Autumn 2004 Las Vegas, USA Sally Khudairi sk@zotgroup.com

600 A Washington Street Wellesley, MA 02482 United States

What's your name

Sally Khudairi Where do you come from? 00:02:11:00 I was born in Boston and I was raised internationally. I spent some time in Sweden, and in London and in Baghdad and back in the States. I loved it abroad. Coming from a multicultural background, multilingual 00:02:40:00 In arab countries people are saying you're American, in America people are saying you are an Arab. 00:02:43:00 Palms in the window 00:03:12:00 Collaboration I think because it's not just one thing, one type of people or one type of culture, one type of language or one way of thinking or one approach of doing things, that to me was really interesting with communities. The challenge is of how do people work together. The challenge is to see of how someone has an idea that is very strong how do you work together in a cooporative way instead of having someone coming in a dictatorial way and saying that's where I am coming from and that's what is interesting to me. My background also educationally is in art and architecture which are very ego-centric spaces. You are creating something that, you know, from scratch or building on someone else's work. Collaborating in creative space is very different from collaborating in a technical space. However the results were the same. But with technology ..., yes there is ego, yes there are superstars in the space, yes you have your rockstars, as you have in fashion, in design, as you have in other creative fields. 00:04:30:00 I was housed at MIT ... I am going to work on something and because it has value to the community I am going to publish it, I am going to share this with other people. In art people are working more privately and making sure that you won't steal my ideas. Technology has that too, because can take a very proprietary way with that, because you can make a lot of money out of something very cool. 00:05:20:00 Working in the web to the point that everybody was showing everybody their work was amazing and very refreshing at the same time. The fact that you could build something an pop it up and get immediate response was so refreshing and wonderful and highly unusual for my background. When was your first encounter with Open Source 00:05:45:00 I got envolved with the web in 1993 ... gopher net. It's eleven years ago I got envolved with Apache Link to Roy Fielding I knew that Apache was out there, but I didn't know what Apache was. As the webmaster for world wide web consortium, that was my title, I owned the world's first webserver so the CERN server the CERN website was something that I inherited. It was running Apache eventually, but I didn't know who was envolved with it and at the time it was the Apache group. It was a very, very small group of people, very informal. More officially after I left the w3c in 1999 I got to know a lot more the guys envolved with Apache specifically Roy and I heard that the Apache Software Foundation was actually going to incorporate as a Foundation and I said if you are going out to the public, then you cannot go without me, you need someone to help with publicizing this. This is a huge thing for the industry and there was a lot of interest in Apache at the time, but who is going to represent you and who is goign to do your communications for you. 00:07:29:00 So I came on board, so 99 I got officially envolved with the foundation. A lot has changed. A lot of good things have changed. Open Source in general has become much more common. A lot of companies are saying, alright it's not just a bunch of our developers ... there is actually commercial applicabilty to it. I think there is a huge amount of interest in Apache, specifically because there are a lot of products out there, that are coming from the grassroots, from the people who are actually trying to solve a commercial problem. Collaboration 00:08:09:00 And the try to come up with a solution and through their collaborative effort they come up with better solutions. Companies are saying hey we are coming up with things that make sense, how are we are going to commercial this, how can we actually make money out of this. 00:08:25:00 You can't really make money out of the Open Source movement, but you can do have market share and that, boom, that click happened with companies saying there is something there for us. We might not own all the dollars, we might not own all the machines, we might not have the entire software solution, but we do have the developer community, we have the users, we have a market base that way, , we have market loyality. Very interesting, because all of the sudden the money that we're spending on marketing can be reduced, maybe it's not, can be reduced, because there is a much more viral application. Link to Patrice Bertrand: 80% of the marketing ... Someone is coming up with a cool idea, all of a sudden spreading around the world much more fast. So for that to happen, Apache , the desire for Apache and the interest in Apache has increased incrementally. Before it just used to be developers and individuals and now we are having companies and governments that are getting envolved, 00:09:09:00 China It's amazing to see that. link to Sam Ruby and Ken Coar: Scaling Apache It's also forcing Apache, Movement and Foundation to be a little bit more formal in their structure. Not just in incorporating as a non-profit, but becoming more efficient how we are running this organization. There is more than a thousand contributors to the code now, which is amazing, hundreds of project now, hundreds of members, it's amazing. So consider that growth to continue, hopefully. 00:10:20:00 Does it become so big that people don't care anymore. It's no longer sexy, it's no longer new. Link to Kit Blake: It's becoming a trend and trends tend to have a short lifecycle So where is it that the cutting edge stops? And how do you maintain the creative edge and what's the next thing. So there are people who just found out about it and there is group which want to spearhead the next thing. Future ... So, it might not known as Apache, it might not be known as Open Source Collaboration 00:11:04:00 I think part of the challenge with that is you have not just a technical element that you are solving, but you have a big cultural element that you are solving. An Open Source community in Asia will have a very different feeling than an Open Source community within the United States, or Europe, South Africa. I think that it's cultural thing associated with it. Who sets the rules? Is there a global ... The challenge is to how do you continue to have people without chaos happening? How do you encourage people to participate, but who sets the rules? Who says this is good or not good? I don't know. 00:11:53:00 I think what's going on here is very important. I think that anything I can help is relevant. I think working with engineers, working with technologists, with programmers, people who are great with technology, need someone to help tell their story, need to have companies understand why is this relevant. Incentive My history has been, you know, from a web user going to the consortium saying you guys have an image problem. What you are doing is great and if you are who you really say you are, people need to know about you. It's not just a matter of having the tunnel vision ... standards ... People want to get envolved with it, how do you do that. So, if I can make that more accessible, then I think I am doing my part. 00:12:55:00 I don't know if I am going to stay in technology forever. I don't come from that space, but it has changed my life profoundly. And if there is something that I can do ... I can help to get it to the next level, I can do to help create another group or improve it somehow, then I am happy to do that. 00:13:15:00 It has changed my approach. I work with people very differently now, I expect more open collaboration, I expect open communication, I expect people to be upfront and you don't get that in every industry. Talk to a lawyer, they are ...A But I think that is leaving the world a better place, opening up trust, opening up communication whether it's in technology or otherwise ... that's absolutely relevant. I see myself as a standard bearer ... and it's effecting different parts of my life whether it's professional or otherwise, so you will leave the world a better place than you came into it. 00:14:00:00 I think there is more collaboration across the board You go to the doctor's office and people are sharing information over the web. ... How do we find things ... yeah, I see it happening. I don't know how technology is going to improve everybody's life, but you go and think back ten years ago, what did you do before you had email on a day to day basis. ... but people do know how to access website ... I see it infaltrating more spaces 00:15:05:00 Do your parents know what you are doing? In the mid 90s Sally is at MIT and works on the web, but they didn't get that ... my father will be 80 in April and you know whatever is new technology he goes out and buys. ... It's easier for kids, than for my parents or brothers. It's easier for kids, because on a day to day basis ... but if you are at the front of movement it's hard for most people to get, it's going to be challenging. .... working with clients, standards and specifications that will lign up for products in 3 or 5 years down the road, it's hard even for other technologists to get it. My family is relatively academic, so they understand things, but not engineers, not computer scientists, but 00:16:45:00 Open Source is sexy, to say we are Apache friendly, this is now a new thing for people, because they say that's a marketing, that's a component we can use for advanatge, why not do that. Open Source is very sexy now. People now know what LAMP architectures are. Who would have thought. You know to see something like Linux in Fortune magazine. It's amazing, but it's saying it's an underground movement that changed, revolutionized the way the industry is happening, how can companies figure out not how to jump on that. It's also interesting as just yesterday someone said to me we need to talk about venture capital for the Open Source movement. What does that mean? A lot of people want to make money out of this. The challenge is how do we balance it between emperor's new clothes and having the companies at the beginning of 2000/1999 timeframe and saying these companies are "vacues"(?), they have no business model, but they are ??? Or when XML came out initially, I helped to launch that through W3C, I was having clients coming to me saying we don't know what it is, but we know it has to be XML, because that's the sexy acronym now. So, companies are going to be jumping on it. They are going to do as much as they can to get whatever they can get out of it. If it's going to make money. I think there are some companies that really have some substantial backbone and they want to do the right thing. There are companies that understand that their cultural shift has to happen to longer sustain, to stay longterm in space, they have to do that. But those hobbyist that you were mentioning they will create something new and they are doing it. More people are doing blogging and they are going to the next thing after that. I don't know what's that going to be, but I am sure I will be there. 00:19:19:00 The web made it so much more easily accessible ... You can do something in Simbabwe. How many people are you going to reach. How do you get to other people, to other collaborators, how ... The web certainly made it easier, but people did things before that through the internet before the world wide web existed. Some people were seeing those two things as one and the same thing, but collaboration has been made much easier by the web. .... It's amazing with Apache Conference, for example, you see these people have been collaborating for years, meeting each other for the first time in space at ApacheCon. So those were not using the phone to talk to each other, they were using the web. Scalability issues 00:19:19:00 There were these grassroot communities with a cool idea, a really cool idea and it stays as a really cool idea. Growth is challenging. Kit Blake I think a lot of these guys, if they really want to go beyond the cool idea and see some commercial uptake on it, a group does pick it up. The challenge of getting picked up is you seem to loose your creativity in the process. Whereas picking it up does it loose sex-appeal because you can't respond as quickly, do you loose the falvour of who you are. Lot of these things happened with Linux, I am sure a lot of people have been noticing this everbody wants to jump on and want to have their own flavour of Linux, their own brand of Linux, hasn't diluted that, ..... If you have some person or some group that can help lead that evolution I think that's integral. more politics 00:22:47:00 I try to remain neutral politically, which can be challenging in these days, so there is that. I think the ability that folks have to use the technology to help to express themselves politically make a statement through it is incredible. It tends to have a democratic tone, but if put in the wrong hands it can also be taken into another direction. If there is a social responsibility associated with .... but anything in the wrong hands can be taken into the wrong direction ... ... I think there is something for everyone there ... there are technical solutions to workaround the laws ... so there is a whole new opportunity for that also. FUD 00:24:35:00 We had FUD "slimped" in the face on a regular basis, .... I learned FUD in technology obviously before I had never heard of it before in creative space, but lot of companies use that as their main marketing strategy saying let's scare everybody running to our solutions .... ... 00:25:07:00 obviously we are talking about change and transformat of change .... For an Open Source community member, you are either leaving the community or starting your own and do something different. Commercially ... driving people to use your product based on FUD is tremendous. I am not going to name names, but we know who they are. But there is a lot of that there, absolutely. My life has beed fudified, totally impacted, let's eight years of FUD .... 00:27:13:00 Sustaining of communities is important. In many of my clients and careers and jobs I had over the past decade in technology ... I have been the only woman on the team, especially on management level. ..... the challenge is to compete in a men's environment has forced at least me to take on much more testosterone, .... female programmers a lot less frequent ... 00:29:34 I think part of it is education ... I think we are going to see a lot more developers ...kids ... Science was considered a men's field .... women