious
than getting microphone feedback sort of
thing so I really did not want to be
that person out out the front at all I
should add that's my lovely sister in
the background who normally does smile
but she was looking rather stainfully at
what two people were doing off off the
off the frame there and remember this is
1984 so we are both fashion appropriate
for the Euro
you know it suffice to say um not a lot
of self-confidence but since since that
photo is taken as I touched on the start
of the presentation I've done played in
bands it had quite a lovely experience
of doing music in different four
different ways but it's always been very
much in the background I was the
keyboard player at the back next to the
drummer and the bass player it's the
thing or whatever it might be but very
much in the um
so this is last year
um
so I mentioned some music and passing
but this was um something that was a bit
new to me because I don't ever sung in
the car
so I learned to sing to give back in
2014 I was still living in Canberra to
do some lessons with a great teacher
there Beck Taylor and that's what got me
started on the on the journey I guess a
little bit and I sung Amazing Grace at
her end of turn concert it was kind of
cool because most of her students were
kids or young younger people there were
two two adults in there but we've still
got to do the end of term so concert
with everyone else but that was kind of
cool
I moved to Melbourne in 2017 did some
lessons with a teacher in Brunswick
which is my shame I've not been able to
find finding nobody did a couple bit of
help but when I moved down to the
Southwest
in in late 2020 I started doing some
lessons shortly there afterwards with
quite a force of nature down that way of
seeing teacher by the name of Leah Oswin
and I went into Lee and said look I want
to just get some backing vocals got
going because I think one day I want to
join a band again and it's good to be
able to do vocals
okay fair enough and I did a couple
lessons with her and then went along to
a um a workshop on musical theater that
was was being run in the region and
actually on my next lesson with Leo sung
a song from My Fair Lady she's like
the local theater company or auditioning
for cats you should probably think about
that okay so I thought I'd have a go and
I won't spend too much time musical
theaters that's the entire talk in its
own right but I figured I'd have a go at
The Ensemble so this is the cast that
sort of sing you know do all the
wonderful stuff in the uh in the in the
behind the scenes so to speak but I sung
um a song from Gus the song called Gus
the theater cat as part of my on
um audition for The Ensemble but I was
quite wonderfully
um humbled to get I actually offered the
role so oh okay I'm assured I'm assured
it wasn't just the hair right like
so um so Gus's gusta theater cat's
actually a poem from T.S Elite's book of
cats and some of you may have seen the
musical some of you may not some of you
may try to understand it don't because
it's just it's it's not really meant to
be understood it's meant to be a lot of
fun but Gus is the old theater cat and
he's the one with a story or an anecdote
for every occasion and you've been
seeing you listening to me for about 45
minutes you can probably see a certain
amount of typecasting going on at this
point but if it is fair to say that
there's a there's a linkage there
so this is um a shot from taken by one
of my castmates of us performing on on
stage and so 2022 in July of last year
the Lighthouse Theater pilate actors and
warrnambool theater currently put on
cats uh jelly arum the character to the
left is the lovely Ally mcpariner now a
dear friend and I've got to say we the
the gusta theater cats are duet it was a
privilege and just a joy to hear Ali
Singh her part of the duet each evening
and from only only a couple of feet
but feet away I should say but um it was
another one of these occasions where I
found I felt like I found my crew almost
the kindred spirits and I think there's
I've always felt that in the open source
community and I'd sort of been
peripherally involved as I said in in
theater but this is just a whole nother
level of sort of uh homecoming but for a
geeky kid and frankly a bit of a geeky
adult it was quite a wonderful jump to
to have made
right I know a couple of big shout outs
were on the downward
um two quick shout outs um wanted to do
real quick
I mentioned open power previously I'm no
longer the executive director but I'm
still involved in a voluntary capacity
but I did want to touch on just a very
one thing that happened since we last
since I last talked about it one of the
proudest moments has been part of the
open power community in that at the time
I was is we actually was my my own
Modest part in guiding the power Isa the
instruction set architecture the
detailed specifications of the power
microprocessor architecture to be an
open Isa which gives us as an open
technical Commons two choices at least
two now in the open microprocessor space
and I think open Computing particularly
that low open Hardware so level is going
to be tremendously important to our
ongoing successes it was an open
technical Commons it probably doesn't
get quite the visibility it should but I
did want to just give it a bit of a bit
of its um to you here thank you
so it's open open pair I've got some
interesting stuff going on both include
um some Libre or free silicon
implementations are on the way and
there's a power pie project and you can
join the dots as to what that might
might be like quick glass of water sorry
and I'd be remiss not to mention this
wonderful Bunch
um I'm very proud to be of what my team
and uh what we're doing overall at
grafana it's not a protocol to spend a
whole bunch of time doing a commercial
talk so I won't but you can try our
pretty useful
free forever plan it's a surprising
amount of data you can actually send up
to our service and it's actually free
for life so it's actually kind of quite
a useful thing and we do have some open
roles in APAC at the moment as well not
a ton of them but if they're of Interest
please do they'll come and
come now and chat to me
so
the final thing I talked a bit about
being an introvert and positive syndrome
backing yourself
having people to encourage you that's
the thing and I also like to acknowledge
my lovely partner Kate who's been
extremely supportive through all the
various twists and turns the last last
few years
thank you
[Applause]
um so I thought I'd try and set a good
example to put myself on the line a
little bit in the hope
it encourages you or I'm doesn't have
you running for the exit that's the case
anyway I figure it's one thing to sing
on stage in entire company and actors
and musicians around you or as I've done
and make up on for that matter and Lycra
yeah
um but something else to do at solo so I
thought I'll uh try and give you a
little like a pillar rendition Augusta
theater Captain to close
so I hope it inspires you to try things
you you wouldn't have thought you would
too
[Music]
I have played in my time every possible
part and I used to know 70 speeches by
heart
extemporized back chat I knew how to gag
and I knew how to let the cat out of the
bag
I knew how to act with my back and my
tail with an hour of rehearsal I never
could fail I'd a voice that would soften
the hardest of Hearts whether I took the
lead or in carried apart I have sat by
the bedside of poor little now when the
curfew was wrong then I swung on the
bell in the pantomime season I never
fell flat and I once understudied dick
whittington's cat but my grandest
creation as history will tell as fire
forfeittle the fiend of the fell
thank you
[Applause]
thank you
thank you that's about this most
gracious of you although I really am
done but I will just say one fine
um
Sarah touched on this when we came in
this morning when in her remarks this
morning but I had the Good Fortune to
catch up with a few folk at dinner last
night and then seeing him all today I
think it's just so wonderful to be part
of this community and so I wanted for us
to have the opportunity to be back
together in person I think it really is
a great thing about yourself to be
pleasantly surprised what you can do and
I hope today something's been something
that was inspired in some small way as
well we've got some links which I'll
share on my blog later they'll be up by
lunchtime hopefully
thank you again
[Applause]