Virtual Barnraising - How Open Source Makes People and Companies Better

The keynote explores the open source projects and communities from within, and explains why people want to contribute and how this makes both the person and the world better.

A good open source project is analogous to barnraising. People strive to accomplish the actual goal and also work side by side for the common good. This creates a strong feeling of belonging to something bigger than themselves alone - a local community.

Belonging and meaningfulness are extremely strong motivators in current very fragmented era - and they can be harnessed for the good of the open source project, community, and participating companies. This session tells you first why and then also how.

Both as an individual or company, you will learn what you would get by participating in an open source project; why it is so deeply motivating and empowering; and finally how to harness this energy to help you move forward faster than people and companies around you.

Janne Kalliola comes from Finland, a low-hierarchy and egalitarian Nordic nation that has long traditions in working together for a common good. Coincidentally, Finns have created numerous widely used open technology tools and platforms, such as Linux, MySQL, git, irc, and ssh.