Dawn Foster
Co-Host of CHAOSScast
Dr. Dawn Foster works as the Director of Data Science for CHAOSS where she is also a board member / maintainer. She is co-chair of CNCF TAG Contributor Strategy and an OpenUK board member. She has 20+ years of experience at companies like VMware and Intel with expertise in community, strategy, governance, metrics, and more. She has spoken at over 100 industry events and has a BS in computer science, an MBA, and a PhD. In her spare time she enjoys reading science fiction, running, and traveling.
Dawn Foster has hosted 26 Episodes.
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Episode 76: CHAOSS Goals for 2024 and Beyond
1 January 2024 | 42 mins 41 secs
In this episode, host Georg is joined by CHAOSS members, Sean, Nicole, Matt, Elizabeth, and Dawn. Today, they delve into the CHAOSS Project’s goals for 2024 and beyond, highlighting efforts to establish CHAOSS metrics and models as formal international standards. The conversation covers their potential ISO standardization, strategies to grow the user community, the importance of increasing collaboration within the CHAOSS contributor community, and enhancing software contributions, acknowledging the need to value non-code contributions. They also touch on the importance of community engagement and the utility of hosted software solutions to make CHAOSS tools more accessible. We are all excited to see where this new journey takes us, and we would love for you to be a part of this journey.
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Episode 75: DEI Metrics Overcoming Social Barriers in OSS
19 December 2023 | 32 mins 50 secs
In this episode of CHAOSScast, Georg and Dawn have a conversation with guest, Anita Ihuman, about the vital subject of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) metrics within open source communities. Anita, who’s a developer advocate and technical writer, shares her research about how DEI metrics are used and their effectiveness. They discuss the importance of documenting DEI efforts, reflect on the challenges faced by communities in improving inclusivity, and share success stories of events that have leveraged CHAOSS DEI badges to enhance participant experiences. Also, Anita encourages everyone to explore the comprehensive research findings for further insights.
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Episode 73: Reflections on the LF OSS Maintainer Report
2 November 2023 | 41 mins 25 secs
In today’s episode, the conversation dives deep into the Linux Foundation Research Open Source Maintainers Report. Georg, Alyssa, Dawn, Sophia, and Anita engage in a thoughtful discussion about the report's methodology, findings, and implications for open source projects. They explore topics such as the challenges of obtaining a representative sample in open source research, the bias toward technical contributors, and the importance of considering the long-term engagement lifecycle of contributors. Additionally, they touch upon the report's best practices, including documentation and diversity, and how these practices can be connected across different categories. Download this episode now to learn more!
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Episode 72: Open Source Software Viability and Project Selection
19 October 2023 | 32 mins 38 secs
In this episode, our host, Matt Germonprez, is joined by Dawn Foster from the CHAOSS Community, Sophia Vargas from Google, and Gary White from Verizon. Today, they dive into the crucial topic of assessing the viability of open source projects for adoption within organizations. The discussion covers the intricacies of evaluating project viability, the challenges of project failure, and the necessity of continuous assessments. The panelists provide valuable insights on mitigating risks, leveraging metrics, and the importance of active engagement within open source communities. This episode offers a wealth of knowledge and practical advice for navigating the world of open source software. Download this episode now to hear more!
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Episode 71: What's New in CHAOSS: Podcast Reboot Episode
5 October 2023 | 47 mins 23 secs
In this episode, the CHAOSScast team is back! Georg Link, Dawn Foster, Sean Goggins, Matt Germonprez, and Elizabeth Barron discuss the relaunch of the podcast after taking a short break. They delve into the fascinating world of open source community health, focusing on metrics, metric models, and the CHAOSS Project’s role in measuring the health of open source communities. They share insights on how they’re working to make metrics more accessible and how they interpret these metrics within the context of specific projects. Additionally, they highlight the Data Science Initiative, the growth of CHAOSS community chapters worldwide, and their initiative to improve newcomer experience and promote diversity and inclusion in open source. Download this episode now to find out much more!
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Episode 62: Maintaining Open Source Projects - a joint episode with the Sustain Podcast
12 August 2022 | 42 mins 7 secs
Today’s episode is a shared podcast between Sustain and CHAOSS. We have six panelists to talk about maintaining open source and we’ll also do a quick update from a previous episode and talk about what has changed and what maintaining open source looks like today. The panelists we have are Georg Link, Richard Littauer, Dawn Foster, Willem Jiang, Amanda Casari, and Ben Nickolls.
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Episode 49: CHAOSS Community Year 2021 in Review
3 December 2021 | 51 mins 34 secs
We are super excited for today’s episode because we are doing a “Year 2021 in Review” with our panel of representatives from the CHAOSS community from all around the world. Joining us today are Georg, Sean, Matt, Willem, Dawn, Nicole, Elizabeth, and Xiaoya. Our panelists tell us their favorite episodes from this year, we hear about new advances in software for CHAOSS Project, things that happened around metrics in CHAOSS, and DEI Badging for Events that was built out this year. Also, we learn more about conversations that happened from this year with metrics models, dependencies, and ethics guidelines. And finally, the panelists share with us where they want to see the CHAOSS Project going in 2022.
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Episode 34: Anniversary Episode with Georg, Dawn, Matt, Sophia, Elizabeth
7 May 2021 | 35 mins 47 secs
Hello and welcome to this episode of CHAOSScast. Today’s episode is our Anniversary Episode because the podcast launched one year ago! We will discuss how the podcast and the CHAOSS project has evolved. We learn why Georg wanted to start this podcast and the project, and the goals he had along with the success of the podcast in the last year. We find out from the panelists the episode that was most interesting to them, the impact the podcast has had on the community as a whole, where they see the CHAOSS Project evolving and heading from where they’ve come in the last four years. Also, Dawn and Matt talk about how CHAOSS is working on doing translations for Chinese and Spanish. Download this episode to find out much more! Don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast or on your favorite podcast App and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
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Episode 28: Human-Centric Operations and Metrics with Sophia Vargas
12 February 2021 | 41 mins 41 secs
Hello and welcome to this episode of CHAOSScast! Our special guest today is Sophia Vargas, Program Manager with Google’s Open Source Programs Office. We will learn what Sophia does at Google and what she does within the Open Source Programs Office (OSPO). Also, find out how Google looks at the life cycle of open source projects and what they do for their project leads and maintainers to help them take the right steps for their projects. Sophia shares with us how CHAOSS has helped in her work with Google and what her hopes are with CHAOSS in the future. Also, she tells us something she would like to start working on with having the ability to look at data completely anonymously. Download this episode now to find out more! Don’t forget to subscribe for free to this podcast and share this podcast with your friends and colleagues.
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Episode 13: Internews OSS Lightweight Needs Assessment Toolkit with Gina Helfrich
14 August 2020 | 48 mins 58 secs
Welcome to this episode of CHAOSScast! Today, our special guest is Gina Helfrich. Dr. Helfrich is Program Officer for Global Technology at Internews, where she manages global programs covering two streams of work. She will talk about the BASICS project, which is where they look at how to strengthen open source security tools that journalists and human rights organizations rely on. You can also find out about The Guardian Project and how it has developed a methodology called Clean Insights. We will learn about the OSS Lightweight Needs Assessment toolkit she created and why CHAOSS was a source of inspiration for the toolkit. Subscribe for free to this podcast and download this episode now!
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Episode 5: Defining “Open Source Community Health”
19 June 2020 | 43 mins 59 secs
Hello and welcome to this episode of CHAOSScast! In this episode, we are going to talk about what Open Source Community Health is. We will let you know what the foundations and basics of what CHAOSS is all about and what this podcast is all about. Also, we will discuss the different working groups of CHAOSS. Download this episode now to find out more!
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Episode 3: Augur
5 June 2020 | 38 mins 29 secs
Welcome to this episode of CHAOSSCast! Today, we have three guests that are maintainers from the CHAOSS Augur Project. They are Sean Goggins, Gabe Heim, and Carter Landis. Sean is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Missouri, CHAOSS Co-Founder and Board Member. Gabe is a senior at the University of Missouri, studying Computer Science and Carter is a senior at the University of Missouri, studying Computer Science. They are here to tell you all about Augur and how they play a huge part of the CHAOSS project. Also, Dawn tells us how Augur is used in VMWare’s Open Source Program Office. Also, they discuss all of their successes with Augur so far, and if you are interested in exploring Augur, find out where you could start. Download this episode now.