Her ten-year Journey in Open Source: Just Follow Your Passion, No Matter Where You Are

She has**15 years of experience in IT industry.**He started out as an engineer and worked in core R&D positions at SUN and Oracle. He also served as a director at the GNOME Foundation and as deputy secretary-general of the China Open Source Software Promotion Alliance in 2016.

She is currently a senior product manager of AI at Microsoft Asia Engineering and a co-founder of Open Source Society.

she isChen Yang (Emily), "Open source is loved by everyone, no matter where in the world" is her voice. From GNOME to Open Source Society, we can see her seriousness and persistence in open source.

11 years to accomplish this

Chen Yang came into contact with open source because of work, and now, she has turned open source into a career.

Eleven years ago, she was an engineer in the desktop operating system department of SUN, and some of her projects were related to the open source community.GNOMEShe was one of them. From then on, she had an indissoluble bond with open source.

In his spare time, Chen Yang actively volunteers to contribute to the GNOME community and promote GNOME in Asia. Since 2008, he and many community partners have founded the international conference GNOME Asia Summit, which is held every year in a city in Asia.

Today, the GNOME Asia Summit has been successfully held for the 11th time, with footprints all overChina (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), Vietnam, India, South Korea and IndonesiaSummits one after another have spread GNOME's technology and community spirit to various regions in Asia.

A Thank You Pants!

From 2010 to 2011, Chen Yang was elected as a director of the GNOME Foundation, responsible for GNOME's finances and Asia-related affairs. Chen Yang recalled that in 2015, she went to Sweden to attend GUADEC (GNOME User and Developer European Conference), and she was pleasantly surprised to receive GNOME's highest annual honor award, the prize was:A pair of pants - "GNOME ThankYouPants".

Emily Chen accepts the "GNOME Thank You Pants" awardThe reason for this "special" award is that a GNOME release manager received a mysterious package with a letter attached. When he opened the package, he found a pair of pants inside.

The letter read: Thank you for your outstanding contribution to GNOME, and hereby present you with a pair of pants!「GNOME Thank You Pants」The award was born.**GNOME Pants has become GNOME's annual tradition and highest honor award.**It also pioneered honorary awards in the open source community.

For Chen Yang, the two most challenging aspects of participating in an international foundation are:One is the difference in time zones, often need to hold meetings in the early morning;Second, cultural differences, which makes communication have certain limitations.

From that time on, she began to think:**How can we build a bridge of communication between China and the international open source community?**With this problem, Chen Yang has been looking for a solution.

"The love of open source knows no boundaries. We hope to bring the spirit and experience of the international community's open source movement over the past 20 years to China, and allow Chinese companies, open source projects and developers to enter the global open source community," said Chen Yang.

Finally2014She and several other partners who also love open source and hope to promote open source work established the Open Source Society in China.

To some extent, GNOME plays the role of a booster for the establishment of the open source community, and it also has an impact on the open source community in some details.

For example, after 2015, Open Source Society has set a **"Open Source Star"**The award is given to individuals who make outstanding contributions to the open source community each year. **"GNOME Pants"**Inspired by the award, the two have the same purpose.

Women make technology more romantic

There is a joke that international gatherings in the technology circle are allWhite English speaking man accounted for 90%.

The implicit meaning here is:Participation rates were very low among non-English speaking people, non-white people, and women.As a member of the Open Source Society, Chen Yang is theThe only woman among the 7 directorsWhile actively advocating for women's participation in open source work, she has also witnessed the changes that have taken place in the open source industry for women over the years.

From the previous interview of Chao Shen Jing with Ted, the chairman of Open Source Society "Say goodbye to the halo of foreign companies and join the front line of open source business"We learned that this year's open source annual meeting hasWomen's Session.

Chen Yang introduced that, in fact, the women's special session of the Open Source Annual Conference started as early as 2015, but at that time, it was still a relatively simpleRound Tableform. After four years, it has developed intoThere are 20 female lecturersA special session for delivering speeches.

The establishment of a women's special session is not only to bring a relaxed and joyful atmosphere to the venue, but more importantly, to convey aDiversity(Diversity) information, showing the indispensable position and influence of women in the open source community.

In the 2018 China Open Source Annual Report released by Open Source Society, sample data shows that China's open source communityThe proportion of female participants is increasing, in 201511%, which rose to12% Even for 12%, the proportion is relatively small.

Despite this, Chen Yang is not discouraged: "We have to face the fact that the times are always developing. Perhaps in our generation, we can do something to influence the development trend of women participating in open source." She is also optimistic about the current trend, "We see more examples of women participating in the open source community."

The open source movement has been developing for more than 20 years. Looking back on the changes he has witnessed along the way, Chen Yang is quite pleased:"I remember that when I attended the Open Source Technology Conference (OSTC) held by CSDN in 2014, I was the only female lecturer at the time. At the 2019 China Open Source Annual Conference, we had more than 20 female lecturers, which is a gratifying number."

In addition to these changes in numbers, various open source gatherings are also opening their arms to women and encouraging more women to participate. Chen Yang introduced the following examples:

• In the GNOME community, 10 years ago, a specialGNOME Outreach Program for Women, the foundation set up a special fund to recruit women to participate in internship programs, and led by senior community mentors, the program will be completed in three months;
• At GNOME's annual European conference, there is a cultural convention every year where all women attending the conference have aWomen's Dinner;
• The Linux Foundation also held a press conference at the LinuxCon China conference.Women in Technology Lunch Salon.

If we look at the influential open source foundations around the world, we will see that women are undertaking very important work.
For example, Hali Tsang, director of the Asia Pacific region of the Linux Foundation, Molly De Blanc, VP of OSI, Kylie Liang, director of FreeBSD, Stormy Peter and Karen Sandler, the former two executive directors of GNOME, Erica Brescia, COO of GitHub, etc. They are all very influential women in the entire open source community, and they all shine brightly in the technology circle.

In the field of technology, we see more and more women exerting their talents and making more contributions. Moreover, because of their presence, the technology circle has also added a bit of romantic and soft colors.

Super benefits: 50 two-day tickets, all free

This weekend, the Open Source Annual Conference is about to take place. The Women's Special Session will also welcome many wonderful speeches by female lecturers. Are you eager to see their style and listen to their experience? We are waiting for you at COSCon'19!

This two-day conference invited more than 100 guests, includingGitHub****Thomas Dohmke, Vice President , Vice President of Community Development, Apache Software Foundation Sharan Foga,General Manager of Microsoft China Cloud Computing and AI DivisionMak Chiu Chun, Founder & Chairman of CSDNJiang Tao and other important industry experts gave nearly a hundred in-depth content sharing sessions.

As the fifth annual China Open Source Conference, it includes the following topics:Open source software, open source hardware, community operation and governance, open source educationThe conference also invited friends from various free/open source related companies and academia to attend this feast.Get the Super Neuro Collaboration Two-Day Ticket: Click to read the original article/scan the QR code to register directly (limited to 50 tickets)

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