Designers are still relatively rare in the FL/OSS space and those that have been around and active are burning out and struggling to peer support each other effectively. I see mentoring designers, new to open source software as a key way in which we can make FLOSS sustainable generally and specifically for the designer community in FLOSS.
In this session, I’ll be outlining what I’ve observed and done as a ‘mentor’ in the FLOSS design space. What I’ve tried to do to support designers new to FLOSS in order to ‘boost’ our numbers actively contributing and keeping our community and OSS healthy. But there’s plenty of ground unexplored here, which is why I’d like to spend half of the session actively workshopping via a shared document how we can mentor designers more sustainably within FLOSS.
What is needed by those that want mentoring? What do FLOSS projects need support with? How can mentors share resources and processes?
and likely, many more questions to collaboratively work on.
About Eriol Fox
Eriol has been working as a Designer for 10 years working in for-profits and then moving into NGO’s and open source software organisations, working on complex problems like sustainable food systems, peacebuilding and crisis response technology. Eriol now contracts at various open source and tech projects including most recently the Open Food Network. They are also part of the core teams at Open Source Design (http://opensourcedesign.net/) and Human Rights Centred Design working group (https://hrcd.pubpub.org/) Mutual Aid World and Sustain UX & Design working group.
Eriol is a part-time funded PhD researcher at Newcastle University’s Open Lab looking at how designers participate in humanitarian focussed open source software projects.
Eriol is a non-binary, queer person who uses they/them pronouns.