Participate or Die -- Abstract -- Karsten Wade

This presentation explains why it is critical to your business to participate in open source projects.

If you are not participating in the upstream open source projects that 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.

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.