Put open source to work
July 16–17, 2018: Training & Tutorials
July 18–19, 2018: Conference
Portland, OR

Trying on hats: Winning over middle management

Silona Bonewald (Hyperledger)
11:35am–12:00pm Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Location: E141
Average rating: ****.
(4.00, 1 rating)

One of the biggest barriers developers face in instituting InnerSource at their companies is resistance from middle management. Silona Bonewald shares strategies and techniques for not only removing resistance but converting middle management into InnerSource advocates.

This talk will be done in a different format than you’re probably used to. Attendees will call out common problems and complaints from the community. Silona will then role-play the perspectives and the solutions, trying on a number of different hats—literally. During a Q&A, audience members can also participate by trying on some hats of their own.

Topics include:

  • Walking in middle management’s shoes: Understanding their goals
  • Different kinds of middle management
  • Showing the benefits: Metrics are key
  • Danger, danger everywhere: Handling the risks
  • How transparency helps everyone
  • Health benefits
  • Open management = less reporting
  • Dealing with never-enough resources
  • Collaboration and negotiation (After all, you didn’t really want to be an accountant, did you?)
  • Active documentation and communication
  • Bridging the gap and getting to the “customer”
Photo of Silona Bonewald

Silona Bonewald

Hyperledger

Silona Bonewald is vice president of community architecture at Hyperledger, where she’s responsible for facilitating the creation of the community metapatterns and processes that a global organization like Hyperledger requires. Silona has been involved in open source communities for over 14 years and has helped four companies transition from proprietary to open source. Most recently, she led the InnerSource efforts at PayPal, helping bottleneck teams remove years of backlog and promote collaboration across BUs. She continues to work on the creation of the InnerSource community with a strong focus on business integrations. She hopes to bring that knowledge into her work at Hyperledger.