A year ago I came to All Things Open at the invitation of Jason Hibbets who was the community manager of Opensource.com. At the time I was thrilled to be invited and so I came to the conference with some expectations but not really knowing what was in store for me. I met people like Jason, Rikki Endsley, Phil Shapiro and Jeff Mackanic. I remember how Jeff repeatedly thanked me for coming and how good that made me feel at the time. I decided a year ago that I wanted to come back here because I learned so much at the conference and met so many wonderful people who made me feel so good about being here.
In December of last year Phil Shapiro suggested that I tell Jason that I was interested in the Community Moderator program. I felt a bit reticent because I doubted my own credentials and qualifications but I did follow his suggestion. Jason was happy to welcome me on board and in January I officially joined the team. Since that time I’ve met other members of the group including Jen Wike Huger, Bryan Behrenhausen, Alex Sanchez and many more. In the past ten months I written over thirty articles about a variety of topics. Some articles came from my own experience with Linux and open source software. Others like interviews were new to me. In the process I got to meet a number very interesting people and to learn about aspects of open source that I would not otherwise have explored on my own. Today for example I had a chance at this year’s All Things Open Conference to meet Harper Reed who I interviewed a month ago. Also today I got to meet Frank Karlitschek who developed OwnCloud and another of my interviewees. My colleagues have helped me to grow professionally as a writer and as a person too. They’ve both challenged and encouraged me and I’m excited to be involved. I recently told Robin Muilwijk that he and the others in our group had been the wind beneath my wings.
In the past couple of days I’ve gained unique insights into being part of an open organization and today we all shared lunch and an open discussion of “The Open Organization” with it’s author, Jim Whitehurst who is the CEO of Red Hat. What a thrill to be sitting in the Red Hat Board Room with my colleagues other members of the Red Hat team. There’s still one more day of this years conference and I’m looking forward to it. I’m also looking forward to continuing this wonderful journey with Opensource.com.