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• They started exploring the idea of creating a version control tool for datasets, which eventually became the debt project. |
• The project transitioned from focusing on government data to scientific data and scientists, after a fortuitous meeting at the Mozilla festival. |
• Discussion of dataset sharing and syncing data for scientific users |
• Meeting at the Mozilla festival in 2013 leading to grant funding opportunity |
• Grant funding process and smaller funding options through organizations like Knight Foundation |
• Overview of the Knight Prototype Funds program and its benefits |
• Explanation of grant writing and the process of securing funding |
• Charitable trusts and foundations set up by eccentric billionaires to evade taxes |
• Philanthropic private foundations in the US, often run by white male billionaires |
• Comparison with European government grants, which are more prevalent due to high taxes |
• Differences between US and EU grant programs, including size and complexity of grants |
• Importance of building relationships with funders for successful grant writing |
• Grant writing as a process that requires time and effort to develop relationships with funders |
• Contrast between grant funding and venture capital (VC) funding |
• Benefits of grant funding, including no pressure to make compromises or judgment calls. |
• Importance of meeting funders face-to-face through community events |
• Value of attending conferences focused on specific issues rather than just technical topics |
• Key to grant funding is looking at projects holistically, not just technically |
• Building relationships with investors/funders is crucial for success |
• Intersectionality and seeking inspiration from different sectors can be creatively stimulating and lead to new connections |
• The speaker was approached by Josh Greenberg from the Sloan Foundation to work on scientific projects |
• The speaker has a history of unpaid open source work and taking pay cuts for non-profit work |
• The speaker's current salary is above average for nonprofits, but below what they could earn at a startup |
• The Sloan grant has enabled the speaker to build a team and focus on scientific reproducibility |
• Scientific reproducibility issues arise when researchers publish papers without sharing underlying data and code |
• The Sloan Foundation's mission includes supporting science and technology in the modern world |
• The first grant established a team and required a commitment to working with scientists |
• The speaker had to figure out what solutions to build by getting embedded into the problem. |
• Grants to develop software for data sharing workflows in scientific labs |
• Partnership with four in-depth labs from different fields (astrophysics, DNA research, social sciences) |
• Overcoming challenges of data size and file formats specific to each field |
• Importance of grants as a way to create incentives for developing open-source software in science |
• Hiring talented developers, including Matthias Spuse, to work on the project despite limited budget |
• Approaches to attracting top talent, such as DMing them on Twitter |
• Importance of attending open source conferences to meet funders and community members |
• Interdisciplinary approach to software development and considering the communities affected by it |
• Focusing on key areas such as science, journalism, and government for funding opportunities |
• Working in a non-traditional startup environment with world-class team members given high degree of freedom |
• Emphasis on open-source work and direct impact on community |
• Incentivizing team members to explore future of scientific data sharing through grant money |
• Discussing paying people to work on open source projects |
• The challenges of changing incentive structures and staying on mission for an organization |
• Conference-driven development as a strategy |
• Importance of team members having personal deadlines and goals |
• The value of remote teams and convening in person |
• The need for team members to have ownership and credit for their work |
• Personal evangelism and speaking on behalf of the community |
• The speaker discusses traveling to collaborate on projects with a colleague from another city |
• They describe their process for planning and working on open-source projects, including a two-phase approach with an intensive project planning phase followed by parallel work |
• The speaker mentions the benefits of decentralized and asynchronous collaboration, including cost savings |
• Grant funding is discussed as a way to support travel and convening events, which can be beneficial but also require pitching and reporting |
• The speaker's team is trying to establish itself as a unique entity that blends open-source principles with nonprofit status and paid staff, and they're seeking a clear label for themselves |
• The conversation turns to the role of grants in funding open-source work, including Stripe's open-source program and private philanthropies like the Gates Foundation |
• The importance of using technology as a tool to achieve social impact |
• Distinguishing between grants that improve technologies and those that aim to improve social outcomes |
• Exploring the concept of public software and open source software as a public good |
• Drawing a distinction between nonprofits and for-profits, with nonprofits often focused on specific social missions |
• The role of grant funding in supporting technology development and its trade-offs in terms of detachment from social issues |
• Challenges of traditional grant writing process |
• Difficulty of predicting project outcomes and timelines |
• Importance of flexibility and agility in funding projects |
• Misconceptions about open source funding and its potential benefits |
• Cultural differences between grant-making organizations and open-source communities |
• Need for grants to prioritize social impact and problem-solving over technical details |
• Technical debt and inflexibility in software development |
• Open source as an advantage for social causes |
• Challenges of pitching open source projects to grant writers |
• Institutional level support for open source work in government |
• Procurement reform in government and its potential impact on open source funding |
• New organizations within the federal government promoting open source initiatives |
• Grant landscape shifting towards supporting efficient government services and competing with traditional vendors |
• The Substance Consortium model for open-source collaboration and project support |
• eLife, a scientific journal, and the development of eLife Lens, an open-source editing tool |
• Collaborative Knowledge Foundation's role in facilitating the Substance Consortium and promoting open-access publishing tools |
• The DAT project's potential to adopt a similar consortium-based model for distributed file system infrastructure support |
[0.00 --> 19.00] Welcome to Request for Commits, a podcast that explores different perspectives in open |
[19.00 --> 23.72] source sustainability. On this show, we talk to people about the human side of code. We |
[23.72 --> 28.12] cover everything from community and governance to businesses and licensing. If you've ever |
[28.12 --> 32.70] wondered how open source projects get started, survive, die, or flourish, then you're going |
[32.70 --> 38.14] to love this show. I'm Nadia Ekba. And I'm Michael Rogers. On today's show, Michael and I talk |
[38.14 --> 43.24] with Max Ogden, creator of DAT, an open source decentralized tool for distributing datasets. |
[43.72 --> 47.78] Max has also done a lot of work in the Node.js ecosystem, including help start Node School |
[47.78 --> 52.36] and publishing hundreds of modules at NPM. He was also one of the first Code for America fellows. |
[52.74 --> 56.98] Our focus on today's episode with Max is around grant funding. We talked about how we figured |
[56.98 --> 60.32] out grants were right for developing debt and how he managed to find his first funders. |
[60.62 --> 64.52] We also get into the mechanics of grant funding. Max shared what it's like to work with grant |
[64.52 --> 68.08] funders and how to build those early relationships if you're looking for grants yourself. |
[71.50 --> 76.92] So Max, you have an interesting story in terms of how you ended up at Code for America. Can you |
[76.92 --> 82.50] tell us a little bit about how you ended up there? Yeah, actually, it was kind of fortuitous or random, |
[82.50 --> 88.30] at least to me at the time. Maybe it was all planned out. I have no idea. But I was attending |
[88.30 --> 92.72] an event around Auscon, which used to be in Portland every year. And they moved it down to Austin |
[92.72 --> 98.38] last year. But Auscon was kind of cool. I could never afford to go. But it was kind of interesting |
[98.38 --> 103.26] because it would bring all these open source people into Portland. And one year, there was like |
[103.26 --> 108.30] a civic apps competition here in Portland that I was participating in. It was the city was trying to |
[108.30 --> 116.44] get people to use their open data. And so I was at an award ceremony for that and received like an |
[116.44 --> 122.08] award for some civic app that I had made. I had a thing called the PDX API that took the data sets |
[122.08 --> 129.48] from the city of Portland and made them accessible to developers. And in the audience was Tim O'Reilly, |
[129.74 --> 134.54] who, you know, owns O'Reilly Books and runs Auscon. And he came up to me afterwards and he goes, |
[134.54 --> 139.66] hey, we're starting this new thing called Code for America. Here's my card. You should definitely |
[139.66 --> 145.12] apply to be a fellow. And this was about like nine months before the first Code for America |
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