---
# System prepended metadata

title: Themes

---

# Themes

Accepted Tracks:
* DEI, FOSS@Play, FOSS for Education, Open Work (govt and edu), AI + Data, BSD, Containers, Research for All, Community

Should there be a theme for themes?

Quick thoughts for prospective themes:

* **open source and education**
  teaching people about open source, using open source in teaching, the world's your oyster!
  
> [name = Monica] there is an education track so do we want to point people towards their CFP?]
> 
~~* **the next 20 years of open source**
  what are the challenges that open source will face in the next 20 years? the opportunities?
  roundtable or panel?~~
* **open source succession**
  share your thoughts/experiences on growing your contributors into maintainers, best practices for handling shared assets, and *gasp* open source advanced directives
* **open source research**
  how does 
> [name=Monica] Should we encourage people towards the research track?
* **the open source ethos**
  //catch all
* **community/corporate relations**
  when community projects become companies, how to balance different priorities, keeping communities from becoming resource-ified
* **codes of conduct**
  how to demonstrate need for a code, how can we put codes in better practice, expanding codes to things like public health
* **community infrastructure**
  more technical theme, possibly, on different open source tools to support your community, how to use them effectively, the question of proprietary platforms, and how to decide (or rather, let your community decide) what to use
* **governance**
  how are decisions made in a project or foundation, what are the different approaches to governance and what are they good for, when is it time to make a change, how do you approach and navigate transitions, should our project apply to join a foundation
* **finances**
  where to spend money, how to talk and think about money in contexts where most people are volunteering, how to manage funds and where to put them
* **contributor experience**
  building pathways to contribution, facilitating drive through contributions as well as leveling up dedicated contributors (this overlaps w succession theme), building a culture of mentorship
* **beyond code**
  how do we attract and retain contributors who specialize in design, or UX, or marketing, or community management, or technical writing; recognizing contributors who don't show up in commit logs; meeting contributors halfway rather than asking everyone to use dev tools
* **diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging**
  how to support people across various dimensions of diversity: geography, language, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, education, disability and chronic illness, gender, sexual orientation, parents and caregivers
> [name=Monica Ayhens-Madon] I think we could point people towards the DEI track, but also still let people submit their talks on this subject to our track if they'd like, especially since DEI said they don't want to be the lone voice talking about this. I think we could focus more heavily on the belonging aspects of this subject
* **event organizing**
  running meetups and conferences
* **marketing**
  how to reach new users and contributors, picking and staffing channels, content strategy
  
  
  Got some governance things, could perhaps fold finance/succession into that
  Contrib experience could go with beyond code or codes of conduct
  Codes of conduct could go into DEIB
  Event organizing/marketing could be combined, or folded into governance
  Next 20 years - we don't really talk about where we want to be -- !! promote this to a conference-wide thing, and/or have a dedicated discussion for this that _we_ organize
  ---
  governance = processes, roles, standards = finance, succession, governance
  contribex = dei&b, contributer experience, codes of conduct, beyond code
  infrastructure = community infrastructure, events, marketing
  ---
  deib & codes of conduct
  governance & finance & succession
  events & marketing & community infrastructure & contributor experience & beyond code & succession
  the open source ethos & community-corporate relations
  