All Open Source Problems Solved in this Session -or- Dousing the Open Source Tire Fire

Track: NightHacking
Skill Level: Beginner
Tags: scala , erlang , openstack , cloud foundry , elixir , open source
Abstract

"Scala is hard to read -and way more confusing than Java”, “Erlang is impossible for many reasons, but how is Elixir better?” “OpenStack doesn’t scale”, “Platforms are so opinionated, why would I want to try Cloud Foundry? BOSH is a mess” … and so many more..
 
We’ve all heard comments like this, usually uttered in disgust over a drink during an event reception hour—for the very project being criticized. 
 
Every open source project and community has its headaches. Criticisms about governance, roadmap and focus are often simply the downsides of the very advantages open source provides: transparency, inclusiveness, and agility. And other criticisms can often be unmasked as groundless, ill-informed, or already in the process of remediation.

In this panel, however, a group of open source insiders will take an honest, unvarnished look at several critiques common to most open source projects, then offer ideas on how we can address them. 

Kim Martin Bannerman

Kim Bannerman leads the Technical Advocate team inside the Office of the CTO at IBM Blue Box. Kim has over a decade of experience in the tech industry working with enterprise customers. Prior to joining Blue Box, Kim was the Director of Technical Evangelism at CenturyLink Cloud.

Kim is passionate about people, open source technology and community – among many other things. She turned her love of learning about new technology into co-founding the Atlanta Hadoop Users Group in 2011. Since then, she founded the Seattle StartupChicks chapter and both the Seattle & Atlanta Cloud Foundry meet-up groups in 2014 (and co-organizes them still today). She’s also an Ambassador for the Cloud Foundry Foundation. When she’s not on an airplane, Kim loves spending time with her husband and blended family of 5 kids who age in range from 9 to 20.