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

Deb Nicholson
Director, Community Operations, Software Freedom Conservancy

Website | @baconandcoconut

Deb Nicholson is the director of community operations at Software Freedom Conservancy, where she supports the work of its member organizations and facilitates collaboration with the wider free software community. A free software policy expert and a passionate community advocate, Deb previously served as the community outreach director for the Open Invention Network, a shared defensive patent pool on a mission to protect free and open source software, and the membership coordinator for the Free Software Foundation. She won the O’Reilly Open Source Award for her work with GNU MediaGoblin, a federated media-hosting service, and OpenHatch, Free Software’s welcoming committee. She’s also a founding organizer of the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference, an annual event dedicated to surfacing new voices and welcoming new people to the free software community. She lives with her husband and her lucky black cat in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sessions

1:45pm–2:25pm Thursday, July 19, 2018
Blockchain: The ethical considerations
Blockchain
 Location: Portland 256
Level: Non-technical
Deb Nicholson (Software Freedom Conservancy)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 5 ratings)
Deb Nicholson explains why, before “disrupting” existing systems by replacing them with the blockchain, we must ensure that the power and potential to improve lives is real and reasonably evenly distributed. We owe it to the future to make good early decisions and to refrain from overselling the blockchain’s potential to be a force for good until we’re certain it is. Read more.