reflection-by-kenneth-lim.md

OSACC Reflection

Kenneth Lim

Being a contributor based in London, it isn’t very often that I get to meet other contributors in person. In fact the last time this happened, the world probably seemed like a completely different place, that was back in summer of 2019 for the p5.js contributor conference held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. What is reassuring is that the energy, approachability, and positivity of the open source software for the arts community hasn’t changed and continues to be massively welcoming and inspiring. At the same time it is equally if not more inspiring to see contributors to many different projects from many different countries around the world joining the conference and bringing in their diverse perspectives of what open source means to them.

For my part, I will try to summarize to some extent, a selection of the different working groups I have been a part of and some of the takeaways I was left with. When it comes to accessible open source software, the focus should be about reducing barriers of entry generally, either through more accessible avenues of communication, more accessible toolings, or a focus on education. Drawing ideas from the social model of disability, the barriers to access are often caused by the environment and not because of the inherent difference between people. As such we should be seeking to create environments, systems, frameworks in a collaborative manner with the people we seek to include and have open source that are accessible by default.

On discussions of education, a really nice thing we have at the conference is that we have students being at the same table as educators discussing these topics. The discussion centered around the challenges of in person/remote teaching and teaching a student body of diverse technical background. Having the opportunity to share experiences, tips, and techniques with other educators are greatly invaluable, while having students join in the discussion reminds me that we should also look into including our students in a more active role in the classroom instead of just being the sole recipient of knowledge, for we educators are definitely learning from our students as well.

Sustainability in open source’s discussions touch on trends and feedbacks I see over the years working on p5.js as well as from responses to the (yet to be fully processed) data gather from the p5.js contributor survey I did for Google Summer of Code program earlier in the year. Active engagement, synchronous work, mentorship are all crucial aspects of creating an active and healthy contributor community.

During the discussions around contributing to p5.js on GitHub, many different ideas are floated and among them: the first time contributor experience, the journey from being a user to become a contributor, the format of the website, to have alternative ways of documenting contribution process (eg. video tutorials). We even filed an issue live using the working group session! (https://github.com/processing/p5.js-website/issues/1354) All the ideas we had during the sessions are all things I would love to see done for the project and I look forward to any contributors taking them forward and create contributions that leads to more contributions, it’s a contribution fractals!

Translation and localization is something I have been interested in for a very long time, ever since my 2018 Processing Fellowship project. It is personally very reassuring to speak with and hear from all the different projects at the conference around their interest and myriad of ideas around how we can enable communities around the world working in non-English language to learn and contribute to open source projects. Having the perspectives of other contributors who do work with different language communities, such as Munus who worked with indigenous Taiwanese community, helped greatly with bringing a clear context to how these communities currently manage learning digital technologies while faced with the language barriers, amongst many other barriers they have. A great idea that came out of the discussions is to consider a wiki-like governance structure for accepting and moderating translation contributions, that enable local language communities to determine for itself the translations that best fit their community. I will certainly keep exploring and developing this area going forward.

OSACC 2023 was certainly an intensive few days in Denver, where the air is thinner and drier than I have ever experienced. However, the community that gathered in Denver for those few days have no doubt provided a lot of valuable connections, food for thought, and new interesting projects/initiatives for not just me but hopefully for many of the other members of the community as well. I look forward to the next time where we can gather like this again with perhaps more new contributors and new projects that may be brought on board after this event!