DevConf.US 2022

In the age of (seemingly) endless amounts of data, we can have databases full of points on a single community, but without taking in the nuances of how open source communities function, we are left with numbers, not insight. With a healthy amount of skepticism, we can dive into the data science workflow on what insights we want to gain versus the past problems of being limited by the data itself. From here, community members can actually make path changes and advocate for themselves at a larger scale in the language of the new age: data analysis.

In this presentation, Cali Dolfi, data scientist at Red Hat, will look at visualizations and metrics from the perspective of the individual community and from the ever-connected open source ecosystem of over 700,000 projects we have identified. From here, we can begin to question what assumptions we make, from the data and community perspective.

From this talk, there will be tactical and strategic takeaways from the data science perspective.

From the tactical view of analyzing open source community data, this talk will provide actionable insights for people within and outside a particular community (or set of communities), that takes in the nuances of Open Source. While there will be specific examples from a conceptual and coding perspective, the goal will be to give you the tools to extend on the unique questions you may have about a given community.

From a strategic data science perspective, this will be a specific use-case examination on the care and nuance that should be considered for any data science analysis performed. It is our responsibility as Data Scientists to be extremely intentional with the analysis we deliver, as many times people will interpret analysis as indisputable fact.