reflections on my open journey (so far)

This past year, I’ve had the privilege of reflecting on the experiences that brought me into the “open ecosystem” in a few keynotes talks and shared discussions. Somehow, some folks thought that I had something to share with them about my own experiences!

These kind folks enabled me to take some time to reflect (and even iterate on these reflections) over the course of the year, and I’m sharing these reflections here both as a log for myself, as well as a collection of histories as they happen in real time.

Slide: Timeline of my open journey

At the June fireside chat for The Turing Way, a few wonderful folks shared their experiences with the community and in openness more broadly. Following their lead (whose slides can be found here), I built a slide that helped me to think through my own experiences in the open ecosystem. If you’d like to explore the slide directly, you can visit this link here.

I also gave two versions of a talk that tried to stitch together my experiences more narratively, in a way that might make sense for others (and gives the illusion of linearity as well)! Then again, perhaps the threads I stitched together in retrospect might also still.

Talk: “Changing culture through open practices: mapping my journey in open scholarship” (14 September 2022)

• Slides: https://zenodo.org/record/7077467
• Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKH8RuSCq4c&t=5s
• I have to admit, seeing this talk again, I feel like I was still so much in the midst of processing so much from the previous months, that it seemed to become a Turing Way talk after a quick zoom through a few choice experiences, though perhaps the connections perhaps weren’t as clear. At the time, I feel like I was still learning the language of The Turing Way, and what its implications were for my own experiences.

Talk: “From culture to computation: mapping my open research journey” (10 March 2023)

• Slides: https://zenodo.org/record/7746621
• Recording: Coming soon!
• With this talk, I felt like I had been able to stitch together (a bit more coherently), the narrative between my past and present relationship with openness. I built off of my previous slides, and talked through what I perceived to be the politics with more confidence. And while the slides are primarily visual, hopefully the recording will make them more clear!

There’s still a lot of ongoing reflection, writing, observation and sharing going on with the OpenStreetMap community in particular, and my experiences from that time specifically. I didn’t spend much time on that here: this is for another blog!

Thank yous

• Thank you Saranjeet Kaur for the invitation to speak at RSE Asia Australia Unconference (RSEAACon) in 2022
• Thank you Susana Roman Garcia and Ceilidh Welsh for the invitation to speak at the Data Hazards, Ethics and Reproducibility One-Day Symposium in 2023
• Thank you Malvika Sharan, Alejandro Coca-Castro, Emma Karoune, Andrea Sanchez-Tapia, and Patricia Herterich for sharing your inspiring open stories, and for inspiring me to do the same.