Bio

Karsten Wade is a 15 year IT industry veteran, a long time Red Hat
associate and Fedora Project contributor, and general open source
iconoclast.  As a member of the industry leading open source community
team at Red Hat, Karsten has seen, done, and recovered from many open
community mistakes.

== Short Abstract ==

You must participate in the open source core to your business, or you cede your future to others. Why is participation key to survival?

== Abstract ==

If you are not participating in the upstream open source projects that
you or your business relies upon, you are giving control of your
future to other people.  Many of whom may be your direct or indirect
competitors.  But all of whom could be your open collaboration
friends, working together toward shared solutions.  This talk explains
why it is critical to your business to participate in open source
projects.

Successful open source enterprise solutions come from successful open
source projects.  The keys to that success are contributors, but there
is another, lower barrier, high impact way to gain from open source
projects.  By turning your business and your teams into participants,
you gain an important voice in the open source projects that matter to
you the most.  By focusing mainly on those important projects, you can
turn a small investment in to a high-value return without increasing
budget or resources.

In this talk you learn why it is critical to participate in open
source projects, how to pick the open source projects that are closest
to your core business, i.e., that should matter the most to you, how
to plan where to put resources in which open source projects, and how
to make and measure low cost investments that are a high-value outcome
for your business.  You also learn why to be bold and learn through
mistakes.

Who should attend?

If you use open source in your business, you should attend.

If you rely upon open source solutions for your business to run, you
should attend.

If you care about the future of your business and how your chosen open
source solutions affect you, you should attend.

If you've ever thought about participating in upstream open source
projects, you should attend.

If you have had failures or been burned from participating in open
source projects, you should definitely attend.