Hannah Aubry

⇢ it will take all of us working together ⇠

Sometimes in life, we get just what we need at the exact right moment.

Recently, I attended my first Monktoberfest. I like how Mike Shaver described it to his wife: “It’s a conference about the world we live in, through the lens of people who work with tech, and especially who work with tech people.”

Lately, I’ve been asking myself some big, hard questions. Questions like, “What matters?” “What comes next?” “Can we really fix this?”

I still don’t have those answers. However, RedMonk’s thoughtfully curated talks, along with the time I spent among old and new friends—or, let’s say, tenured and emergent ones—were gentle, directional reminders for my existential ponderings.

So here’s what I’ll carry forward as I skip past* another crossroads and trot off** down a new road.***

It’s the people, stupid.

Most of the systems in which we exist weren’t built for people. Rather, they were built to accumulate power, enforce law and order, produce a good or service, or to funnel the almighty dollar from one system to the next. Usually, we exist in these systems because we have to for our survival.

These systems are terrible, carnivorous machines.

These systems separate us, they put us at odds and in contest with each other. They encourage us to focus on our differences, even though we’re far more similar than not. In doing so, these systems take away from us one of humanity’s greatest traits and my favorite thing about being alive: the strength of our social ties. Community.

In Carol Lee’s presentation at Monktoberfest, which focused on Combating Code Review Anxiety based on research completed with Cat Hicks, she talked about a common phenomenon among developers. Their research found that one of the most productive interventions for code review anxiety was simply for the people experiencing it to sit in it alongside a group of peers.

Further research supports that human connection as an intervention is one of the most powerful tactics we have in combating a multitude of mental and physical health issues. Loneliness is as deadly as smoking or alcoholism. It leads to dementia and cardiovascular disease. And conversely — some psychiatrists go so far as comparing social connection to vitamins: “just as we need vitamin C each day, we also need a dose of the human moment—positive contact with other people.”

Ashley Williams put it succinctly with a quote she shared during her talk: “Open source is people.”

We are social creatures, and people are awesome. They’re funny and smart. They have an astounding capacity for good. They’re capable of building incredible things and accomplishing remarkable feats. They hold such darkness, certainly, yet the brightest light.

So what matters? Well, to me—in the midst of a loneliness epidemic—it’s no thing. Dear reader, it’s you. It’s all the beautiful people I know and have yet to meet. I cherish you.

Just because you don’t control it doesn’t mean you can’t change it.

I’ve written a bit about organizational change in the past. You might say I have a passion. Since my time as a theatre maker and installation artist, I am most driven and excited when I’m finding and fixing neglected or broken things. Usually, the things I try to change or fix aren’t my “area of responsibility,” and I almost never have a “mandate.”

In Jenny Zhang’s talk about organizational change, she described the challenges organizations face in shaping positive and healthy cultures. She describes the challenges individuals face, especially ones from marginalized communities, in driving impact within such organizations. In sum, organizational change is not easy. Any kind of change is not easy. It’s even harder when the thing you’re trying to change doesn’t want it or doesn’t understand why it’s necessary. But even in those cases, change is possible.

We all have the power to enact change. It starts with simple things that every single one of us can do in the face of these machine systems. We can care. We can try. We can do the damn work. And we can start at home — with ourselves, our family, our team, our town. Big change starts with small actions.

Change isn’t easy, and it won’t come soon, but for me, it is imperative that I try. I want to make the world a better place. I want to challenge it; I want to illuminate it. And the best place to start is right where you are, wherever you are, on any given day.

Jenny Zhang also spoke of the burnout from moral injury, or the cognitive dissonance that occurs when a person or place's stated values don’t match their lived values. It was a good reminder for me. If I want to take care of the world, I should start by caring for myself. As an individual actor, I cannot change complex systems single-handedly. If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. And no one—especially not me—benefits from my burnout.

Nothing we love ever truly leaves us.

Day one of Monktoberfest was bookended by two talks about grief. Éamon Ryan talked about leaving a company he loved: Pivotal. David Smith talked about his partner’s passing and shared a framework of what he learned about preparing for and processing that grief.

They were thoughtful, sad talks. I commend the speakers for their vulnerability in sharing their stories. People are at their strongest when they choose to be vulnerable. I admire anyone who chooses to show the cracks. The cracks are what make us golden.

Life moves through us and around us like a river. Even when we try to stand still, the water around us changes. It beats on us as if to say — forward, forward. And so when it’s time to leave, we must go, or we'll drown. Because spiritual decay is stifling. But even when we leave, we can carry with us the ways those places and people touched us, shaped us, and, most of all, sustained us.

So what comes next? I don’t really know. (I mean, careerwise I do, see footnote, but philosophically…‽) I just hope that someday, when it’s time to go over my final waterfall, I can look back and say, “See grandma? I put your lessons to good use. I did my best. I touched a few hearts. I made a difference.”

And until then, I’ll try not to be too sad about the people and places I must leave behind. Because we never truly lose the things we love dearly.

And dear one, I love you.

—

*My time working on Fast Forward at Fastly is at an end.

**I’m joining AWS’ Open Source Strategy & Marketing team to work on CDK.

***Don’t tell me I buried the lede. That’s just capitalism, babe.

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I was recently asked, “What did you learn during the pandemic?”

I said perseverance through grief—there has been so much senseless tragedy on a macro scale, and in my own life and the lives of people close to me—the shields I've built to protect my heart deploy with a hair trigger. But as I've reflected, I realized that is not the most important thing I learned. That's just what I had to do to survive, and everyone deserves to grieve in the way that gets them through it. (As long as they don't harm others.)

As I reflect on these tragic times, the bright moments, the beacons that give me hope, are the people. The people who spare a moment for kindness, lead with curiosity and lend a helping hand when others need it. Those people make the world better for everyone.

So, the most important thing I've learned (so far) is to choose kindness. Because what we think we know about other people and our impressions of people can be horribly wrong. People are so good at compartmentalizing, hiding, or ignoring stuff. You never know what's happening in someone else's life.

So, I have learned to choose kindness because it doesn't cost anything, and it's priceless. It can change someone's day, month, or life trajectory.

And because it's my mission to leave this world better than I found it, I'll say this. We're not going to build a better world by doing big or little violences to each other. Bullying is not how we win.

We do it by creating more kindness. Kindness towards the planet, to each other, and to ourselves.

And at the end of the day, I choose kindness because I'd rather lose than live with regret. Because the only kind of power worth striving for is power over yourself.

Thanks to the friends who have helped me along the way. You've helped make me the person I am today.

And I love myself.

Now go sit in the shade of a tree you planted — you deserve it.

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Earlier this year, I presented a talk at FOSDEM. My talk was called Learning from disaster response teams to save the internet.

“Save the internet” and “disaster response” may sound like bringing a jackhammer to a chisel’s job, but all you have to do is put “open source” into your favorite search engine to see what I mean. Corporations and bad actors treat people like products and mine their data and passions for profit. And there isn’t much standing in their way.

Over my years in the open source community, I’ve found that most people who work on open source identify more with the specific project or two rather than as part of a movement. I wish we would think of ourselves as the entire community more often because forgetting our guiding principles limits our ability to coordinate and cooperate. It breeds competitiveness between people with the same ideals but different ideas on achieving them. And it distracts us from our common goal: to ensure the internet is free, open, and safe for all, forever.

So, we must convene as a community to save the internet. But that is easier said than done when, by virtuous design, open source communities are distributed and decentralized.

Pathways to achieving the communitas in open source that I’m describing exist. And what’s more, they’re pretty well-trodden. Organizations across many industries have perfected the art of operating as disparate and self-contained teams while working to achieve a common goal. (They tend to be more formalized/ structured than the open source community, but that doesn’t mean the learnings gleaned from studying those organizations can’t be applied in less structured ones.) In social network analysis, these organizational structures are conceptualized as “multiteam systems,” and some of the best examples exist in disaster response.

In the talk, I explored how we can apply social network analysis findings gleaned from studying disaster response teams in laboratory and field settings to empower leadership and strengthen community ties in pursuit of our collective goal.

I hope you enjoy it or at least learn from it. You can watch the recording below or on FOSDEM's site.

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I’ve been a hypocrite.

For years, I’ve worked hard to advocate for the open source community, to encourage others to live and work by its values: openness, transparency, and collaboration. Meanwhile, I haven’t lived those values fully. The majority of what I’ve written, here and here, is about finished projects, or celebrating some milestone. I haven’t shown my work. I haven’t shared how I think about my work or written about any of the messy stuff or my failures (which is where I’ve learned the most).

So I made this place to change that — I’ll do my work in public and write about my own philosophical noodlings here. I hope someone out there finds it useful. Maybe you, friend.

This is the work

Since Fastly launched Fast Forward (that’s our open source support program) one year ago, I’ve paid a lot of attention to those two words wherever they appear. (You can probably imagine that’s pretty often for me.) Usually, I smile to see them, but there’s one place where I’ve come to dislike seeing “fast forward.” In stories. I’m bored out of my brain of that storytelling mechanic where they lay out a nice, juicy problem… and then skip past the glorious work.

No 👏 more 👏 montages. 👏 (Sorry, Team America.)

I joined Fastly to work on their open source program almost four years ago — my start date was March 9th, 2020. I love to build things with passionate people, and I love to help others build too. I’m hard-pressed to think of a community that is more passionate and committed to building and doing than those drawn to working in open source communities. Within a month, I worked on the announcement of Fastly’s $50 million commitment to the program, and the expansion of its scope to include nonprofits, to support those fighting COVID and its effects on society.

It’s been a long, difficult, and glorious road since then.

The $50 million commitment to Fast Forward opened a floodgate of applications that effectively stress-tested the program’s internal infrastructure & resourcing. Meanwhile, managing the program was just a part of what I was doing at Fastly. I won’t get too deep into the nitty-gritty, but the basic gist of what was broken was that our processes weren’t built to scale, the program’s work wasn’t tied to Fastly’s overarching vision of what the internet can be, we weren’t active in the communities we support, and we weren’t taking credit for our work.

So I created a slide deck outlining these issues and proposing fixes to them. I shared the deck with anyone who would listen. I presented it to Fastly’s leadership. It took a long time, and I began to despair that anything would change. Finally, Fastly acquired Glitch. I was moved to the newly formed Developer Experience team to focus on the program full-time. I gained the support of an industry-leading team that deeply understands this work, better than almost anyone — I mean just look at what they built. I began to make inroads with the teams that could help fix the broken stuff. I made new decks. I wrote design docs. I invited comments from anyone who had ideas and verve. There were missed opportunities, false starts, missteps, dead ends. Nothing about it was easy. It was fun, but it was messy, hard work. A full year passed between the time I made that first deck and the day we launched the new program, the program we built together: Fast Forward.

Here’s what I learned:

  • If you’re trying to create systemic change in any kind of organization, you have to be ready to repeat yourself. A lot. I think most people don’t understand that about communications; I’ve seen this often since my journey in tech began. Your message isn’t sinking in until you’re sick of repeating it.
  • None of us can do this alone. I think about this proverb often: “If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together.” Building for a community means building in community, so ask for help when you need it. Trust that if you put your need out in the world, help will come to you. It may not be exactly when you think you need it most, or be in exactly the form you thought you needed, but help will come.
  • Perhaps the most significant shift I’ve had in the way I think about my work is to stop thinking about it as a series of goalposts. Rather, I now take joy and a sense of accomplishment in the day-to-day moving forward. I see each little step as a win. I see the act of taking a step as a win.

A quick interlude, lamentoso

We’ve had so many hard years: disease, layoffs, wars, relicensing, paywalls, shuttered programs, and 60-day warnings. Climate crisis. The digital spaces where we used to convene and commiserate have changed forever. Institutional Tech lost a lot of ground in building trust with not only the open source community, but the world. It will take time and effort to rebuild and repair. Some people and things are gone forever. We must give space to mourn who and what we’ve lost.

Twenty-six months ago, I went through a period of significant personal loss. Every year since, the holidays have felt dimmer, and I haven’t felt much like celebrating, so instead I take that time to refocus myself. I reflect on the year that passed, record what I learned, and set goals for the coming year.

The most impactful thing I’ve done as part of my holiday reflections is to write down a theme for the coming year. It’s deeply personal to me so I’ve never considered sharing it before — but this year I will.

This is the work. Onward, we must climb. I act when I’m at my best, otherwise I rest. The pounding and lapping of waves on a beach.

(Be gentle with me, I feel vulnerable and exposed.)

History cycles. Time is a wheel. We’ve fought the fights we’re facing before, albeit wearing different mustaches. In the end, we move forward. It’s the best and only way to go.

I’m holding space for anyone who needs a friend. I need one too.

Work in public

Just last week I broke Fastly’s Mastodon instance, Fastly.Social, while updating it to v4.2.4. I created the instance as a place for experiments, a place where Fastly employees could learn together, to demonstrate best practices of using Fastly in front of Mastodon. However, I am decidedly not an expert at this, so to be honest, it was only a matter of time before I broke it. Breaking the instance sucked. It was embarrassing to admit defeat when I couldn’t troubleshoot the issue, especially to admit it in front of my colleagues who quite literally build the internet. But that wasn’t my failure. My failure was that I didn’t apply the learnings I described above until last week.

When I realized I wouldn’t be able to fix the issue, I put a call for help in our interest-fediverse Slack channel. The response was overwhelming; people are wonderful.

I realize now that my superpower is this — it’s not that I’m really good at some things (although, at the risk of sounding like a braggart, there is some stuff I’m really good at). It’s that I unashamedly, sometimes even gleefully, narrate what I’m bad at and I’m always willing to point at stuff that’s broken to those with the power to fix it, even if I’m part of why it’s broken.

People can’t fix what they can’t see, and no person on this planet is omniscient. If we want to fix this broken and beautiful world, we have to be willing to talk about the work in progress. The messy stuff. Recently, I saw someone post, “It’s worth it to be hurt sometimes, so you don’t have to live with your guard up all the time.” Be vulnerable.

And with that in mind — let’s hear what it took. What did you give, what did it cost? Tell us what you need. Work in public. Share what you learned. We can’t wait to celebrate until we reach the finish line, because, for us, there isn't one. The goal is to do the work, to strive for the cause, and to keep making the world a little more open and free, forever. I think doing that is a thing worth celebrating, any and every day.

There is so much work to be done, and the first and most important step is easy. It’s just to care. Be kind, be curious. Think twice. When you see something broken, fix it. If you see someone doing ridiculous amounts of stuff without complaining, help them. You have experience and passion. We need you.

I’ll end this transmission with a little reminder, which is just as much for me as it is for anyone reading — we have to heal ourselves before we can heal the world. Good luck out there and take it easy, friends 👋

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