@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

anthrocypher

@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io

Principal, Uploop. Guerrilla researcher. Community systems designer. I turn developer tools into movements.
Ex Stack Overflow, Shapeways, Nodejitsu.
Invested in the deliberate practice of a brighter future. she/they

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anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

Okay, so there's an extraordinary community story unfolding right now in the Home Assistant ecosystem:

Chamberlain, the maker of MyQ automated garage doors, stopped supporting third-party apps in order to force device owners to use Chamberlain’s app.

Why?

So they can serve in-app ads, of course.

For real, they're forcing the customers who have already paid them money for hardware to ALSO use their app so they can keep monetizing their eyeballs.

(1/n)

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

This Harvard Business School paper from Hoffmann, Nagle, and Zhou on the estimated monetary value of open source is kind of an incredible feat.

$8.8 trillion, btw.

That's the estimated value of open source, according to these researchers' excellent work.

https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/24-038_51f8444f-502c-4139-8bf2-56eb4b65c58a.pdf

anthrocypher,
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

I've talked before about how the most important things don't always show up in spreadsheets (“What IS the ROI of clean water, good soil and breathable air?”)

and how organizations whose purpose is to make money are currently having a harder time making money because they don't/can't measure the non-pecunariary resources they rely on.

So, if all orgs stare at and act on are spreadsheets, they'll eventually deplete those foundational resources enough that their spreadsheets will look worse.

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

We have to stop wasting time on ‘community.’

Software that wins builds movements: people learn to succeed in new ways, and work together to become new versions of themselves.

This doesn’t have to be an accident!

I've been at this for 13 years, and part of why I went independent is that most orgs just don’t think in these terms.

It's been such a blast finding the emerging leaders who DO

https://www.uploop.dev/blog/stop-wasting-time-on-community/

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

What if instead of “non-code contributions” we called them “social contributions”?

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

I've had so many thoughts since seeing this earlier this week.

It's completely true, and I think it's bad that it's true.

When orgs don't create good shared, working definitions and words are arbitrary moving targets, everyone runs around spending indiscriminate cycles, dollars, and energy hoping it'll accidentally yet happily propel them in the right direction.

It creates burnout, wasted runway, blown budgets. Ask me how I know.

josh, to opensource
@josh@josh.tel avatar

Hoo boy. I'm not naming names because I don't want to fan the flames, but the knives are out:

Events around have rightly emboldened volunteer-driven open source projects to take their hyper-wealthy downstream users to task.

Wild to think that many large companies have hollowed out their open source program offices (OSPOs), the internal teams who have been working on addressing these resource issues.

I fear this will get worse before it gets better.

anthrocypher,
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

@josh IMO we're at at point in the cycle where many orgs are at peak constituency illiteracy.

It's not good for anyone.

https://www.uploop.dev/blog/stop-wasting-time-on-community/

grimalkina, to random
@grimalkina@mastodon.social avatar

A real challenge for me in this life is that for years and years because of my areas of research I have it firmly in my brain that "performance orientation" is generally speaking a pretty maladaptive thing and I am used to thinking of "performance cultures" quite negatively in terms of, this is a place where you don't feel you can be authentic or show your effort (only outcomes) and that's a known bad thing but in business, uhhhh.....the word performance is MUCH more positive 😂

anthrocypher,
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

@grimalkina I was having a conversation some years back with someone with a neuroscience PhD and a psych background. I acknowledged that I was feeling real insecurity about having recently joined “a really high performing team”.

She says to me “You know who else is high performing? Dogs in dog shows.”

I will never stop thinking about that.

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

There's this halfway correct assertion that software is zero marginal cost, and it fueled the VC-funded everything of the last cycle.

But software at scale requires more humans to ensure reliable delivery to users, and more humans still to help users be successful with that software.

Skating over this point is how we got to now.

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

Online conflict is one of the scariest things about building something that matters in an internet age

but it doesn't have to be.

Pulling from a lot of firsthand experience, I wrote a guide to help leaders make tense moments with extended constituencies more constructive.

https://www.uploop.dev/blog/make-decisions-to-defuse-online-conflict/

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

For ages, music production has been as enchanting to me as it has been opaque. This year I finally made some progress grokking the fundamentals. I wrote this to help it stick.

https://blog.anahevesi.com/2023/12/27/music-production-101-with-vcv-rack/

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

I love this from @danilo so much. It's not a promise, nor a solution, because those would both be disingenuous and ineffective.

Instead, it’s an exercise in refusing to accept the wrong constraints. I believe that’s the work under every work that matters.

https://redeem-tomorrow.com/sorry-i-still-want-to-build-technology

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

In an age where gen AI makes it much cheaper to produce code, the ability to read, comprehend, and review code becomes that much more crucial.

Until and unless businesses and executives recognize this, they won’t actually be able to realize the economic upside of AI because they’ll be too busy creating so many fires which need putting out.
https://cute.is/@keith/112191562540684140

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

"Where do we go from here?"

It’s time we answer that together. Every great conversation I've had lately has come down to this question.

So: imagine an invite-only, one week community for our sociotechnical future. Async conversation exploring today’s terrain and tomorrow's ambitions, culminating in two hours of talks.

Interested in this experiment?

https://www.uploop.dev/event

anthrocypher,
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

I'm delighted we'll have @dahukanna joining us as well:

Dawn is a computational designer. Wielding mastery of software, hardware, and networks, she models their interactions to empower people.

In a world where our organizations too often keep our skills and abilities constrained to tidy boxes, Dawn's cross-disciplinary practices are a beacon. Together, we'll be exploring computing as a source of creativity and joy.

You don't want to miss this.

https://www.uploop.dev/event

anthrocypher,
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

The magic of the internet, and the human creation it enables, hasn't gone anywhere. It's the very thing that enabled staggering levels of tech wealth the last 15 years.

It also doesn’t show up in spreadsheets.

Firms today are staring laser-eyed at quarterly reports, wondering why the money isn't coming the same way.

Failing to invest in extended constituencies is leaving us all poorer.

I think we should talk about it:

https://www.uploop.dev/event

anthrocypher,
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

So this event has live conversations. First one to announce: @haubles.

In her day job, Hannah makes sure OSS projects get the bandwidth they need.

I want to talk to her about the complicated human components that technical ecosystems depend on. Through her rigor and clarity about these social dependencies, Hannah is one of the people modeling where I want to go from here.

Still have room for a few more. Apply to join us today:

https://www.uploop.dev/event

KFosterMarks, to random
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

Lit reviewing "developer experience" as a construct and earliest thing I found in initial search is from Fagerholm and Münch(2012):

F. Fagerholm and J. Münch, "Developer experience: Concept and definition," 2012 International Conference on Software and System Process (ICSSP), Zurich, Switzerland, 2012, pp. 73-77, doi: 10.1109/ICSSP.2012.6225984.

It doesn't reference any existing literature on developer experience. Google ngram also shows a HUGE spike in "developer experience" mentions in 2013.

anthrocypher,
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

@grimalkina @trochee @gvwilson @KFosterMarks Having been deep in devtools in 2012-2013, talk of ”developer experience” emerging around then makes sense, I can see it meeting a need. Node.js revolution meant you could turn front-end devs into backend devs. GitHub was propagating, lowering the barrier to production of OSS software.

If as a VC you REALLY want software eating the world, you also need devs eager to cook that world

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

Consensus building takes an extraordinary amount of labor.

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

This AM I'm spending some time with @dahukanna's talk “APIs: semi-permeable osmotic interfaces”.

It's devastatingly precise and wonderfully interdisciplinary. I’ve rarely seen systems of interaction modeled on this level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqEXAqGZJPw

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

So much comes down to one very simple question:

Are you growing with people or are you extracting from them?

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

“Feasting on seed crops"

is going to be my new shorthand for all the extremely short-term practices, and constituency illiteracy

that's dominating so many business and leadership styles lately.

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

I have a core of compatriots who are trying to make our industry more rigorous, visionary, and kind.

And what I’ve realized in recent weeks is we're all out here working to explicate what’s made our species successful from first principles BECAUSE WE HAVE TO.

anthrocypher,
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

Turns out psychological safety isn't a "nice to have”. Turns out balancing competition with cooperation is better for long-term outcomes. Turns out when you show up for people, they want to show up for you. Turns out organizations are comprised of humans, squishy and emergent, and org charts and spreadsheets are only lagging indicators of reality.

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

Really excited to attend my first PyCon.

What should I know?

anthrocypher,
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

Seriously cannot thank organizers enough for the robust public health policy.

As someone who can’t afford to fuck around and find out, y’all’s practices are a game changer. ❤️

anthrocypher, to random
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

Relatedly, I’ve been thinking a lot about maintenance work. It’s a completely different mode than the production of something new.

It's a matter of diving into an existing situation and untangling it.

After years of open source constituency management, where I'm incentivizing people to work with one another's code, I have some ideas about what makes it so tricky…
https://hachyderm.io/@anthrocypher/112191630639655941

anthrocypher,
@anthrocypher@hachyderm.io avatar

Again, the exact moment when code review is becoming more necessary than ever, thanks to gen AI, is also a moment where industry respect for emotional labor is at an all-time low.

Until code review and maintenance is valued properly, businesses are actually kneecapping their own ability to realize the economic benefits of AI.

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