Non-native English speakers in Open Source communities: A True Story

Presented by Masayuki Igawa, Dong Ma, Samuel de Medeiros Queiroz
Wednesday 4:35 p.m.–5:20 p.m.
Target audience: Community

Abstract

The primary language of most open source projects is English, but open source users and contributors span the globe. Non-native speakers face many communication challenges when participating in the ecosystem. In this talk, as non-native English speakers and contributors to OpenStack projects and its community, we will share our experiences and some best practices for coping as and including non-native speakers in your project.

This talk will include:

  • Common issues for non-native English speakers
  • Tips for avoiding and resolving these issues
  • Suggestions for effective communication

Presented by

Masayuki Igawa

Masayuki Igawa is a software engineer for over 15 years on a wide range of software projects, and developing open source software related to Linux kernel and virtualization. He's been an active technical contributor to OpenStack since the Grizzly release. He is a core member of some OpenStack QA projects such as Tempest, subunit2sql, openstack-health and stackviz. He currently works for HPE's Upstream OpenStack team to make OpenStack better for everyone. He has previously been a speaker at OpenStack Summits, LinuxCons Japan and the other open source related conference events.

Dong Ma

Dong Ma has worked at Hewlett Packard Enterprise as Software/System Engineer since 2007. He worked on the FOSSology(www.fossology.org) project from 2009, with a focus on the Continues Integration and Delivery system. He's been an active technical contributor to OpenStack since the Liberty release. He now works on the HPE's Upstream OpenStack team, focusing on Jenkins, OpenStackCI and QA.

Samuel de Medeiros Queiroz

Samuel is a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. He has been working with OpenStack since 2013 and is a core reviewer on Keystone, the Identity Service. He likes to help newcomers in the community and to give talks for spreading OpenStack awareness in Brazil.

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