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Description
In today’s news, technology and software are often maligned with stories of how technology is driving bias to eroding democracies to isolating communities. At the same time, the social problems we see in the world (climate change, poverty, etc.) are ever pervasive and persistent. Open source software can be an effective tool to address these pressing social issues of our time. It offers an even more compelling opportunity to develop and collaborate on software that is changing people’s lives. Come listen to developers who are working at the intersection of social change and technology.
A panel discussion with Miller Abel, Julius Sweetland, and Tiffani Ashley Bell, moderated by Admas Kanyagia.
About GitHub Universe:
GitHub Universe is a two-day conference dedicated to the creativity and curiosity of the largest software community in the world. Sessions cover topics from team culture to open source software across industries and technologies.
For more information on GitHub Universe, check the website:
https://githubuniverse.com
A
Good
morning,
everyone
so
stories
like
this
that
you
saw
in
the
video
today
are
the
things
that
make
us
really
excited
to
work
at
github.
My
role
is
the
director
of
social
impact
is
all
about
thinking
about
how
open
source
software
and
code
can
be
used
to
address
the
pressing
of
social
issues
of
our
time.
A
In
today's
news
we
hear
too
many
stories
of
how
technology
is
driving
bias,
how
technology
is
driving
eroding
communities
and
isolating
isolating
communities
as
well,
but
we
see
the
social
problems
in
the
world
around
us
is
ever
persistent
and
ever-present
climate
change
poverty.
These
two
seem
like
quite
intractable
problems,
but
open
source
can
be
a
solution.
It
has
the
power
to
drive
collaboration
and
shared
expertise,
to
drive
innovation
and
change
and
to
build
communities,
particularly
with
multiple
and
diverse
perspectives,
so
I'm
so
excited
to
direct
to
introduce
today's
panelists
up
to
the
stage.
A
So
for
the
first
few
minutes
of
our
panel
today,
I'd
love
each
of
you
just
to
tell
us
a
little
bit
about
your
own
individual
developer
story.
How
did
you
get
into
coding
software
and
then
also
talk
a
little
bit
about
the
projects
and
the
organizations
that
you
work
in
operate
in
open-source
Miller
sure.
B
This
is
a
system
that
allows
for
individual
payments
platforms
like
banks,
MoMA
microfinance
institutions
or
mobile
money
systems
to
connect
their
systems
together,
so
that
account
holders
on
one
system
can
send
money
to
the
account
holders
on
another
up
until
now,
that's
been
somewhat
challenging
in
the
developing
world,
but
we've
got
a
lot
of
success
there.
Ten
years
ago
there
were
only
fourteen
million
mobile
money
accounts.
B
C
Morning
so
I,
my
developer
story
is
sort
of
an
accidental
one.
I
started
coding
when
I
was
six.
Actually,
my
mom
bought
me.
This
thing
called
a
pre-computer
1000
from
VTech
and,
like
it
had
games
built-in
like
hangman
and
stuff
like
that
and
I've
started.
Seeing
that,
like
you,
the
words
repeat
themselves
so
I
just
want
to
like
start
making.
My
own
games
but
like
I,
was
kind
of
weird
and
like
I,
was
a
six-year-old
that
read
the
user
manual
for
things
and
so
in
the
back
of
the
user
manual.
C
For
this
pre-computer
1000,
there
was
a
queue
basic
tutorial
and
so
like
I
started
with
that,
basically
and
just
kind
of
made
little
things
or
whatever,
but
actually
wanted
to
be
a
cartoonist.
So
I
didn't
really
think
of
that
as
like
a
career
because
nobody
of
my
family
was
a
developer
but
like
I,
just
kept
coming
back
to
computers,
so
like
probably
fourth
or
fifth
grade
learning
how
to
build
websites
and
then
like
later
taking
your
programming
class
at
my
high
school.
C
That
happened
to
offer
one
which
I
didn't
realize
was
like
a
thing
that
was
really
like
exceptional
at
that
time.
This
was
like
99
and
I
have
an
uncle
that
bought
me
a
programming
book
for
my
15th
birthday
and
I
just
kind
of
dropped.
The
notion
of
becoming
a
cartoonist
at
that
point.
I
went
to
Howard
for
computer
science
finished
in
2008
and
then,
like
you
know,
I
got
to.
It
was
fast
forwarding
a
bit.
C
I
was
reading
in
the
morning
one
time
on
Twitter
about
how
a
hundred
thousand
people
in
Detroit
we're
about
to
have
to
live
without
running
water,
because
most
of
them
couldn't
afford
the
water
bill,
and
that
was
pretty
crappy
like
this
is
the
United
States,
like
people
should
be
able
to
have
water
in
their
houses,
regardless
of
their
financial
situation.
So
me
being
a
developer.
C
The
first
thing
that
we
kind
of
did
just
shorting
it
again
like
was
throwing
up
a
website
to
try
to
find
people
who
needed
help
with
their
water
bills,
but
I'm
an
obsessive
tweeter.
If
you
follow
me,
you
see
I'm
on
there
all
day,
long
but
I,
just
kind
of
shared
that
you
know
we're
doing
this
thing:
we're
trying
to
find
people
to
help
with
their
water
bills,
and
it
turned
into
like
just
because
we
were
on
social
media.
C
A
ton
of
people
wanted
to
like
give
themselves,
and
so
it
turned
into
this
whole
big
thing
that
we
ended
up
building
an
organization
around
and
that
wasn't
on
purpose
either.
But
when
you
hit
upon
a
solution
that
you've
written
some
code
for
and
people
get
behind
it,
you
kind
of
can't
stop
it
from
that
point.
So
you
know
we
were
funded
by
Y
Combinator
shortly
thereafter
and
we're
a
nonprofit
organization.
Today,
that's
helped
nearly
a
thousand
families
in
Detroit
and
Baltimore,
a
bunch
of
other
cities
in
Michigan
cuz.
C
D
I'm,
a
software
developer
from
London
I've,
loved
computers,
since
I
was
5
years
old
and
my
dad
brought
home
a
a
BBC
microcomputer
and
we
try
to
program
it
from
magazines
and
it
didn't
really
work,
but
it
was
fun.
I've
always
been
obsessed
with
their
their
power.
This
sort
of
limitless
power.
These
boxes
have
so
I
studied
all
the
way
through,
like
you
got
a
degree
in
computer
science
and
I've
spent
the
last
15
years.
D
Writing
financial
software
for
hedge
funds,
investment
banks,
that
sort
of
thing
which
is
very
challenging
it's
good
fun
sometimes,
but
it
doesn't
give
you
a
particularly
fuzzy
warm
feeling
so
so
I've
always
I've
always
looked
for
something
some
opportunity
where
I
could
write
something
that
potentially
made
a
difference
in
people's
lives,
had
some
sort
of
social
impact
and
under
under
unfortunate
circumstances.
I
got
an
opportunity
when
my
dad's
sister,
my
aunt
Jill,
got
diagnosed
with
motor
neuron
disease
and
called
ALS
or
Lou
Gehrig's
disease
over
here
and
I.
D
Don't
want
to
bring
you
down
at
10
a.m.
in
the
morning,
but
it's
it's
a
bit
of
a
horrible
disease.
It
takes
away
your
body's
ability
to
move
and
towards
the
end.
Often
people
can't
speak,
but
they
can
move
their
eyes.
So
there
are
systems
out
there
that
can
help
them
as
it
gets
to
this
stage.
They
allow
you
to
control
the
computer
and
speak
using
eye
movement,
but
the
problem
is
these
systems
are
sort
of
10
15,
20
thousand
dollars
so
put
yourself
in
our
situations.
D
D
I
spent
far
far
too
long
on
this
problem
and
eventually
released
object
in
2015,
which
is
an
on
screen
series
of
keyboards,
and
it
allows
you
full
computer
controllers
if
you're
typing,
as
if
you're
using
your
mouse,
and
you
can
also
talk
to
people
around
you
and
it's
completely
free.
It's
completely
open-source.
A
You
know
quite
effective
solutions
to
what
seemed
like
intractable
problems.
Tiffani
I'll
just
start
with
you,
so
you
know
the
work
that
you've
done
has
helped
thousands
of
families
and
Baltimore
and
Detroit,
and
you
talked
a
little
bit
about
you
know
when
you
have
a
great
idea.
You
know
developers
do
flock
to
you.
How
did
you
activate
developers
really
all
across
the
world
to
help
support
you
and
contribute
to
the
human
utility
project?
I.
C
Mean
mostly
there's
social
media
like
people
just
found
out
they're
like
we
were
hosting
them,
so
we
started
on
github.
Literally
and
again,
it
was
just
like
some
tape
together,
bootstrap
code,
a
Google
form
that
looked
like
it
was
something
more
extensive
than
it
was,
but
it
was
just
posted
there
on
github,
but
you
can
contribute
so
like
if
we
had
a
typo
on
the
website,
people
would
like
do
pull
requests
and
fix
it
or
whatever.
C
People
wanted
to
be
a
part
of
that,
because
you
know
people
would
confide
in
me
like
in
my
dm's
that
hey
I
work
at
this
company
I'm,
not
that
excited
about
it,
but
I
want
to
do
something
like
what
you're
doing
so
like
they
would
either
contribute
or
they
going
to
ask
to
like
help
with
not
ask
with
help
but
like
to
do
their
own
kind
of
thing.
So
yeah
but
I
think
it's
just
a
matter
like
you
know.
People
saw
something
that
was
bigger
than
themselves
and
want
to
be
a
part
of
that.
A
Thanks
Miller
I
want
to
talk
a
little
bit
about
the
power
of
open
source,
so
you
talked
about
interoperability
being
like
the
primary
problem
that
you're
trying
to
solve
with
the
financial
inclusion
work
that
you're
leading.
So
how
has
open
source
been
helpful
to
address
some
of
the
compelling
challenges
around
connecting?
You
know
the
world's
poor
to
all
the
financial
systems
that
we
have
in
the
world
today.
Well,.
B
Understanding
a
little
bit
about
how
some
of
our
markets
in
sub-saharan
Africa
and
Asia
work,
there
could
be
four
to
six
mobile
money
wallet
providers
in
those
countries
and
they
have
been
challenged
in
connecting
their
systems
together,
primarily
because
they
don't
want
to
they
think
of
it
as
an
add-on
to
their
own
services.
But
that
philosophy
has
been
changing
now.
B
They
see
the
power
of
interoperability
through
some
of
the
recent
work
that
others
have
done
to
help
them
connect,
but
connecting
bilaterally
as
a
mathematically,
unscalable
problem,
so
putting
a
set
of
shared
services
at
the
center
was
an
ideal
approach.
Well,
we
think
about
that.
The
the
infrastructure
of
through
basically
four
rungs
of
a
ladder,
the
very
bottom
rung
we
would
think
of
it
as
the
rules.
What
does
the
market
need
and
what
is
how
does
it
self-regulate?
B
You
know
that
the
Internet
of
payments,
on
top
of
that
is
the
accounts,
which
is
the
companies
I
mentioned
that
actually
face
the
customer
and
hold
their
money,
but
on
top
of
that
as
apps,
and
so
we
think
about
companies
like
hello
tractor
that
is
essentially
the
uber
for
tractors.
If
you're
a
farmer,
you
don't
want
to
have
your
own
tractor,
you
don't
want
to
fix
it,
but
you
do
need
tract
Turing
done
a
couple
times
a
year,
but
how
do
you
get
paid
for
that?
B
Well,
the
problem,
of
course,
is
that
you
get
paid
in
bags
of
cash
or
some
other
form
unless
you're
on
exactly
the
same
mobile
money
system
that
the
the
farmer
and
the
the
and
the
rest
of
your
clients
are
on.
So
we
looked
at
it
said
those
bottom,
two
layers
rules
in
rails-
that's
really
cooperation
space
and
the
best
way
to
build
cooperative
systems
is
using
open
source
methods.
So
we're
you
know.
B
Our
systems
built
on
node
uses
Kafka,
okay,
it's
it's
deployed
on
kubernetes,
so
that
it
can
be
deployed
by
a
national
government
as
part
of
their
national
payment
system,
or
it
could
actually
be
deployed
by
a
commercial
entity
and
the
Gates
Foundation
doesn't
take
a
position
really
one
way
or
the
other
on
whether
it
being
served
by
commercial
or
they're
being
served
by
you
know
open
source
or
a
community
mode.
We
want
to
see
the
best
result.
We
also
want
to
be
sure
that
the
systems
actually
do
fit
together.
B
A
The
power
of
collaboration,
coordination
and
cooperation
can
really
be
unleashed
through
open
source
right
Julius
love
to
talk
to
you
about
your
work
on
open,
an
optic
II.
It's
really
a
true
developer
story
of
you
know,
locking
yourself
down
working
on
something
really
hard
refining
it
refining
it
and
then
launching
it
to
the
world.
So
when
you
launched
optic
II,
what
were
maybe
some
pieces
of
the
github
ecosystem
that
really
helped
you,
you
know
with
this
particular
project
and
address
the
particular
problems
you
were
trying
to
to
to
fix
with
the
assistive
technology.
Well,.
D
When
I
release
stop
Tiki,
I
I
didn't
have
particularly
high
hopes.
I
wasn't
I,
wasn't
hoping
for
hundreds
of
collaborators
and
people
to
come
forward,
but
once
it
was
released,
I
was
actually
amazed
that
people
were
putting
their
hands
up
and
they
did
this
through
the
github
ecosystem.
So
what
I
saw
is
the
the
issues
board
get
quite
lively
and
it
was
the
users
themselves.
It
was
their
families
and
friends.
D
He
was
saying
it's
great,
but
we
really
wanted
to
do
this
as
well,
or
is
it
possible
that
it
could
be
converted
into
Turkish
or
German,
or
this
sort
of
foot
and
the
power
of
that
was?
You
know
the
three
years
I've
spent
on
my
own
before
working
on
it
I've
been
making
every
decision
I've
been
driving
a
project
in
whatever
direction,
I
wanted
it
or
thought
it
should
go
in
and
it
was
that
inversion.
It
was
the
user
suddenly
using
github
to
say
no.
D
This
would
be
great
instead
and
they
pulled
it
in
different
directions
that
I
hadn't
thought
of,
and
it's
touched
on
in
a
video
there's,
there's
now
a
fork
where
someone
has
made
it
possible
for
children
to
play
minecraft
using
only
eye
movement,
there's
something
I'm
releasing
soon,
which
is
a
full
plug-in
library
for
object,
which
will
allow
you
to
control
the
lights
in
your
home
and
all
your
home,
automation,
bits
and
bobs,
and
it's
just
it's
in
19
languages.
Now,
because
and
I
never
thought
of
this.
D
A
C
So
this
morning,
I
had
an
email,
basically
where
a
woman
she
related
totally
to
the
problem
of
like
not
being
able
for
like
her
utilities
and
whatnot,
but
she's
like
unemployed,
and
she
just
wanted
to
volunteer.
Basically
so
I
mean
that's
like
the
easiest
thing
for
us
like
either
through
social
media
or
email
or
like
if
you're
a
donor,
reach
out
or
whatnot.
That's
pretty
easy
to
do.
C
D
I'd
echo
that
as
well
that
sentiments
exactly
what
I
was
going
to
say.
It's,
you
know
if
you,
if
you
guys
out
there,
I
want
to
get
involved,
just
just
go
and
get
hub
search
for
Otsuki.
There's
a
there's,
an
issue
board.
If
you,
if
you
want
to
play
with
it
and
you
come
up
with
a
new
idea,
just
create
an
issue
and
we'll
start
talking
about
it
and
I.
B
Think
for
us
go
to
mojo
lupillo,
which
is
our
pages
posted
website
for
the
motional
new
project.
We'd
love
to
see
you
on
git
er
and
on
our
slack
Channel,
and
get
involved
help
us
out.
We.
What
we
really
desperately
need
are
experts
in
node
kafka,
kubernetes
the
underlying
pieces,
to
help
us
optimize
this
thing
for
scale
we're
trying
to
hit
thousands
of
transactions
per
second
capability
with
the
system
and
there's
a
lot
of
wiring
and
under
work.
B
A
For
so
for
more
stories
like
this.
You
know
please
join
us
in
the
building.
The
future
lounge,
where
you
know
Tiffany
and
joyous
stories
are
featured
and
then
also
immediately
after
this
panel
milah
will
actually
be
doing
a
demo
of
the
mojo
loop
software
system
in
our
demo
area
right
outside
the
store,
and
this
afternoon,
I
just
invite
you
to
join
me
for
another
panel
discussion
with
the
case
foundation
and
a
finalist
for
the
XPrize
on
global
literacy
about
again
more
stories
about
how
open-source
is
changing
the
world.
So
again,
just
a
last.