I have several active or otherwise on-going open source projects. I’m also currently doing some thinking about university open source project offices. More about OSPOs…
Open Demographics
The Open Demographics project is an open-source project designed to help people and teams ask questions about demographic data (gender, sexual orientation, race). It uses an open source paradigm (community sourced, publicly accessible) to generate a collective consensus on the most inclusive ways to ask questions. This project is not without it’s own political shortcomings and challenges - it’s in English, and most contributors are based in the United States. The community is working to enhance it and expand it to other regions.
Outcomes: This project, in concert with the Gender Field project on Drupal.org has resulted in more inclusive questioning for over one million Drupal.org users. Check out the blog announcement by Dries Buytaert (founder of Drupal).
Trans-inclusive data model
As the result of both Open Demographics conversations, and other conversations about how to store data collected by inclusive demographic forms. The trans-inclusive data model (currently under construction) is designed to store name, gender, pronoun information in a context-sensitive way that supports asking questions of the data like “I’m about to call this person at home - what is their name and pronoun there?”
You can read more about this data model in Chapter 4 of my dissertation
Open Government Vermont
When I moved back to Vermont in 2022 (initially to work for Dartmouth, but now I live here forever!), I immediately got involved in local town issues. I am continually reminded of how little I know about making communities better in slow, steady practice. In contrast to the theory of my PhD, and the radical protest of my younger days, my current work is more complicated, more intricate, and far slower than I was prepared for. As I learn and experience the details of how local government and small-town social change works, I’m sharing it here.
Note: As of this writing (August 2023), I am an elected member of our town Selectboard and also the (Interim) Town Health Officer.
Open Source PhD
Before I began my PhD program, I frequently thought, “I wish I knew what people in [insert name of PhD program] were reading” because I wanted to do that same reading. Some courses had syllabi available, some had notes, but it was hard to get a sense of the themes that were being discussed. I told myself that if I were ever lucky enough to be able enter a PhD program, I’d share as much as I could about the material I was reading. During my coursework and comprehensive exams, I did just that. Those posts form the core of the Open Source PhD project. Read all of the posts.