Executive Director at the OpenJS Foundation | Robin Bender Ginn

Luke Schantz: In this episode of In The Open, we bring you a conversation with Robin Ginn, the Executive Director at the OpenJS Foundation. We will be discussing a variety of topics, including the origin and mission of the OpenJS Foundation, as well as their programs, certifications, and upcoming events. Before we welcome our guest, let's say hello to my co- host, Joe Sepi.

Joe Sepi: Hey Luke, how are you my friend? How's the weather out there?

Luke Schantz: I'm doing well, Joe, thank you for asking. It's a little rainy, I believe it's the remnants of Hurricane Nicholas, which I believe went through Houston but didn't really collaborate too bad.

Joe Sepi: Okay. Okay. Yeah. And we're already up to" N"? Didn't we just have" I"? These things go fast, don't they? Nicole.

Luke Schantz: Yeah, because that is the convention. They do it alphabetically and...

Joe Sepi: Yeah.

Luke Schantz: Do they switch...

Joe Sepi: Genders?

Luke Schantz: ...Pronouns each year? Is that a thing? I don't know how they do it.

Joe Sepi: I'm not sure either. We'll have to look into that and save it for next time.

Luke Schantz: Sounds good.

Joe Sepi: Yeah. Normally our weather's similar normally, but I'm in Chicago right now and it's actually quite lovely. Very sunny, hot. I feel like the sun is brighter here. Is that a thing? I don't know. It just feels very bright.

Luke Schantz: It might just be the Midwest is such a friendly place, it you're just, you feel it.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, things shine brighter in nice places. Yeah.

Luke Schantz: Without further ado, let's find out how the weather is on the West coast and meet our guest, Robin.

Joe Sepi: Hi Robin.

Robin Ginn: Hey, great to see you all. Hey there. Yeah, I was ready for that weather talk. Climate change. Yeah, we've had, actually the sky's a little cloudy today, but at least it's clouds and not fire smoke. So we've had some tough air quality this summer, so coming out of that.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, good luck. We've even experienced a little bit all the way out here on the East coast. I think ours is from Canadian fire or something, but that just affects everybody. It's wild.

Robin Ginn: Yeah.

Luke Schantz: I was worried when we started talking about the weather that somehow it would seem out of date as these episodes age, but it seems like we're constantly talking about either hurricanes or fires, so it's every content.

Robin Ginn: Oh, make it stop. I know.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, I laughed. I laugh to not cry. I don't know.

Robin Ginn: Seriously.

Joe Sepi: But anyway, how are you Robin? Maybe we can start with a little self- introduction and tell us how you got to where you are.

Robin Ginn: Great. Yeah, so I'm Robin Ginn, executive director at OpenJS. It's been almost two years now. It's really gone super fast and Joe feels like part of my water cooler gang because he's chair of our technical oversight committee, what we call the Cross Project Council. So feel like I'm with family already. I spent many years in tech, a lot of marketing and communications, technical advocacy, which we used to call Evangelism. But I was a tech and a policy nerd. And so when I came from Microsoft and Microsoft was looking for somebody in 2008 to work on open source and I had done a lot of security and privacy, which is also a blend of tech and policy. I started doing open source at Microsoft in 2008 and it was hard back then.

Joe Sepi: Yeah?

Robin Ginn: Yeah. I was here today. When the opportunity came up with the OpenJS Foundation, it was super cool. I felt like I was just changing teams. It was a time when the Node. js Foundation merged with the JS Foundation and I had been very active in the Node. js project since it was the node advisory committee and helped when that became a foundation when the opportunity came up. I really wanted to jump on that.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, we were so glad you did when it happened. I remember everybody was really excited. I'm curious because 2008 feels like not that long ago, but also a long time ago. What was your experience with regards to open source, and why was it difficult, and what do you think has changed?

Robin Ginn: It was difficult. I think Microsoft had been contributing code even before I joined. There was a perception. They had just been coming out of an antitrust issue out of Europe and the US so interoperability was very big, but it was also kind of a nice nudge to do more. But really the cloud was just coming about. That was changing the business model for not only Microsoft but the industry. So of course developers were very important back then. There was still a very big anti- Microsoft sentiment. So our philosophy was sort of code talks, right? Let's show them by actions, not words. Admit where we got it wrong and then try to move forward.

Joe Sepi: I see, so it's more of the Microsoft thing rather than open source was harder back then necessarily. I feel like it could have been things that evolved.

Robin Ginn: Open source was a little bit harder back then when the foundation model was not around. We used to always say, " Gosh, we must not be having beer in the right places because how can we get our poll requests through? This is..." There was no transparency. There was very few foundations like ours with kind of an open governance model where it was open and transparent and how decisions are made or documented. It was hard back then. If you're sitting in Seattle and you're not sitting in Silicon Valley, we thought, " Oh, it's even more hard."

Joe Sepi: It's interesting. I feel like I'm trying to avoid going down the open governance path because I always am happy to talk about that. I think it's really, and we've developed some great practices and ways to work better together and in the open source, but we have so many other things to talk about. So maybe...

Robin Ginn: I think another reason why joined OpenJS is because of the Lennox Foundation. We're independent, OpenJS is independent, but we are hosted by the Linux Foundation and Jim Zemlin was a big advocate for women in tech. There is a great peer group we have with the executive directors. We meet every other week. We joke that we shamelessly rip each other off and support each other. You couldn't ask for a better onboarding and just continual mentorship from those other executive directors.

Joe Sepi: I learned more about that when we did the merger, the Node. js and JS foundations. We merged them together because they were both part of the Linux Foundation, but they were in a different way, a part of the Linux Foundation. So that was an interesting thing. But overall, your experience with the LF Linux Foundation has been positive things? They're supportive, they, they've got...

Robin Ginn: They're pros. I saw that when the node foundation moved under the LF. It's just professionally managed the foundation as the service and you only need to use as much as you want or can afford. So we have a fantastic events team, the finance team, they do all of our accounts receivable and billing. You have HR, legal, and so it's just a wonderful kind of model to create that entire business around your open source project.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, I like that foundation as a service concept because my experience has been really great. We pretty much operate independently. I don't worry too much about the LF, but then when we need things, they're right there to help us technically or with, for example, and we'll get into this more later, the certifications and the trainings, it's great that they help us manage that and everything. It's really been a good situation.

Robin Ginn: It has, and obviously every project is independent and look at the Linux kernel, look at Kubernetes, those are obviously all of our projects at OpenJS. Those are a hundred percent run by the community so that there's a clear separation between the technical projects and then the business marketing training services you receive.

Luke Schantz: Maybe we should unpack that a little bit more, especially for some of our listeners who aren't familiar with the foundation model at all, specifically to OpenJS. But in general, give us the sort of rundown about what is the role that a foundation plays and how does it sit between these other entities that we might be more familiar with.

Robin Ginn: The foundation really is a neutral home for an open source project. And think of it as you have your project on GitHub and some people will ask, " Hey, why don't you just have your project on GitHub and call it a day?" Our goal is to really to drive adoption, stability and growth of these open source projects. So whenever you want to offload that non- development aspect of your open source project, bringing it to a foundation like ours is a good place to be. Everything we do supports the project, so then the developers can just work on making their open source project great.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, I think" neutral" is really a key word there too. Imagine if you had this open source project that the community and companies, even enterprise companies started to adopt and really make use of, and really rely on, and say you're a big company that created this open source project. I don't know, let's just say, Google, for example. And then you have this project that everybody's adopting, but you don't have it in a neutral foundation with open governance and these rules that prevent one company from dominating how that project is managed, and the features that are developed and the bugs that are fixed or whatnot. Then companies don't feel comfortable, or at least they feel uncomfortable adopting that technology.

Robin Ginn: And companies are making big bets on our projects and look at Node. js that you're involved with. Everyone from NASA to Netflix are making big bets and building their businesses and entities on our projects. So it gives you that future proof, long- term kind of comfort that it's being run independently. So in a neutral way.

Joe Sepi: And I'll just add one more thing too. The neutral part. We have things in place that prevent one company from being more dominant, like only 25% of a technical steering committee can be from one company and that includes subsidiaries. And we know this a lot because at IBM we do dedicate a lot of folks to work on this stuff and we often run into that limit, but usually we're engaged enough that we're like, " Oh, when we add her, that's going to put us over the number. So maybe you should step down for a bit, manage that stuff."

Robin Ginn: And the great part is our board president is Todd Moore at IBM and he is just the best boss I could ever have. I always say the board is my boss as well as the community, but just, I'm very thoughtful and just works so well with all of the industry leaders. I mean we have a Red Hat person on our board as well, Michael Dawson. So that's pretty cool.

Joe Sepi: And he's from the community in that role.

Robin Ginn: He's a community rep, so he's elected from the Cross Project council. So non member paying community folks elect to board members. So we have Michael Dawson and we have Sara Chipps as our community board members.

Joe Sepi: And they're both great. And Todd's my VP so I won't gush over him here. He might be watching, so maybe I should... Oh, what was I going to say? Oh dang, I forgot now.

Luke Schantz: I have something while you're thinking, Joe.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, please.

Luke Schantz: Could we unpack a little bit more about the different ways individuals and organizations are involved? So you mentioned there's individuals who are members representing organizations, but then you also have this community aspect, which may also be people from organizations, but they're more just contributing to the code side. Is that the idea?

Robin Ginn: Right. It's very important to know. One, we're a member supported organization, so they support our staff and all of the events and everything we do. But that membership is very... There's a hard line between the technology and the projects and the community. Again, you have the community representatives, our board of directors, which sets our vision and antigens our budget. They're from our dues- paying members. But really the bulk of what we do, a lot of it is really driven from the community. And as Joe mentioned, so each project has their own governance. So they'll have a technical steering committee, some outreach committees, and things like that. And then there's a Cross Project Council that has representatives from many of those projects. But again, we keep those separate and they support each other.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, we've got all the big names involved. IBM, of course, Microsoft, Google, not all of them. There's one that's not there, but we have a new one too. Do we want to... I don't know if we should highlight that.

Robin Ginn: Yes. American Express, we announced that they joined this week and they've been very active. Glenn Hinks has been active on the Node. js projects. Thank you, Glenn. They have a lot of great developers and engineers doing some really innovative and cool things in Fintech. So I just love to see some big sort of industry vertical companies join and really support everything that we're doing.

Joe Sepi: Yeah. That's great. Yeah.

Luke Schantz: And what is their influence, say, on the technology or on the organization? Where are those lines drawn?

Robin Ginn: The only influence anybody can have, member or non- member, is through the code that you contribute. So that is very separate from membership. But as a member, they have the opportunity to run for a seat on our board of directors. We'll be having elections this next month and they can help set our budget and how we spend our budget. As long as they convince the other people on the board that's the right thing to do.

Joe Sepi: So we all work together. And what I think is interesting too is there is that separation. So for example, we're talking about the board and stuff, but the Cross Project Council is made up with some voting members from specific technologies, but really anybody who wants to get involved can just start joining the meetings. In our open source model, we do all of our work in issues and poll requests and documentation in GitHub. So we try to make the entry point to be not too difficult and not too hard to find and to get involved. So whether you're a part of a member company or not, you can get involved with the work that we do from a organizational standpoint or from actually contributing code and then helping with technical direction and stuff.

Robin Ginn: And one interesting thing about us is, we say we're radically transparent. We broadcast most of our meetings live on YouTube. As you're welcome to join, you can participate, you can lurk if you feel like it, or you can watch us later. But again, everybody is welcome and there's lots of opportunities for people who are not coding. I don't code to get involved. And we have a program committee who is setting content for our events. We have a scholarship plan, which we can talk about a little bit later. There's all kinds of ways for people to get involved.

Joe Sepi: I think now's a good time, and maybe I should even click create a banner while I'm talking about it. openjsf. org/ collaborate works. And the OpenJS calendar as well as the Node. js calendar are both easily accessible. And you can find some of the links there on this collaborate page that link to our Slack, our calendar, our repositories, a variety of things to get involved.

Robin Ginn: All kinds of ways. We have a standards working group that's also very active. So if you're a standards wonk like I am, and many of us love supporting the open web, that's a really great group as well, very active.

Joe Sepi: And we can maybe transition here to the collaboration spaces, because that's another area that we're trying to flesh out and make opportunities for folks to just get involved in the work that we're doing.

Robin Ginn: Yeah, so this is a Cross Project council initiative called Collaboration Spaces. You all in the audience may know them as SIGs or special interest groups if you've been active in other entities or open source organizations. And it's where you have these sort of common issues that are impacting many of the projects. So you get everyone together to identify those. So we announce this program, Collaboration Spaces, and the first one is kicked off on package management vulnerability and reporting, which has been a challenge with a lot of false positives. And so they're working together, they're working with NPM. Darcy Clark is helping to co- chair that in identifying tangible things the industry can do in the short- term and the long- term in that. So I urge you to take a look at some of the things we've done. We've blogged about it, and you'll see a link on our GitHub page as well.

Joe Sepi: Security is super important right now. It's really always been important, but it feels especially important now. And I hear people talking about an executive order. Are you familiar with that from the president of the US? I'm not familiar enough, so I can't say, but I keep hearing people talking.

Robin Ginn: Yeah, I don't know. I'm probably reading what you're reading, but haven't been. But the Linux Foundation does have a open SSF, Security Software Foundation. It's really ramping up. I urge you to take a look at that. It's" Open SSF", you can find it under the Linux Foundation or just put it in your search engine. And then you'll see... Again, and that's where our collaboration will benefit from others as well and some of the work we're doing.

Joe Sepi: That's a fairly new thing too. I think if folks wanted to get involved now, it would be a great time to really get there and help out and make things happen.

Robin Ginn: Exactly. Exactly.

Joe Sepi: JavaScript is known to be a very passionate community. How is your experience with being ED of OpenJS Foundation? You have to deal with much drama or anything like that. How are things going?

Robin Ginn: No, I love my community. I don't know if I'm like the protective mom, but no, we actually have no drama, knock on wood. And we say, " Boring is cool," JS and it's not always the way we are a passionate group. We're a super diverse group culturally, just the people, which makes it a beautiful thing, I think. There was bumps along the way with the Node Foundation and I think a lot of lessons learned from that, through at the time they brought in some mediation, but then they got better at documenting how decisions are made. But I don't know, I think maybe the folk... I would say the OpenJS Foundation's new, but the people who've been, who are a part of the core leadership have been with the entities, either JS or OpenJS, for a very long time. And it's just a positive and productive group of people. And we have a lot of fun. We're actually not boring. I think we're actually a lot of fun.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, no drama is good. And we have been really good about that. We've had some things in the past, but they've been really good learning experiences and they've helped us to develop ways of working that we are have been successful in avoiding big problems such. So it's been good. That was a bit of a softball, but it's what talking about.

Robin Ginn: I know. I think people are surprised because there's these, " What's JavaScript mad at today?" But we actually, not a lot in our world, we are some cool things. And I have to say, we also work with projects who are not hosted at OpenJS Foundation. If you go to our YouTube channel and look at some of the events that we've had in the breakout sessions, it's not just OpenJS- hosted projects, but we like to feature other JavaScript projects as well.

Joe Sepi: And I think always trying to figure out ways to get the community involved more with these different initiatives. What else are you excited about in terms of what we're working on in the space?

Robin Ginn: Today we launched a scholarship program, which I think is pretty great, and thank you for the Cross Project Council. They had a travel fund, which gosh, there hasn't been a lot of travel the last couple years. And it was something that wasn't completely always tapped. And they're like, " Let's do something great for the community." And one of the first investments they're making is with a scholarship fund for the Node. js training and certification program. Having a certification and training can really help differentiate yourself in the job market and help actually companies like yours find top talent as well. We're excited about that. We're going to be awarding 20 scholarships to folks, diverse kinds of folks. If you just can't afford to do it on your own, please take a look at the scholarship and we're excited about that.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, that is exciting. I'm glad that we announced it and I look forward to seeing how well it does and bring out more ways to do those kinds of things. And you mentioned the community fund, that's just one thing that we're doing. We still are able to do the travels, not much of a thing these days it seems. But that's still an option. Any other thoughts about other ways to use the...?

Robin Ginn: We have a DEI working group from under the Cross Project Council and Sara Chipps, and Toby inaudible from Google, and I have been brainstorming ways to use that. The community has already adopted the inclusive naming initiative where we've gone through all of our repos from the foundation side and many of the projects to remove harmful language. But we're starting to reach out to some organizations to partner with. So if that is something you're interested in, either partnering with us, or participating with us to help make decisions on how to bring more diversity. There's a lot more we can do, I think we've come a long way in the last couple years, but always have a lot of work to do there.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, there's always work to do there for sure. And again, I think if anybody has an interest in this sort of stuff, please just get involved, show up in Slack, show up in GitHub, and help us move things forward.

Robin Ginn: Absolutely. Absolutely. We've switched the Cross Project council meetings, if you'll see on the calendar, to biweekly where we just do deep dive working sessions. So we're starting to tackle some of that as well. Yep. I'm excited about our event. It seems like we just finished one, but gosh, time flies. So yeah.

Joe Sepi: Let me get that one.

Robin Ginn: Fingers crossed. We are going to have an event in Austin in June of 2022, kind of a hybrid event. So we'll keep the virtual aspect. We will hopefully have an opportunity to all meet in person and hopefully folks from around the world can fly in as well. But we're already identifying who would be cool to have speak, because we had some really cool speakers on our event this summer. Even this last time we had analytical, we had a NASA astronaut, we've had some fun speakers. Looking forward to that. And we'll have hopefully some JavaScript superstars there as well speaking.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, they've been fun. The events have been really great. It's been exciting and I hope that we're able to get together in person and spend some time in the hallway track. And I miss everybody. It's funny, the thing I was thinking of earlier, I guess maybe I'm digressing here a little bit, but oftentimes Robin and I will be in meetings and with IBMers, and IBMers will introduce themselves as IBMers, and then Robin will introduce her team and she includes me and her team.

Robin Ginn: inaudible

Joe Sepi: That always makes me laugh.

Robin Ginn: That's right. And speaking of fun, I think I might just be cooking up a little talent show in Austin.

Joe Sepi: We've got you learning drums, so...

Robin Ginn: I'm learning drums. Pressure's on.

Joe Sepi: You're smart, you always know where to go. There's a dearth of drummers. So Robin's like, "I'm going to learn drums so I can be highly valuable."

Robin Ginn: Tech geeks are such great guitarists and I play a little guitar, but not enough to compete.

Luke Schantz: That is so interesting. And I must say one of the things I miss the most about not traveling and not attending events is JavaScript events. And it's funny to make a generalization like that, but it seems to be something about, even if they're different organizers, there's always interesting arts and cultural and... There's something really fun and exciting about JavaScript events. It's part of the culture. It's very interesting.

Robin Ginn: Yeah.

Joe Sepi: Yeah. Go ahead, Robin.

Robin Ginn: I always say human interoperability is incredibly important and I think we've actually done a pretty good job on Zoom and other online ways the last couple years. But looking forward to definitely meeting in person.

Joe Sepi: We've got a good history of events from the Node. js interactive event series to the Node plus JS interactive series, and then now the OpenJS world stuff. I've got a lot of shirts, but I've also got a lot of memories, a lot of good times, good people.

Robin Ginn: And we're hearing... Actually, there's some other conferences that have some best practices that we're learning from as well, like the JS comps and things like that. So we're looking forward to that.

Joe Sepi: And that's another great thing about being a part of the Linux Foundation. You said you meet with the other executive directors often, and you guys all can really learn from each other and, yeah.

Robin Ginn: Yep, we do. And what you'll probably see, some other folks from the Linux Foundation joining us in Austin. We have a big space, so we'll have more to share on that. So that'll be pretty cool. Yeah.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, exciting. And I'm looking at our notes. The CFP will be in January with the... We're in September. Okay. So that's..

Robin Ginn: In January, yeah. And if you want just, we do have a Linux Foundation event coming up in a couple of weeks, the Open Source Summit, and we have a JavaScript panel. It's called Peace, Love, and JavaScript. So speaking of culture and no drama, it's Myles Borins from GitHub, Sara Chipps from LinkedIn, Liz Parody, and myself. So all active OpenJS community folks that will be broadcast virtually if you're interested. And we'll tweet it out as well. That's September 28th.

Joe Sepi: Those are some of my favorite people. That's going to be a really great panel.

Robin Ginn: I'm excited about that. Yeah.

Joe Sepi: Very cool.

Luke Schantz: Myles is also a former IBMer, and Joe, Myles, and I sometimes get together and we hang out, and I have this story I have to tell. We went to see a rock concert in Brooklyn, and I was talking so loud about technology that I was disturbing all the people around us at this rock show. And now it's perpetuating now my reputation here, but it is like, " This is something that I do."

Joe Sepi: It was hilarious. So funny. Anyway.

Robin Ginn: That's hilarious. Yeah, I think Myles is quite the musician as well. I think he might even have a degree in it, I think, but yeah.

Joe Sepi: Yeah. That's great.

Robin Ginn: Yeah. So it'll be fun to see everybody in... There'll be a few folks in Seattle, and again, broadcast virtually as well.

Joe Sepi: Will you all be in Seattle at the panel? Will you all be in?

Robin Ginn: Yeah, we'll be live in Seattle.

Joe Sepi: Wow, that's exciting.

Robin Ginn: I know. Vaccines are required and masks are required except for when you're speaking, but yeah. And the Linux Foundation events team's doing a great job. They're using the Clear app for the vaccine verification, but there's other ways that doesn't work.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, you're talking about the events specifically, but for me, vaccines are just required overall. I don't care what you're doing, just get vaccinated.

Robin Ginn: Hundred percent. Absolutely.

Joe Sepi: Please, people, please.

Robin Ginn: I know.

Luke Schantz: I wonder what the swag's going to be like. I remember before the pandemic two years ago, socks were the hot thing, right? Of course we get T- shirts, we're getting socks, but I'm imagining now there's going to be lots of cool masks to be given away at these booths.

Robin Ginn: Oh, you're right. I know. I'm bringing my own swag. So we haven't talked about one of the fun programs we have called JavaScriptLandia. And speaking of fun, JavaScriptLandia is our individual supporter program. And I think it started with Myles and some other folks having a fun dinner one night and saying, " Wouldn't it be cool if we created our own country world called JavaScriptLandia? And then we could have the. JS domain, like a code, and then everybody would want to have that for their email address, or what have you." So we called our individual program JavaScriptLandia, but we found out, unfortunately, that we can't have a two letter URL because you have to be a recognized country from the UN in order to have two. And we really didn't have the budget to buy a small island or anything like that. So not a good...

Joe Sepi: But Luke and I are in New York, so we're going to hit our UN contacts and we're going to lobby for something, maybe just a section somewhere.

Luke Schantz: It's funny you say that because I used to be in this arts co- working space called Third Ward in Brooklyn, and my roommate there, my studio mate, he was into agriculture and all this stuff. But now I follow him on LinkedIn and he is actually the UN... He's our job, but at the UN. He's like an advocate for the UN. So I think I have the "in" there.

Robin Ginn: Oh, phone a friend, do it. So in Seattle, but I'll mail it to anyone else. If you become a member, it's only$ 25 a year and you get discounts on events and trainings and certifications, special other activities. But we printed, I don't know if you could see, it's my little thing, these embroidered patches. So I'll have...

Joe Sepi: I love it.

Robin Ginn: ...Seattle. And then we will mail them out if you're a member as well. We have stickers for those who just want to be general fans, but we'd love to have you become a JavaScriptLandian, I think is what we call them JSLand.

Joe Sepi: Yeah. We just like to have fun. So come hang out with us, spend some time, become a JavaScript and we'll send you some swag, but also just get involved and help us think of ways to have fun. And when we have the community fund and we just want to do good things for the community and the projects, and the ecosystem overall.

Robin Ginn: And that's what I love about open source. You really erase those comp boundaries. It's great for your career. I'm confident of that. And it is just great. You do learn from each other. It's that coopetition sometimes. And if you're passionate about things, we're a nonprofit, so I'm passionate about open source and governance and folks are passionate about a number of things, and coming together is a great experience.

Joe Sepi: Agreed. If anybody has any questions about this stuff too, my DMs are open, feel free to just reach out. If you're like, " I don't know what to do, but I want to do something," just message me. I'm happy to help. Cool. What else should we talk about? We got a list, right? What's on the list?

Luke Schantz: I actually have some question from what we were talking about earlier, but I thought now might be a good time, just do a little housekeeping and talk about some of the stuff that we should talk about. This show that you're watching now, you can always find the latest episodes as well as all the past episodes on ibm. biz/ intheopen. We do livestream where... This is our first episode on LinkedIn as well. We're live- streaming on LinkedIn this time. Very exciting. Yeah, thank you for Doreen who helped us from IBM to get that set up. The link is on the other page I mentioned, but we also published this as a podcast. So if you don't feel like watching, if you're driving, if you're mowing the lawn, you can always listen as a podcast. In addition to this show, we've got a variety of other shows. We've got special series around our Tech for Good initiative, call for code at modernization. We've got some new stuff on the horizon. I've got some stuff in the works that I'm excited to, can't talk about it yet, but looking forward to that. And then other developer content, whether it's blogs, tutorials, starters, code patterns, developer. ibm. com has lots of great content. And also all the stuff that IBM does about open source. You can find it on ibm. com/opensource. And yeah, thank you for tuning in. And as Joe mentioned, if you have any questions, our DMs are always open. And if you're watching us now, please feel free to drop any questions you have for Robin into the chat on whatever platform you happen to be watching on.

Joe Sepi: Don't forget to smash the" Like" and" Subscribe" button, smash it, and turn on the alerts too.

Luke Schantz: Definitely turn on those alerts.

Robin Ginn: And it is super cool to see all of the contributions that IBM does, not just from the technology side, but the people side. And it's actually gets to be part of your day job, Joe. So maybe I'm asking you a question. Am I allowed to do that?

Joe Sepi: Totally free- form. Yeah.

Robin Ginn: Yeah. You don't have to convince your boss, obviously.'Cause your boss is awesome.

Joe Sepi: Yeah. No, I feel very fortunate. My job is pretty much working in open source and IBM really cares about the whole open governance model. And so I try to spend time working on that and making sure that the places where we work, like The OpenJS Foundation is healthy and vibrant and productive and a good place to be for, not just IBM, but for the community overall and the member companies. And we all can move forward together a neutral home. It's a good thing.

Robin Ginn: And I think I used to say, open source is just good business too. And you are building your business with a lot of open source technologies. It's more than just a good thing to do, I think it's a smart thing to do from a business perspective.

Joe Sepi: Absolutely.

Robin Ginn: At least that's what I used to try to convince our Microsoft folks back in the day. I think they've got that work.

Joe Sepi: I think it worked, Robin. I think they're on board.

Robin Ginn: I think it wasn't just me, it was the ground. It really was this big" bottoms up" and it was pretty cool.

Joe Sepi: There was a really good team back then over your time at Microsoft. There were a lot of good people, right?

Robin Ginn: Yeah. And some great executive sponsors as well. Bob Bugle at the time. So yeah, really cool to see.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, it is good. I'm glad that things have gone for Microsoft and open source. I like to see everybody succeeding and open source. It's helpful to all of us.

Robin Ginn: And I think sometimes with JavaScript, people take it for granted a little bit. It's a little bit of a challenge we have. And so I think if companies are investing, sometimes they're investing in bright shiny new open source projects and things like that. And we are 25 years old, the language, but still the number one programming language. Companies are still using a lot of our work, not just Node. js. Electron, Webpac, Appium, ESLint, jQuery still used over 70% of the top 500 million websites including WordPress. We fill a lot of... It's a humbling and awesome responsibility. We feel like if our infrastructure fails, then the web fails. And believe me, one of our jobs at OpenJS is to host a lot of this infrastructure that these technologies are built on and that does take investment. And so we're really grateful for companies like IBM and Google and Microsoft and GoDaddy, Netflix who help fund that.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, we've got a lot of great member companies. And yes, JavaScript is everywhere. Node. js Is the most widely deployed runtime in anyone's cloud. It's everywhere. So if you work for a company that relies on Node. js, or JavaScript in general, which is every company, you should be a part of the OpenJS Foundation, especially if you are a big company, a big cloud provider or something, get involved.

Luke Schantz: That's a great point, Joe. And you know what just came to mind when you both were talking this out is how we talk so much about hybrid cloud now. It's just the reality we have to face. This is how big companies run and I feel like open source is the other side of that coin. The way that you're able to run your applications in all these different environments and they're supported. And it reminds me when I have to explain what I do and how this technology works to my family...

Joe Sepi: Like when you're...

Luke Schantz: At a rock concert, yeah, when I'm at a rock concert. Or often in a quiet restaurant, they'll be...

Robin Ginn: Oh no.

Luke Schantz: This is why I'm a natural advocate. I have a little bit of no shame. So it allows me just to constantly be promoting. But I think too about past generation, slightly different example, but about how when maybe computers first came out, everybody had their own peripherals, and it was just mayhem, you weren't able to share. And then you created these industry consortiums where we're going to agree, " Yes, we're going to compete on selling our mouse or our webcam or whatever it is, but there has to be some level of commonality or we're doing a disservice to our customers," and it made a bigger pie for everybody. So I know it's slightly different, but that's an example I often use to someone who's not at all familiar with it is and they're like, " Oh, I see how that relates." And now this is a next iteration or generation of that type of collaboration.

Robin Ginn: It is. And we used to say that you can build a great product that's open, that's connects to every printer or whatever, and you can use all of the great technical standards that you rely on from ECMA or W3C, but there's that human factor as well. And in order for that sort of magic to work the interoperability, you really need to work with others in the industry. And I think through these open source projects and the foundation, that's just the best way, I think, to build better products today.

Joe Sepi: And I think too, just to get back to the security point, doing open source in the open, we're all using the same foundation and we're all working to make sure that this foundational aspect, whether it's Node. js or any cloud- native technologies, we're all working to make sure they're secure. And if we find something that's wrong, we all want to work to get it fixed fast. And that benefits everyone when we all do it together.

Robin Ginn: And it has been great to see so many companies, big and small. It's not just the big cloud providers. We have a lot of great, smaller companies who are members and who do a lot, contributing a lot of contributions from policy to technology. And we couldn't do it without them as well.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, agreed.

Luke Schantz: So a question I did have left over from earlier, we had talked a little bit about the projects that are in the OpenJS foundation, and projects that are outside that you still are supportive of or share the stage with. How does a project come into the fold of the OpenJS foundation? What is that process like?

Robin Ginn: Yeah, the decision really is in the hands of the Cross Project council. Which Joe chairs. So I'll give you a quick overview and Joe, please weigh in. The project must have an open source license. It must have a diverse contributor based, you don't want to have a vanity project that you just want to land. It must be an active project because you don't want to just throw it over the fence to us as well. And that's about it. They could be big, they could be small. We've been talking about technical strategy and that comic about the tech stack with the one little piece built from some guy in Nebraska. So we call those The Nebraska Projects and we love those as well because we can support them. And we have some important projects that are very small with the small maintainers. And then we have projects that come in small. And then I think grew very quickly through the collaboration OpenJS. Fastify is a great example.

Joe Sepi: No, I think you described it well. I would just say that some of that stuff is maybe not necessarily a requirement, but more if that's your goal, we want people to adopt these sorts of codes of conduct and those sorts of policies. And a diverse TSE or technical advisory committee is great, but you don't have that a goal. Have that be something that you care about and you want to work towards because we're here to help.

Robin Ginn: It's a pretty lightweight process to join. There's a simple little application and we have examples from others, big and small who have joined, but pretty easy. And sometimes then you'll talk with a few folks from the CPC, and then once the CPC votes to bring in the project, then we have what's called an incubation period. And that's really where the project is just onboarded. So they adopt, as Joe mentioned, the code of conduct. They make sure their governance is all together. They hand over the IP for some of their domains and things. So we have the bus factor. So we're always there to support folks. But even just things that you don't think about, the trademarks and the privacy policies, we have easy footers for those and really... And then just onboard with our marketing and business and legal teams because we provide all of those services as well to the projects.

Joe Sepi: And it shouldn't be too daunting. We have all the information there on a checklist and the application, some previous applications to get some ideas from. And then also the CPC is very accessible and we're happy to help, we're happy to talk things through. And once we do decide to accept a project into the incubating phase, we have a champion from the CPC help that project on board as well as LF and OpenJS F staff to help them onboard and get their ducks in a row and everything. But we're definitely here to help and make it smooth.

Robin Ginn: I just love seeing people help each other across Projects on specific things. I've even seen it in our board with some of the bigger companies. I mean Joe laughs that I introduce them as part of our team, but once you get in that OpenJS realm, again, those boundaries disappear.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, so true. So true. Yeah. And I think an example too, I'll just say, is IBM and the LoopBack project, which is incubating right now. And it was already fairly community- run. We're working towards having a robust technical committee and some of the folks are at different companies now, and a lot of community folks involved. And that's, I think, been going well. And I look forward to seeing that complete incubation.

Robin Ginn: That was fun. That was a great announcement from our June event and we got to celebrate them. And the things I love once these projects are in, I geek out over case studies. I just love to hear how companies are using our stuff. I think it's super cool. I've mentioned NASA, but we did one with Net- A- Porter, which is like a Italian fashion house. I thought that was super cool. They're using Fastify for web performance, just some really cool stories that we've been able to tell. So if you're using any of our projects, reach out to me on Slack or DM, or what have you. I'd love to surface that. That's pretty cool.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, the weather channel's another good one that I know of.

Robin Ginn: Weather Channel was super... Yeah, that's amazing. All the data coming in there, it's pretty cool. Yeah.

Joe Sepi: Very cool.

Luke Schantz: Yeah, I'm not going to gush over the Weather Channel, but my new VP, Chris Hill, is from the Weather Channel and he was just telling me the specs that they run at it. It's remarkable. It's like millions of API calls like a minute or something.

Robin Ginn: I can't imagine. Yeah, it's on the homepage of my phone. There you go.

Joe Sepi: Nice. Nice. We talked about the scholarship stuff, but I don't know, did we talk about trainings and certifications at all?

Robin Ginn: No, maybe not in great detail. Yeah, the Node. js training and certification had been something from the node foundation that had been sort of in great demand from the community. And the community was very thoughtful about bringing in the feedback and what they wanted to see. And then the node and OpenJS foundation then brought in some subject matter experts from NodeSource and NearForm to really help build out that content. So that launched just under two years ago. And again, we have one for apps and one for services. Again, we had our scholarship program launched today. And again, I really do think it helps your tech career. I was speaking at an event in San Francisco right before lockdown and there was a lot of recruiters working in the expo booth and I kept saying, " Who are you recruiting for?" And I heard a lot of Node. js. So again, I think you do need to be a little bit more of an intermediate Node. js user. And I do recommend you study a little bit, but you can take it twice. So if you don't pass the first time, you could take it a second time as well. And Dave Clements, who is a great instructor, he built out the curriculum for the training and works a lot on the certification.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, Dave's great. And then we have scholarships happening, but also sales happen often too. If you're interested. Keep your eye on it.

Robin Ginn: That's right. We have flash sales, big sales. Yeah, keep it. Keep watching our Twitter handle and our blog.

Joe Sepi: And I'll also mention if you work for a member company, you likely get discounts and that's another reason to become a member company.

Robin Ginn: It is. And that's actually on our member page. You get a 50% discount, Joe, being part of IBM. We partner with the Linux Foundation training and certification program. They're pros. They're so excellent at what they do. And we meet weekly with them and they have a corporate subscription program as well that some big companies and smaller mid- size companies, ISVs have taken advantage of. So if you're an employee, just have an unlimited access to the Linux Foundation Library of training and certifications.

Joe Sepi: Yeah. Yeah.

Robin Ginn: I think if you're a platinum, you get 50% discounts on all of that.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, I just worked with Mary from the LF to find out all of our details, especially with Red Hat, different membership levels, but we got it all sorted. So if you work at Red Hat or IBM, message me and I will give you those details. I've got it all written down.

Robin Ginn: Awesome. And if you're a member of JavaScriptLandia, if you're a supporter, you get a discount as well.

Joe Sepi: There you go.

Robin Ginn: There you go.

Joe Sepi: Yeah.

Luke Schantz: I think I'm going to join just for that patch. I really...

Robin Ginn: I know the patch is...

Luke Schantz: It's very nice.

Robin Ginn: I did the patch. Yeah.

Joe Sepi: I love it. I love it.

Robin Ginn: I said I'm going to cover up your L on your hat.

Joe Sepi: The L's iconic.

Luke Schantz: I don't wear this hat every day. This is really just my show hat.

Robin Ginn: I learned y'all before we joined. The L is for, obviously, Luke.

Joe Sepi: Yep.

Robin Ginn: Team Luke.

Joe Sepi: Team Luke. I'm on team Luke.

Robin Ginn: Me too.

Joe Sepi: We don't have a lot of time left. Do we touch on everything we wanted to make sure we touched on? I want to make sure we don't skip over anything important.

Robin Ginn: I think I talked a little bit about if you want to really get involved, I think our Slack channel's a great place and there's a number of channels. So again, if you want to learn more what's happening in our standards working group, people will share a lot of information there. If you forget in your calendar, we had mentioned the collaboration calendar. We'll send a little reminders. Jory Burson is our awesome community director. You might hear a lot from her or you might receive newsletters from her. Jori also leads a very popular OpenJS book club.

Joe Sepi: Oh yeah. Almost forgot about that.

Robin Ginn: If that is something you want to geek out with us or recommend books, there is a channel in Slack. It's also on our public calendar. And gosh, the turnout's been pretty big and they've had a lot of fun with book club.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, we like to have fun. And I want to just double back. You're speaking at Open Source Summit, right?

Robin Ginn: I'm speaking at Open Source Summit on Tuesday, September 28th. I'm also speaking on Thursday, September 30th at the next web conference.

Joe Sepi: Okay.

Robin Ginn: That's in Amsterdam. Unfortunately I can't fly there with the quarantine and Covid, but I am doing a fireside chat with Amanda Silver, who is the court VP for the developer division at Microsoft. So she and I will be talking about how to lead resilient teams. I'm looking forward to talking to Amanda. That is at 9: 00 AM, I believe, on Thursday, September 30th.

Joe Sepi: Okay. The 27th and the 30th. Got it.

Robin Ginn: The 28th and the 30th.

Joe Sepi: 28th and the...

Robin Ginn: Tuesday. Yeah.

Joe Sepi: Got it.

Robin Ginn: Yeah. Again, team, we really liked some of that team building stuff. So...

Joe Sepi: Yeah, for sure.

Robin Ginn: We're a pretty good team. Brian Warner is our awesome program director. He keeps us all together, runs the infrastructure of all of our projects. Again, keeps the web standing with our technical steering folks, so couldn't do it without Brian as well.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, no. Props to Brian. He is great and always very helpful and something goes wrong and he's right there to jump in there and sort it out. And he's really great.

Robin Ginn: He's amazing. Yeah, we're super... We have a great team. We have the A team.

Joe Sepi: Agreed.

Robin Ginn: Including Joe.

Joe Sepi: We have fun. Yeah. Cool. What else? Anything else that we, how's your drumming coming along? I've been meaning to ask you.

Robin Ginn: Well, let me just tell you, you know when your kid learns an instrument and it gives you a headache? I think I'm giving myself a headache, so I just need to get over the hump and, or maybe go from online to in- person. But I have a virtual band with two of my friends. We've picked our first song just to practice with. It's kind of dorky, but, There She Goes. So we're good. Just something easy to get us all together. So we're zoom rehearsals, so

Joe Sepi: That's great. I can't wait to hear that. And did you say you have a child that plays an instrument as well? A child is maybe not the right word.

Robin Ginn: Yeah. My kids are older in their twenties. But yeah, I have a really good guitarist. He's going to learn drums, but he's set up his guitar down there too because he thinks it's easier for me to learn if he's playing.

Joe Sepi: I was going to say, I would recommend that as a musician, playing with someone else, especially probably learning the drums would be good. Your tempo and your timing and learning to play with people.

Robin Ginn: So yeah, drum sets. New set up. A friend helped me set up, he put duct tape on my drums, supposedly soften it and I was like, " Oh my new drums. Duct tape." But I guess it's the thing to do.

Joe Sepi: It is. It helps to keep the reverberation down and you can change your head. So if you really don't want the duct tape there, you just put a new head on and you're fine.

Robin Ginn: Yeah. So...

Joe Sepi: They're real drums then. They're not electronic drums?

Robin Ginn: No. I got real drums. Oh yeah.

Joe Sepi: That's awesome. Yeah. I'm excited for you. I wish I had a set right here. I'd be playing it.

Robin Ginn: Cool.

Joe Sepi: Yeah.

Luke Schantz: I was going to say, I think I've seen people put a piece of leather over a snare drum as well.

Robin Ginn: Really?

Luke Schantz: Have you ever seen that? That'll put a piece of... And I think it's that same kind of thing to dampen it a little bit.

Joe Sepi: Yep, yep.

Luke Schantz: I was also going to say what a great family activity to be able to play music together.

Robin Ginn: Yeah.

Joe Sepi: Yeah.

Robin Ginn: Absolutely.

Joe Sepi: That's wonderful.

Robin Ginn: Yeah, so we have a lot of fun. We like music too. Live music. Looking forward to seeing more live music.

Joe Sepi: I'm going to try to book something at OpenJS world. I have a bunch of musician friends in Austin and we got to make some stuff happen down there. I'm really excited about it.

Robin Ginn: Yeah. I think I've already flagged for our amazing event team, my mission LF, Emily. We need some space for fun and that's being... That's the part of the plan.

Joe Sepi: Good. Because we need a talent show is one. We always, at all the OpenJS and Node. js events, we do karaoke.

Robin Ginn: Karaoke.

Joe Sepi: I would love to do a live band karaoke thing. I don't know if they have that on Austin, but if they do, we should book them now and then just we should do a lot of fun stuff. I'm looking forward to it.

Robin Ginn: Yeah. Karaoke. You should see Joe Sepi do a punk rock version of Taylor Swift. Super cool.

Joe Sepi: You can find it on the internet, I'm sure. So somewhere.

Robin Ginn: Maybe. Yeah.

Luke Schantz: Well we are at the top of the hour. This has been such a fun conversation. Really, Robin, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. It's really been a pleasure.

Robin Ginn: Thank you for having me.

Joe Sepi: Yeah, thank you Robin. I'll see you soon, I'm sure.

Robin Ginn: Exactly.

Joe Sepi: All right, great. Cheers everybody.

Robin Ginn: Thanks, Bye.