WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:17.280 Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very pleased to welcome Deb's Udo. I think it's the first time 00:17.280 --> 00:22.360 I've ever heard a nurse speak at Forstems. It's the first for Forstems and she's going 00:22.360 --> 00:28.360 to look at how we address the Forst funding paradox. I hope you, Deb's. 00:28.360 --> 00:39.480 Thank you, Jeremy. Oh, that's a very pleasant crowd. Thank you. I'm going to be talking 00:39.480 --> 00:49.400 today about what happens when we ignore the eggs and fond only the chickens. My name 00:49.400 --> 00:57.480 is Deborah Udo or just Deb's because the other is a mouthful. I'm a registered nurse, 00:57.480 --> 01:05.640 midwife and public health practitioner. I'm currently serving in a government hospital in Nigeria 01:05.640 --> 01:16.600 actively practicing, but I am a bit of a double agent. Well, I, in my previous role, I served as 01:16.600 --> 01:24.280 community manager and research software engineer for OLS and I also volunteer some of my 01:25.160 --> 01:33.960 time to the documentaries as a lesson instructor, developer and I also sit on the governance 01:33.960 --> 01:41.480 committee. I am currently in my fellowship here with the Software Sustainability Institute where I 01:41.560 --> 01:50.840 advocate for best practices in research software engineering and my favorite one is that precedes 01:50.840 --> 01:58.360 my baby projects which I founded and direct currently. I have the next 15 minutes to tell you about 01:58.520 --> 02:10.760 precedes. Now, this is some food for thought. How every open source project started small. 02:10.760 --> 02:17.000 I'm sure I'm looking at people who have, at some point, founded or supported a small open source 02:17.000 --> 02:25.000 project, but not every open source project gets the chance to succeed. Have really taught 02:25.000 --> 02:31.400 consciously about the fact that maybe those projects wouldn't have failed, but they just didn't 02:31.400 --> 02:39.640 get the kind of support that they needed and they're in lies the fourth chicken and egg dilemma 02:39.640 --> 02:48.760 where you require funding to make impact, but funders need to see some impact to give you funding. 02:49.560 --> 02:57.320 And I've put the additional notes at the bottom to clarify that funding doesn't necessarily mean 02:57.320 --> 03:04.040 finances in this case. We're talking about resources and you will get to understand more about that shortly. 03:07.560 --> 03:16.600 And why is this such a hard problem to fix? Well, credibility is often judged by metrics. 03:17.560 --> 03:26.520 Someone called the vanity metrics yesterday and I loved that. And performative reports or track records 03:26.520 --> 03:34.040 or the maturity of your governance committee. And these aren't inherently bad or good things. 03:34.040 --> 03:38.600 Actually, they're very necessary to think about it from the funders perspective, right? 03:38.600 --> 03:46.600 There's risk to be managed and they need to be accountable. However, younger projects are 03:46.600 --> 03:57.160 mostly judged by late stage rules. And in doing this, we run into certain blind spots for 03:57.160 --> 04:03.400 instance. We think that because a project is visible, then it has value or because it looks 04:03.480 --> 04:10.120 posh and prime and proper, then it's ready to be funded. Or because it's stuck around longer than 04:10.120 --> 04:18.920 some others, then it means it has impact or network proximity means merit. So being closer to the 04:18.920 --> 04:26.440 key players or having access suddenly makes it look like you're more serious project. However, 04:26.440 --> 04:34.280 these blind spots bet some diversity gaps. And we don't make enough room for new and 04:34.280 --> 04:43.720 unconventional ideas. Now, what's the cost of ignoring these eggs? Well, of course, we 04:43.720 --> 04:51.320 strangulate and stuff the life out of new and novel ideas, no more innovation, no new 04:51.320 --> 04:59.720 antennas. And the previous antennas are crying, burning out. There's a starvation of regional 04:59.720 --> 05:07.960 cultural and disciplinary diversity. There's a nurse speaking at Boston. There's long-term 05:07.960 --> 05:16.920 consequence overall where we have a fragile and homogeneous flat-out boring ecosystem. 05:17.880 --> 05:24.120 And a thought that I want you to really leave with is the fact that considering diversity 05:24.120 --> 05:32.200 is in charity, it's actually the core of sustainability and its risk management for our future. 05:33.960 --> 05:40.920 And so pause and ponder. What if we invested in potential and not just proof or track records? 05:41.320 --> 05:51.320 Free seats. I told you I was going to come back to presets. So presets is an open source initiative 05:51.320 --> 05:57.880 with a community-led curriculum. We're trying to get more research coming out of Africa by teaching 05:57.880 --> 06:05.880 open research skills. And the mission is to find people where they are and deliver materials that 06:05.960 --> 06:11.880 really obscured their knowledge when it comes to research practices. And this also serves 06:11.880 --> 06:17.560 our larger research software engineering community by helping researchers who have come from 06:17.560 --> 06:25.240 non-academic backgrounds to get advertising to the world of research. It's modular, self-paced, 06:25.240 --> 06:32.600 but we also deliver this as workshops. And on the right you see the pillars on which pre-seeds is built. 06:33.240 --> 06:42.520 And these are some, but there's not enough room on the wall for all the challenges for 06:43.160 --> 06:50.280 early stage projects, but there's problems of limited credibility, no access to networks, 06:51.000 --> 06:59.000 in experience, in handling grants, in the general lack of experience, in these tidal waters. 06:59.960 --> 07:05.800 There's on-click of non-expectations, you know, how much effort it took to try and get 07:05.800 --> 07:11.560 enough documentation to be on board at our fiscal sponsors. There's a general lack of 07:11.560 --> 07:19.160 visibility for smaller projects. And a lot of note is that this is in necessarily a competence 07:19.160 --> 07:27.480 problem. It's more access problem. And a fairer metric as my friend Roland would always say is 07:28.280 --> 07:38.680 George Achievement Relative to Opportunity. Now what does it mean to actually support 07:39.320 --> 07:46.840 projects, Ellie? Non-monetary support of visibility, for instance, sharing your platforms, 07:46.840 --> 07:55.480 Ellie, and off with smaller non-shiny projects. Mentorship, as I mentioned, I am 07:55.480 --> 08:01.720 a fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute and one of the programs and one of the benefits 08:01.720 --> 08:08.600 of being a fellow is that you get a mentor, someone to guide you on DAC for the days. 08:11.000 --> 08:18.840 I'm in too far, didn't I? Networks. So access to the right people can really make the 08:18.840 --> 08:24.840 difference between success or failure for open source projects, especially young ones. 08:26.280 --> 08:32.360 An amplification going out there and talking about new interest in projects that you found. 08:33.960 --> 08:41.240 This is credibility by proximity. It really helps these projects more than you know. And at the 08:41.240 --> 08:48.360 bottom, I've put some of the organizations or institutes that have been of incredible support 08:48.440 --> 08:58.360 to precede whether by providing pots of funds or lending on Zoom access for pilot workshops or 08:58.360 --> 09:03.720 letting us go through trainings for free, these make a world of difference. 09:05.960 --> 09:11.160 But I'd like to point out that precedes is not unique. I'm not here to tell you about a challenge 09:11.240 --> 09:19.480 that we faced. This is a pattern that keeps repeating in our ecosystem and small investments 09:19.480 --> 09:25.240 without time or generosity can make so much difference between whether those projects 09:25.240 --> 09:34.600 later get ready for funding. Case in point. I'm sure you see the screen. Sarah and I 09:34.600 --> 09:44.280 really am investing in 14 companies that went on to reach unicorn status, a value of one billion 09:44.280 --> 09:54.760 dollars or more. On the right, you can see some interesting stats. How 79% on the represented 09:54.760 --> 10:03.720 founders, 54% were women, 47% were black founders, 11% were Latino founders, 10:04.360 --> 10:13.480 and less than 2% of all VC money went to women. Food for thought. 10:17.080 --> 10:25.800 And a second case study is from Cindy Gallup to female founders talking about how white men 10:25.800 --> 10:38.200 tend to get funded based on white women. Don't get as much funded and it's even worse for 10:38.200 --> 10:49.640 women of color. All of this and 11,000 plus more stories can be found at nottheonlyone.org. 10:49.640 --> 11:03.480 And so in wrapping up what can you do about it whether you're a funder or an individual who 11:03.480 --> 11:09.800 just cares about open source. It's imperative that we change the things that we count. 11:10.760 --> 11:20.360 We should be more conscious of rewarding, learning, momentum, clarity and not just the scale of impact. 11:22.520 --> 11:29.080 It's important that we share platforms, alien off, and write young projects to speak, 11:29.080 --> 11:37.880 to demo their work to participate. It's also really, really incredibly important to lower the 11:37.960 --> 11:45.240 cost of credibility. It should be enough that someone has made an introduction. References, 11:45.240 --> 11:52.520 count, trust signals, matter as well, and everyone in this room can do at least one of these things. 11:53.480 --> 12:07.800 If we only fund the chickens, how can we be surprised when this ecosystem stops lean eggs? 12:11.800 --> 12:19.640 What questions do we have in true capantry style? I will entertain questions for whatever amount 12:19.720 --> 12:24.200 of minutes I have left. And thank you very much for listening to me. 12:33.400 --> 12:38.680 So we have a few minutes for questions and a reminder again questions, please not statements. 12:42.200 --> 12:43.080 Any questions? 12:43.320 --> 12:56.760 Okay, so I very much agree with the premise that you should invest in potential, but I suppose 12:56.760 --> 13:00.440 to miss quote Macbeth, if I could look into the seeds of time and see what grain will grow, 13:00.440 --> 13:05.880 what will not. I would only invest in what grains grow, but I can't. How do you recognize potential? 13:05.880 --> 13:14.040 Most of the in-between I didn't really catch, but I think the most important part was right at the 13:14.040 --> 13:24.440 end, how do you recognize potential? That's a great question. I cannot confidently answer and say 13:24.440 --> 13:33.080 there's a laid-down metric to identify potential, but I believe that things like passion and 13:33.160 --> 13:39.640 impact and vision count towards potential, and that should be taken into account as well. 13:43.640 --> 13:44.680 Any more questions? 13:48.440 --> 13:49.320 Okay, thank you. 13:49.640 --> 14:03.640 Actually, not so much a question, but you're remark about the white guys getting funded because 14:03.640 --> 14:09.080 they recognize themselves and the white women getting funded when they have proof and the 14:09.080 --> 14:15.800 black women not getting funded. I just want to say that seeing you up here, as a woman seeing 14:15.800 --> 14:21.880 another woman and a setting like this is always inspiring, and I think you have a point there, 14:21.880 --> 14:26.680 and I really like seeing you up here, giving this talk. Thank you. 14:36.120 --> 14:40.200 Okay, I think that's all, but I think that was a very good point to finish on. Thank you very 14:40.200 --> 14:51.480 much, Deb, an inspiring talk. And we have a little thank you from the conference for your efforts. 14:52.920 --> 14:58.440 So thank you very much. We have a short break, and then we'll be back with the next talk in 15 minutes. 14:58.440 --> 14:59.320 Thank you very much.