Executive Director at the OpenJS Foundation | Robin Bender Ginn

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

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

Luke: 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 clober too bad.

Joe Seppi: Okay. Okay. Yeah. And we're already up to end, we just have a high. These things go fast, don't they? inaudible

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

Joe Seppi: Yeah. Yeah. inaudible

Luke: Do they switch genders and pronouns each year? Is that a thing? I don't know how they do it.

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

Luke: Sounds good.

Joe Seppi: 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: It might just be the Midwest is such a friendly place, you're feeling like you feel it.

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

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

Joe Seppi: 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 Seppi: 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: inaudible Yeah.

Luke: I was worried when we started talking about the weather that somehow it would seem out of date as these episodes age, but it seems like we're constantly talking about either hurricanes or fires so it's like it's everyday content.

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

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

Robin Ginn: Seriously.

Joe Seppi: 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 Gin, executive director at Open JS. 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 I 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. So I started doing open source at Microsoft in 2008, and it was hard back then.

Joe Seppi: Yeah?

Robin Ginn: Yeah. inaudible today. Yeah, when the opportunity came up with the Open JS 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 Seppi: 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 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 code talks. Let's show them by actions, not words. Admit where we got it wrong and then try to move forward.

Joe Seppi: I see. So it's more of the Microsoft thing rather than open source was harder back then necessarily? Because I feel like it could have been things that evolved with...

Robin Ginn: Yeah. 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?" There was no transparency. There was very few foundations like ours with an open governance model where it was open and transparent in 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 Seppi: Yeah, 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 in the open source, but we have so many other things to talk about. So maybe...

Robin Ginn: I think another reason why I joined Open JS is because of the Linux Foundation. Open JS 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 Seppi: Yeah. 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, with the Linux Foundation has been positive things, they're supportive, they've got inaudible

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 model to create that entire business around your open source project.

Joe Seppi: 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: Yeah, 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 Open JS, those are a hundred percent run by the community so there's a clear separation between the technical projects and then the business and marketing training services you receive.

Luke: 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 Open JS But in general, give us the 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: Yeah. 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 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 Seppi: 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: Yeah. 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 comfort that it's being run independently in a neutral way.

Joe Seppi: Yeah. 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. 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 and manage that stuff."

Robin Ginn: Yeah. 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 very thoughtful and just works so well with all of the industry leaders. We have a Red Hat person on our board as well, Michael Dawson, so that's pretty cool.

Joe Seppi: Yep. 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 two board members, so we have Michael Dawson and we have Sarah Chips as our community board members.

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

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

Joe Seppi: Yeah, please.

Luke: 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 manages 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, 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 Seppi: 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: We do. Yes. American Express, we announced that they joined this week. And they've been very active, Glen Hinks has been active on the Node JS projects. Thank you, Glen. 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 industry vertical companies join and really support everything that we're doing.

Joe Seppi: Yeah, that's great.

Robin Ginn: Yeah.

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

Robin Ginn: Yeah. 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 Seppi: Yeah, 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 easy 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, 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 Seppi: Yeah. I think now's a good time, and maybe I should even create a banner while I'm talking about it. Openjsf.org/ collaborateworks. And the Open JS 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: Yeah, all kinds of ways. Yeah. 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 Seppi: Yeah. 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, it's been... 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 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 Seppi: So 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 about it.

Robin Ginn: Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'm probably reading what you're reading but yeah, 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 you're doing. Yeah.

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

Robin Ginn: Exactly. Exactly.

Joe Seppi: Yeah.

Robin Ginn: Yeah.

Joe Seppi: JavaScript is known to be a very passionate community. How is your experience with being ED of Open JS Foundation? Do 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. So yeah, 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 folks... I would say the Open JS Foundation's new, but the people who are a part of the core leadership have been with the entities, either JS or Open JS 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 Seppi: 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 have been successful in avoiding big problems such, so it's been good. That was a bit of a softball, but it's worth talking about.

Robin Ginn: Yeah. I know. I think people are surprised because there's these, " What's JavaScript, man, at today?" But...

Joe Seppi: inaudible

Robin Ginn: Yeah. Actually, not a lot in our world. We have done some cool things. And I have to say, we also work with projects who are not hosted at Open JS 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 Open JS hosted projects but we like to feature other JavaScript projects as well.

Joe Seppi: Yeah. 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 in the last couple of 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 Seppi: 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 inaudible

Robin Ginn: We have a DEI Working Group from under the Cross Project Council, and Sarah Chips and Toby Tonal 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 of years, but always have a lot of work to do there.

Joe Seppi: 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. Yeah.

Joe Seppi: Let me get that one.

Robin Ginn: Fingers crossed, we are going to have an event in Austin in June of 2022, 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 so looking forward to that. And we'll have hopefully some JavaScript superstars there as well speaking.

Joe Seppi: Yeah. 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, maybe I'm digressing here a little bit, but oftentimes Robin and I will be in meetings with IBMers, and IBMers will introduce themselves as IBMers, and then Robin will introduce her team, and she includes me in her team.

Robin Ginn: I always include Joe.

Joe Seppi: 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 Seppi: We've got you learning drums, so I'm...

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

Joe Seppi: You're smart, you always know where to go. There's a dearth of drummers so Robin said, " 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: 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. inaudible

Joe Seppi: 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 of years but looking forward to definitely meeting in person.

Joe Seppi: Yeah. 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 Open JS 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: Yeah. And 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 Seppi: 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 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 Seppi: Great. Exciting. And I'm looking at our notes, the CFP will be in January. We're in September. Okay. So that's...

Robin Ginn: CFP 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 Miles Borins from GitHub, Sarah Chips from LinkedIn, Liz Parody, and myself, so all active Open JS community folks. That will be broadcast virtually if you're interested and we'll tweet it out as well, so that's September 28th.

Joe Seppi: Those are some of my favorite people, that's going to be a really great panel. inaudible.

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

Joe Seppi: Yeah, very cool.

Luke: Miles is also a former IBMer. And Joe, Miles 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 I'm perpetuating now, this is my reputation here, but it is like, " This is something that I do." Yeah.

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

Robin Ginn: That's hilarious. Yeah, I think Miles is quite the musician as well. I think he might even have a degree in it, I think. But... Yeah, good piece.

Joe Seppi: 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 Seppi: Will you all be in Seattle, the panel? Will you all be in inaudible

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

Joe Seppi: 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 is doing a great job, they're using the CLEAR app for the vaccine verification but there's other ways that doesn't work.

Joe Seppi: 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: A hundred percent. Absolutely.

Joe Seppi: Please people. Please.

Robin Ginn: I know.

Luke: I wonder what the swag is going to be like. I remember before the pandemic two years ago, socks were the hot thing. 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 Miles 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. Yeah, 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 inaudible

Joe Seppi: Yeah. 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.

Robin Ginn: Yeah.

Luke: 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 like our job but at the UN, he's an advocate for the UN so I think I have the in there.

Robin Ginn: Oh, phone a friend. Do it. Yeah. 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.

Joe Seppi: I love it.

Robin Ginn: So I'll have 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. JS Land. Yeah.

Joe Seppi: 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 we have the community fund, and we just want to do good things for the community and the projects and the ecosystem overall. So please inaudible

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. There'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 it's a great experience.

Joe Seppi: 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: I actually have some question from what we were talking about earlier, but I thought now might be a good time to 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/ inthe open. We do livestream. 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 publish 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 to it 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 Seppi: And don't forget to smash the like and subscribe button, smash it. And turn on the alerts too.

Luke: Definitely turn on those alerts.

Joe Seppi: inaudible

Robin Ginn: Yeah. 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 actually gets to be part of your day job, Joe. So maybe I'm asking you a question, am I allowed to do that? Yes?

Joe Seppi: Totally free form. Yeah.

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

Joe Seppi: 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 Open JS 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: Yeah. 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 Seppi: Absolutely. 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... Yeah.

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

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

Joe Seppi: Yeah, 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 Bugley at the time. So yeah, really cool to see.

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

Robin Ginn: Yeah. 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 are 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 is 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 Open JS 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 and Netflix who help fund that.

Joe Seppi: 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 Open JS Foundation, especially if you are a big company, a big cloud provider or something, get involved.

Luke: That's a great point, Joe. And you know what just came to mind when you both were talking this out is 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 Seppi: Like when you're... inaudible

Luke: At a rock concert. Yeah, when I'm at a rock concert or often in a quiet restaurant they'll be this... Yeah.

Robin Ginn: Oh, no.

Luke: Yeah, it's 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 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 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 Seppi: Yeah, 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: Yeah. 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 smaller companies who are members and who do a lot of contributing, a lot of contributions from policy to technology. And we couldn't do it without them as well.

Joe Seppi: Yeah, agreed.

Luke: So a question I did have left over from earlier, we had talked a little bit about the projects that are in the Open JS 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 Open JS 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 base, 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 grow very quickly through the collaboration of Open JS. Fastify is a great example.

Joe Seppi: 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 codes of conduct and those policies. And a diverse TAC or Technical Advisory Committee is great, but you don't have that be something that you care about and you want to work towards because we're here to help.

Robin Ginn: And we have what's... 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 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 then just onboard with our marketing and business and legal teams, because we provide all of those services as well to the projects.

Joe Seppi: 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 Open JSF 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: Yeah. 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. Joe laughs that I introduce them as part of our team, but once you get in that Open JS realm, again, those boundaries disappear.

Joe Seppi: 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 I think has been going well, and I look forward to seeing that complete incubation period.

Robin Ginn: Yeah, 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 Seppi: Yeah, the Weather Channel is another good one that I know inaudible

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

Joe Seppi: Very cool. Speaking of inaudible

Luke: 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's remarkable, it's millions of API calls a minute or something. inaudible

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

Joe Seppi: 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 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 Open JS Foundation then brought in some subject matter experts from Node Source and Near Formm 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 Seppi: Yeah, Dave's great. And then we have scholarships happening, but also sales happen often too. I hope you're interested. Keep your eye on it.

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

Joe Seppi: 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. inaudible

Robin Ginn: It is, yeah. And that's actually on our member page, you get a 50% discount, Joe, being part of IBM. Or 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 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 Seppi: Yeah. Yeah.

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

Joe Seppi: 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 Seppi: There you go.

Robin Ginn: There you go.

Joe Seppi: Yeah.

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

Robin Ginn: I know, the patch is...

Luke: It's very nice.

Robin Ginn: I dig the patch. Yeah.

Joe Seppi: I love it. I love it.

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

Joe Seppi: The L is iconic.

Luke: 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 Seppi: Yep.

Robin Ginn: Team Luke. That's it.

Joe Seppi: Team Luke. I'm on Team Luke.

Robin Ginn: Me too.

Joe Seppi: 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 little reminders. Jory Burson is our awesome community director, you might hear a lot from her or you might receive newsletters from her. Jory also leads a very popular Open JS book club.

Joe Seppi: Oh, yeah. Almost forgot about that.

Robin Ginn: Yeah. So 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 Seppi: 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 Seppi: 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 a resilient teams, so I'm looking forward to talking to Amanda. So that is at 9: 00 AM I believe on Thursday, September 30th. inaudible

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

Robin Ginn: The 28th and the 30th.

Joe Seppi: 28th and the 30th?

Robin Ginn: Tuesday and Thursday. Yeah.

Joe Seppi: Got it.

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

Joe Seppi: 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 we couldn't do it without Brian as well.

Joe Seppi: 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 is. He's amazing. Yeah, we're super... We have a great team. We have the A team.

Joe Seppi: Yeah.

Robin Ginn: Yeah.

Joe Seppi: Agreed.

Robin Ginn: Including Joe. Yeah.

Joe Seppi: We have fun. 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 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. It's just something easy to get us all together. So we're Zoom rehearsals.

Joe Seppi: 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 but...

Robin Ginn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My kids are older, in their twenties, but yeah I have a really good guitarist. Yeah, he's going to learn the 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 Seppi: 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: Yeah. So drum sets, 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 Seppi: 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.

Joe Seppi: They're real drums then, they're not electronic drums?

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

Joe Seppi: Oh, that's awesome. I'm excited for you. I wish I had a set right here. I'd be playing it.

Robin Ginn: Cool.

Joe Seppi: Yeah. Luke, you...

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

Joe Seppi: Yep. Yep.

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

Robin Ginn: Yeah.

Joe Seppi: Yeah.

Robin Ginn: Absolutely.

Joe Seppi: 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 Seppi: I'm going to try to book something at Open JS 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. 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 part of the plan.

Joe Seppi: Good. Because we need a talent show, is one. We always at all the Open JS and Node JS events we do karaoke.

Robin Ginn: Karaoke.

Joe Seppi: 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... Yeah, we should do a lot of fun stuff. I'm looking forward to it.

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

Joe Seppi: You can find it on the internet, I'm sure. It's there somewhere.

Robin Ginn: Maybe. Yeah.

Luke: But 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 Seppi: Yeah. Thank you, Robin. I'll see you soon, I'm sure.

Robin Ginn: Exactly. All right.

Luke: All right.

Joe Seppi: All right. Great. Cheers everybody. Thanks.

Luke: Bye.

Robin Ginn: Thanks. Bye.