Brian "bex" Exelbierd
Brian “bex” Exelbierd is a spreadsheet aficionado and open source strategist who splits his time between Linux communities and life in Brno, Czech Republic. At Microsoft, he directs investments in Fedora and Debian, aligning community growth with Azure’s strategy while keeping the projects independent and healthy. Before that, he helped shape Red Hat’s open source policies for Fedora and CentOS, finding pragmatic ways to balance community ideals with business reality.
When he’s not decoding the politics of open source, he’s usually debating international tax quirks over a perfect coffee or beer or tinkering with his entrepreneurial projects at Electric Pliers. Find his latest musings at bexelbie.com.
Session
The hallway conversations at conferences can be as valuable as the talks. This keynote explores how shared space transforms open source communities. We will touch on why principled and pragmatic projects need each other, and what we've lost when we stopped celebrating our wins. Through stories, we'll examine what OpenAlt's 211 meetups and 19 conference have already proven and how we can keep it going. You'll leave knowing what to do this weekend, next month, and next year. Bring wood for the fire.