Welcome everybody to today's panel on how government Ospos can deliver value for citizens at scale. We're delighted to be here at OspoCon, though not in person, at least we can bring these fabulous voices from all around the world to help discuss this fantastic topic. You know, and we all know that there has been a recent trend in terms of Ospos or open source program offices being established in public sector organizations. And what we're here today is to hear from some real live experiences from people who have been involved in the creation and the planning for such Ospos or who have been working with them. So I'm delighted to welcome our panelists here today. First of all, we'll do a very quick introduction of all our panelists.  So my name is Claire Dylan. I work with Moss Labs. We're involved and we facilitate the Ospo plus plus network which is a network for Ospos in universities and government and civic institutions, and we help them collaborate and we like to create collaborations that make it for impactful open source project so that's one of the things we do. And I'm delighted to be joined by a bastion Gary, who is the free software officer for the French public administration. And he is involved and responsible for the free software action plan, and which relates to Ospos in France so we'll be hearing from bastion later. I'd also like to introduce a Malakumar, who is who heads up in fact the tech for social good at GitHub, but who has a long history of working with nonprofits for social good in the past so she'll be giving her insights there. Welcome, Malak. And I'd love to say hello to Astor, New Melon Carlberg who's from open forum Europe, and he's a policy director there so we'll be hearing from Astor shortly. I'd also love to welcome, hey Salinas from the European Commission. He's the product officer there and is working in the Ospo there. And, and indeed I'd love to welcome Maurizio Garo gasola, excuse me Maurizio, who's the chief of strategic technical technology solutions at the United Nations Office of Information and Communication Technology, quite a mouthful, but we are delighted to have you here Maurizio, and welcome to everyone here. So, to get kick started, I think it might be useful for us to have a little bit of context about why we're seeing this trend, this increase in the number of Ospos in public sector. I want to call on Astor to give us an overview of the report that came out that was published by the European Commission earlier this month, talking about the economic impact of open source and how that relates to Ospo. So, Astor, if I can call on you to maybe just give us a very brief overview of what was included in that report. Yes, absolutely. And I'm also going to take the liberty to share just a few slides, not to break up the rhythm of this panel too much, but to give you a little bit of context because there are some numbers here from the economic analysis that I will show. I hope you can see this. All right. Okay, perfect. Well, so yeah, so like you mentioned on the 6th of September, the European Commission published a landmark landmark study on the impact of open source on the European economy. And I'm of course especially happy to mention this because our think tank open from Europe conducted this study together with Fraunhofer ISI. And it has to be said here that my colleagues will be presenting this study in detail in another panel at the open source summit. So, but I'll give you a brief overview of the economic findings, if you have any specific questions analysis methodology or whatever else, I suggest you check out that panel as well. Let me come to some of the main findings here. The first one I don't think is a surprise to most people listening in here today. Open source code and components are essentially everywhere. And I think it's however good to have this empirically back in an ecosystem of studies and reports. And this is a point that needs to be underlined in policy discussions more and more that it's not a fringe question. It is everywhere. Then secondly, we found and this should be said a very conservative figures. We worked with a very conservative methodology to come to a very strong stable defendable number. This is the third point that I wanted to raise here is that in more of a dynamic number if we saw an increase of the globally available open source code to rate if they were to raise by 10% we would see an increase in the US GDP of between 0.4 and 0.6%, which is for an economy of 500 million people, a big number in the EU open source software has a cost benefit ratio of one to 10 in terms of investments put in and value created. If you in that number also can take into account hardware and capital costs will see a ratio one to four. So good ROI on open source when it comes to investment. And this contextualized this in the European Commission's words, they stated that these findings show that there are clear signals from investors on the huge value and potential of open source policies to maximize the return in Europe of this value may be required. In the short term, the findings of the study will be used as a basis for policy options in many digital areas. And in the long term, the findings can be used for a new open source policy focus on the EU economy as a whole. So then we're now entering the space of talking about open source policy at scale. And that brings me to the question of auspice. And because we believe that auspice, or the auspo as an organizational construct, thought about broadly in society has the potential to realize this vast amount of value from open source or realize a vast amount of value from open source for citizens across Europe and the and the world. As it has, or the hospital has for companies and shareholders in the private sector. So we argue that the Ospo and subsequently and I think we'll get into this later more in detail on networks of auspice should be considered as central to capacity building. And this has to do with creating an institutional framework or infrastructure if you want on to which you can then roll out large scale open source policies. So very briefly and we'll get into a lot of these questions later on. But we recommend that the European Commission should consider five steps in the context of auspice to increase this institutional capacity. And the first part is giving the European Commission Ospo, which we'll hear Chris talk about more, an external networking component. Now they already collaborate with people and have things we want to boost this capacity and make this a very clear distinct action for for the European Commission Ospo. Then we also want to see European Commission Ospo being a task and built up in a way where it can be a reference point internally and explicitly in any digital policy that might touch on open source or open source development to be a point of knowledge and be part of the process of developing legislations and bringing in technical experts, etc. Then and here's a task that I have a hunch might already be planned, but it's an important one. We recommend that the European Commission all suppose identifies and maps the existing European all suppose in industry public sector and academia with explicit aim to exchange information and share best practices for a future European Ospo network. This is kind of a first step. And here, the kind of big investment recommendation is for the European Commission through its funding instruments. Fund pilot programs where 10 auspice are built in the public sector and 10 in academia as a first step or kind of getting this development going, it's already starting in some places, but to get this at scale and across Europe. And with that, the last bit, which will have a chance to get into more detail later on, we encourage them to establish over time a formal EU Ospo network. And this has brings all the earlier recommendations together where the easy Ospo which we receive the natural home for this to be administrated together with identified auspice in industry the public sector and academia, as well as the newly built auspice if this recommendation is followed to bring this together in a structured network for best practices and be able to collaborate at scale. I think I ran through this quick enough. Very well that was that was that was that was beautiful and short thank you after that was that was fantastic and and we definitely will touch back on this idea of the network and very shortly. Before we do, I do want to go to bastion and ask him about another report so your report or the report from the European Commission asked her very clearly outlines the economic potential of both open source and using auspice that may enable that. I think there was also a report in January of this year that was made to the French in the French Parliament by Eric but the rail and it covered a little bit more context in terms of the value of open source, beyond the economic value as well and or purely that that that GDP angle and bastion can you maybe refer to that gives a little bit of an overview of what happened in France and how that relates to us pose for France. Yeah. The the butter report was mainly about open data policies. It was about assessing these policies and renewing them and open source legally is part of open data in the sense of what the public sector builds in terms of software. That's really is the source code. So the angle the first angle was this one how can we go further into publishing the source code of the software that the front status is building. What the report says is that if we are publishing source code then we want other administrations in France to reuse it. And if we want this administration to reuse open source, then there is a cultural shift to be made towards open source and they need to learn how to buy and to acquire open source so this is this virtual circle that the report. And the hospital recommendation from this report is based on that if you put together in the same institution within the administration right people will understand the open source in its virus dimensions because we also recognize the diversity of the problems. We also have a chance to rationalize the publication and then the use of open source and in between the contribution that the public sector can make to the outside open source ecosystem. Thank you so much. And, and, hey, I'll come to you now you're sitting in the European Commission, and you actually have an Ospo so so perhaps and you have been one of the first public administrations to actually create an Ospo in Europe so maybe can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like what have been the first priorities for your Ospo in terms of in terms of how how that's come about. Thank you Claire. So, maybe first clarify why we started an Ospo it's it's really the logical outcome of an increasing importance to the organization of open source. The relationship that dates back 20 years when the data center started running its first week is based on Linux. But by now 77% of all our hosts in the data center are Linux. We use open source for the vast majority like all of them but two of the Commission websites and web based projects. Everything new that comes out through the website through the websites of the Commission is based on open source and one cool example is the CD which we use for the conference on the future of Europe conference. And so open source is such an important component for everything we do. And open source is something that we increasingly share with the wider community that it has outgrown the IT department that has become critical for almost all of the organization. And that is why when the commission renewed its its view on on how to deal with open source its open source strategy. First of all, we elevated the status of the strategy to a communication to the commission meaning it really was taken out of the IT department and given to all of the commission. And we created Ospo to take charge of the strategy, basically to promote a working culture, based on the principles of open source. That's what the inside and to remove any organizational or legal barrier towards open source so far. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. So, so I'm going to ask a question then because, you know, obviously, hey, sir, you're a little bit perhaps further down the line in terms of actually having established an Ospo bastien the recommendation suggests that, you know, France should have an Ospo multiple Ospo's. So can I ask you both. What do you think the biggest challenges that you would face in terms of setting up an Ospo in a public sector organizations, they may be the same that might happen in organization but I'm guessing that there might be some additional challenges in the political context so so maybe you can with either of you like to to perhaps have a go at answering that question. Last year feel free. I'm sure you'll say the same as me. Okay. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. There are two challenges. The first one is to recognize diversity and local needs for example. During the report there was a consultation run through this team and people expected the French government to have just one for for every software repository out there. And what we noticed the last two years is that we have more than 20 forges of source codes for public sector source code, and we have many organization accounts on GitHub on GitLab everywhere, and we don't think it's time to rationalize factorize all this into one single place. So recognizing diversity is a sense of keeping a sense for the local agencies and the ministries that they own their own politics about open source and that they have to move forward into their own direction so we are not centralizing everything as we are expected to do as French people. And the second challenge. But we still have coordinated plans so diversity is respected but still we need to move forward into three goals one is open more source code, use more free software in the administration and attract new talents open source to work within agencies. The second challenge is about sense of shyness from public administrations they don't like to talk about what they use they don't like to sometimes they don't even like to speak about what they produce, even if it's a very small and very nice team doing a great open source product. There is this culture of shyness. If you take for example the anti COVID application you don't see the name of the country because because they all use the same name because they were afraid of going public so going public is quite a challenge and we need to make progress on this. Thank you, thank you bastien. So, hey, were they the same challenges that you faced is it is it similar different got extra ones to throw on there. I cannot deny and confirm not I think at a higher level, they are the same because we're talking about change management and changing the culture. And I really appreciate what bastion said about the timidity of projects. For the commission. We have a similar, we face similar things. So, let me just give you two examples. We have, we were quite fast in removing one of the stumbling blocks in the house where developers are for some reason not able to easily look into the code and components and the tickets and help desk things from their colleagues across the teams in other DGs. And so this we fix quite fast, but that's only one part of the problem. To change the way they work to change their culture to make them look into each other's projects that will take a bit of time. And another barrier that we quite quickly were sort of able to remove we're not there yet is to make it easier to share open source software from the commission with the outside world to publish commission source code as open source. So the rules have been written, we're just trying to get the paperwork through the machine that takes a bit of time because of the pandemic, a bit more time than we had hoped. But it's an important barrier. And I'm pretty sure that we will see as who's just the tens of projects per year going open. And where we differ is that in the commission, we tend to really try to rationalize and optimize the way we do these processes. So there is a lot of talking about, should we go to this platform, should we go to that platform, should we centralize, should we let people free. Again, that's a culture change. And I think that Boston and I can both agree that the hardest part is to make this open to loosen the rules in our organization such as a government. So because that's what open source tends to do. Yeah, no, and thank you for that and I think the diversity kind of point that bastion makes is such an important one because no matter what you decide no matter what anyone decides on in any one organization they'll always be another one, there's always one, and you can't exclude them right because they could have a totally important. And that's okay so we just have to get to relax with that. And hopefully that will even help with the culture change because when people are familiar with their own environment and that can help so, so thank you both for that. And I want to touch back now because we've been talking about this idea of the individual challenges and the actual as pose themselves, but one of the things that asked are mentioned in the report summary was this idea of an network. And so I'm going to come back to you after just to maybe comment about what you mean by that in the context and maybe even commenting in the in the context of what bastion and has was talking about earlier. Like, what do you see the value what's what do you mean by the network and what's the additional value that can provide. Absolutely. And the first thing I would say here to kind of link it back to to crisis investments work is, you know, the internal components so to say if we're going to call it that of the also is extremely important for the capacity building of an organization. You know one can talk as much as they want about a network but if the hospital doesn't bring value to the organization within which it's built, then, you know, you got to get this stuff right to begin with. And that said, we are thinking we don't want to shy away from what we think is this very vast potential of finding ways of both informally informally networking these hospitals in different sectors, etc. And in many ways, what we hope to see here is what we've seen in the private sector already. The hospitals look very different in different companies, they're in different parts of the companies, they're at companies of their vastly different sizes, and they're both on the vendor side and on the user side. But what we're talking about when talking about networking these hospitals it's essentially and this is something I think any bureaucracy or any organization always looks looks for it's increasing organizational interoperability enabling collaboration. And this action costs between very diverse organizations, which, you know, is not necessarily the easiest thing. But we believe that the hospital can really help in this especially together and matched with, as they trusted intermediaries that can help bringing these notes together. So I mean, imagine to paint a little bit of a picture because it can sound very abstract talking about Osboat networks. Imagine you have, let's say, a city that has an Osboat setup. It's in search of a solution to a challenge identified by citizens that, let's say a digital solution can solve. They would then, which is also an additional benefit without having to sign let's say tricky contracts or memorandums of understanding, be able to collaborate together with a university Osboat. The open source licenses as the kind of collaborative framework. At the same time they could also engage local and for that matter global companies to participate and support in this development. And, you know, then maybe even early in this process as a result of hopefully continuous communication and a backbone kind of trusted intermediary that supports the network. The Osboat that is faced with a similar challenge can also enter in the conversation and there is this kind of station there's this point of entry when talking about open source where the Osboat being named an Osboat can really help. I mean for an individual developer or a large corporation it can be very good to know that the European Commission, for example, has the Osboat. It's a very natural point to go and ask about open source for and the same goes for a city or a national government. And so here, I also want to say that we're very clear eyed when it comes to that the kind of difficult difficulties of just spurring collaboration between very diverse sorts of organizations and stakeholders, it doesn't just happen. We do believe that from the outset, especially because we're talking about this kind of green field advantage of starting to really work with us was in the public sector and academia, for example, to have this thinking established from the start to have this part of the conversation when building them because if you look at the private sector, it took probably 15 years or so until more informal networks of collaborations actually were established here. The government we could leapfrog this in many different sectors. And I mentioned this earlier on and this is when it comes to kind of the potential. I think we have to be very realistic when it comes to, you know, we heard about the challenges of cultural change and ways of working etc. Just run before we can walk. When it comes to talking about large scale ambitious open source policies in the context of, you know, creating growth, really realizing value from open source for citizens. Let's take one step at a time. Let's look, do we have the institutional framework in place. Do we have the capacity. Do we have the infrastructure onto which then can roll out these policies, because it's very easy to roll out very ambitious policies. But if you don't have this framework in place, it's often and we, you know, we all know examples of this. They don't get traction in the real world. In the end of the day, we need to connect one, these big policies to citizens, but also individual developers, other companies, universities, it all needs to come together. So, and we think, you know, we have good models for this that we can look at in the private sector, but it's not that simple. There are special needs that we need to take into account for in the public sector as well. But the potential is there. Yeah, and I mean, when you think about the network like, you know, to your point, there may be already models in existence that we can, we can look to, but actually, you kind of need that network to exist even to as we go, we're learning. I mean, this is this is new for you, as you mentioned, it's Greenfield and many organizations, and I don't think even, you know, corporate I suppose have it all figured out yet. So there really needs to be an opportunity to to actually share those learnings as we go as well, and to address the challenges that we see cropping up and share the best practices as they come up to. So, so you can see the value of a network like that in all those instances so thank you thank you, Esther. And I'll come to you now Maurizio because from the United Nations perspective, obviously we have the UN Sustainable Development Goals. And they're they're kind of the responsibility of everyone to achieve right we have, you know, common goals set out for the world. So can you maybe comment on how you think your office can actually use open source to actually help that help the development for the sustainable development goals. First of all, thank you Claire and for the organizer this but I think it's very important I hear and I learned a lot of things and you know maybe we are the last on the on the blocks here so we really need to, you know, keep up but I really resonate from from an to the to the network approach of the hospital and the end state of having infrastructure that actually knows how to talk about open source and connect at various level. And as the UN, you know, our competitive advantage is really the network effect the ability to to expand and talk to countries to different diversity as well and inclusion as part of the process. So, I think as you said that the sustainable development goals and the DGA assembly, the General Assembly resolution says a very important thing that you know it's not only government that needs to implement these goals. It's for us, all to do with all the actors of the society need to need to concentrate on this. And you know, this is a clear understanding from everybody you talk to, you know, in, you know, if you talk to a company and University or a nation state, everybody understands that the complex solutions that are needed today cannot be done, you know, by themselves cannot be, you know, done individually they need to be interconnected the challenges are totally beyond goes beyond the border restrictions we need to make sure that we are collaborating together. And so, to achieve the scp scp scp is really important to have open innovation and open culture that spans the local boundaries of every organization so the, you know, if the data is that is the new oil for us definitely open source software is its refinery so we really need to make sure that we, you know, adopt and as the studies that we were presented today of the sea says that, you know, $1 invested in open source produces $4 in in the economy that is good enough incentive to bring this instance to the decision makers and this is what we really trying to concentrate in our work. With that with various entities in the second in the secretariat including the tech and boy office the digital public goods Alliance inspiration that is coming from the European Commission we're really trying to work on establishing also for for the United Nations and for the secretary. So, as you know, we, you know, all big organization has been working on open source for four years, you know, I think we have 1000 to 138 Linux servers at this point running the work of the UN so we've been using, you know, open source solutions we've been with our official website is on Drupal so we have 500 more websites on Drupal so there's a lot of expertise there's a lot of, you know, understanding of the value of this but this is really scattered throughout the organization. And we've been talking to, to many of these colleagues that we now call them open source heroes because these are really the heroes in the organization are trying to put forward these instance so making sure that open source is used to this to the fullest benefit. But indeed they what they're telling us they need a central coordination and a function and institutionalized function for them to reach out find information talk the open source, you know, policies strategies implementations that need to be, you know, followed for for the you know, really engage in the digital public good arena because we have as the EC has a lot of software that were developed, and maybe internally that could be open source that could be leveraged for for the, for the wider communities open source communities. And of course, you know, we have challenges and like everybody else I think I subscribed to the ones that I heard already, but of course, you know, also in large organization the bureaucracy takes time, and, and this is not necessarily bad because we really need to think it through and really the capacity where you need to talk the walk the talk, as we say, and we really need to find the senior decision makers on on the ball with on this and making the right decision. And at the end of the day, you know, change management is really what what is the major problem that we are facing at this point, we're trying to attack that through a bottom up approach with concrete solution that we put out, we start learning from your engagement with the community and a top down approach from the policy maker to meet in the center and really change the culture of the organization so that's really our end goal and our challenge at the same time. And, and Rizio, a lot of those challenges seem similar to the ones that Bastian and he says have described in terms of actually changing the culture change management internally within the UN. And can you maybe speak to as well any practical steps then you'd be thinking about in the context of actually interacting with or engaging with other city or or country level as both like how have you got plans in that area and in terms of actually helping that adoption or to do those collaborations is that something that is also on your playbook. Indeed, it's this approach and the network approach that we were discussing before is really, you know, the end goal that we want to achieve of course we are recognized that, you know, before to get before, you know running we need to start walking and this is where we are at this point, and we have kind of engineer a three tier approach to try to attack the and achieve the end goal. And first of all, we really need to build, you know, capacity internally making sure that we know what we're talking about. We know that we have we have functions and procedures and policies and strategies that really govern this work and this is where we are, you know, piggybacking on on our colleagues and in DC and other organization to make sure that we are not making the same mistakes that they did. So we are leapfrogging, you know, those mistakes. The second tier is really try to engage with all the the biggest family of the of the UN all the funds and programs and we have a model here was we know is doing work with WHO and we actually, we are talking very closely to see if they can also help us on that particular tier. And the most important part that and probably the most difficult part is really to to engage at member state level to to be able to leverage the UN competitive advantage that we're talking about before to connect, you know, different countries and different cities of course and different administrations to talk the same, you know, to discuss the same open source agenda, making sure that we have maybe a strategy and policy at the UN level. We have resolutions that could talk about that we actually had a resolution few weeks ago from episode about requesting the secretary general to come up with the with the report on how the UN can assist the open source community and engaging with member states on the open source agenda so indeed next year the secretary will be busy in looking at this report and providing guidance of that so indeed, you know, it's a three tier approach that works in parallel and we are all trying to put our priorities where where we see that the most impact at this at this point. But again, one of the key issues here is really to build awareness among the decision makers and being able to demonstrate with the hard evidence that there is value in the open source. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Muratio.  And as as Muratio mentioned, you've had a lot of experience working with organizations like the WHO, and can can you maybe comment as well, apart from the sustainable development goals, you know, for when you think about the tech for social good, what part to play I mean, does open source obviously has a huge part to play but what part to play do I suppose also can play in the context of of tech for social good good at that global level. Yeah, I mean I have to echo everything that my fellow panelists have said. I'm a designer by training so before I join get have a couple years ago I was the person who worked for the UN and basically design the tools that they would implement in whichever way. And I have a lot of lived experience with just the challenge and frustration of being a design team of one with one engineer across 30 countries, and a lot of people promising me that we're going to do this project but then just not getting the resources. So I think one of the challenges that we see throughout the UN system and with USAID and the UN Foundation and all of these organizations that have rightly called out that open source is a really critical component of tech for social good you know any part of advancing equity and human development is really just the technical on the tactical side, what tools do you use which developers do you hire, you know how do you set your budgets up. And I think those are some of the gaps that we've been able to fill through our work with the World Health Organization this past year and a half. So we've been doing a lot of work with them to just understand where their current teams are with open source and of course as you would expect for an organization that large and especially with everything happening around there are teams that are just thinking about it and teams that are really just have one or two barriers that need to be knocked down. And so I think an OSPO has a role to play in basically all of those areas. From the work that we've done so far you know I think a lot of the topics that my panelists covered especially around change management are really important with OSPOS but then we're also identifying some areas that I think are quite unique to international organizations like the UN. For example, you know if you have a license for instance like which jurisdiction is that actually forced under if you're a UN organization. And then how do you work for a five year strategy when you've got a budget that's supposed to roll up to that five year strategy when you have a very clear process to buy $100 license but not to allocate $100 or $10,000 or whatever amount to documentation and open source. So we're identifying all these little challenges and I think the tough part now really is to prioritize that and say, obviously, everybody needs help with everything so how do we prioritize and figure out what we address first. I think that's ultimately a question that WGO is going to have to make but we're helping them kind of build up that evidence and try to think through, you know how to prioritize those points. And the second point that's just really interesting, especially coming from the UN system and then we're now working at a company GitHub, that's very critical to open source but also based in San Francisco and through and through an American company, you know we have developers and pretty much every country in the world but a critical mass in North America, you know thinking about tech companies, they can really only hire and like 30 to 40 countries around the world so we're limited to North America we're limited to Europe, but in the you know my colleagues are from everywhere grew up everywhere, based everywhere, you know you can talk to people about a specific tribe in a specific country and the differences therein right so when you talk about international perspectives then it gets really, really, really, you know, micro it gets really localized. And so I think a UN Ospo has a really critical role to play in just being able to hire developers in Africa, simple as it sounds you know we need to make open source more equitable that's a huge challenge that we've had you know the history of open sources, it's tough you know it was exclusionary for a while, and I think now people are starting to understand that history and how it plays out. But when you're talking about movements such as the digital public goods and you know the DPGA the digital public goods alliance with UNICEF Lucy Harris's work they're doing amazing work but they know that it's a challenge to make it more equitable. And so one of the challenges that we have at GitHub and then working with WHO and other UN agencies that are really thinking about an Ospo is how can you bring in a more equitable approach and as a designer that really speaks to me right inclusionary design to make sure that digital public goods which majority are servicing people in low and middle income countries are actually built by people in low and middle income countries. You know so there's a lot of I think economic and social aspects that an Ospo at the UN could eventually think about and the network of Ospos as Mauricio was talking about. I think those challenges are probably a couple years out. But at least at the beginning, we can start with the more tactical approaches of who do you hire them why do you hire them how do you pay them what are they doing, how do they work what tools are they using, etc. So I think once we can get to kind of the that more basic level then we can start to go for more of those higher level topics that ultimately I think we're all trying to work towards. Now thank you for that and and when we're thinking about that kind of global impact or even just being the inclusionary and I know I know we were saying that in many respects, you know some of the, the large corporations are actually you know from a smaller group of countries but when we think about the corporations as well who also many of whom do have a global footprint if not, like, as local as we would like it in the future. Can can either of you perhaps Mauricio or Malo or in fact anyone on the panel, like comment about how a network of Ospos from from a public sector and administrations and organizations like the UN, like is there a role to play with and also a corporate Ospos in that respect in terms of potentially having, and I don't know in the context of corporate social responsibility like is there an opportunity for that also to happen. Yeah, I definitely think there is you know a lot of Ospos in the corporate sector do focus on tooling for instance so if you're using a piece of open source then how do you like automatically detect that and make sure you're staying compliant with the license. And that kind of concern is something that we hear quite often so there's some countries that WTO works in that are very pro open source and they want to work with for example the French government to strengthen that. And other cases they categorically know we're not going to do this at least not yet. And so some of those concerns do come down to the actual technology and for the fact that again you might have one developer for every 30 program officers at the UN. And I think that that capacity from the corporations to really say alright so I understand this is the challenge but is there actually a technical solution to at least start to address some of those issues. So yeah I definitely think there's there's work to be done there. And also I just think the network effect you know one great thing about open source open open doesn't mean equal and I do want to stress that point you know it doesn't mean equal but it doesn't mean that in theory people do have the opportunity to engage. There are a lot of rules that you know corporate auspice can play and that's exactly what we're doing so you know GitHub is owned by Microsoft and our Microsoft Osmo and our GitHub Osmo are you know working side by side with WTO and these coming months to really help stand up some of these like critical pieces of infrastructure that they would need. Thank you yeah that's fantastic. So I suppose then one of the question and I'll open this up to all the panelists again. You know there there are many groups out there who have been working on the areas of shared learnings around us pose folks like the two group have lots of great resources about how to get started with your Osmo and provide those a lot of those resources. There are particular needs for public sector I mean Malatouch done some of them but it can maybe any of any the rest you want to comment on the idea of whether there are like what what what do you need in terms of kind of assets or shared resources or learning or tooling and I'll make it really broad. If you all could help each other what ask would you put on the table. Can I start with this one. Yeah go right ahead. It's a very short list I mean we need, at least from a political point of view we need a stability. So my my first wish would be for the French Oscots were existing the next 10 years, and then we are not, and then open source has a steady strategy that can develop, develop itself and and and be nurtured by the network of relations with other agencies. One word about this networking. That's why this action plan exists is that because we started to have partnerships with this other ministry this other agency and this other one and then we need to gather all this into one single institution for one action plan. And that that's also the case for corporate Ospo or corporate just companies. We need to have a place where we can articulate the way we work together on reaching the goals that we have for the administration. It's not for the company to set goals, it's the administration the public sector sets the goal the government sets the goal but how can we work together to achieve them. And this tech time. And so my first wish would be to have time to develop and then of course more diverse people to share them their experience in their knowledge of open source within their technical expertise within their coming from companies, explaining how their Ospo work, worked in the company and so on and so on. And hopefully, and hopefully also from the the emerging French Ospo so they think get over the shyness to so we will all do the mutual sharing that would be fantastic. So does anyone else have so so sharing experiences, a magic wand to create more time and instability for Bastia and that that will come with time and anyone else got any ideas about what what the network could come together to actually create to actually help at public sector Ospo's I think one thing is just kind of level setting expectations, I think there's the sense with open source that if I build it they will come. That's not necessarily true but it who cares you know if you have five people who look at your tool and they're five people from other governments and that's probably what you need right it doesn't matter, necessarily about the quantity or the volume of people contributing. And a lot of what we see with open source in the social sector really is around that transparency so you can imagine. If you're working with somebody who's got a limited budget, it's, it's a big deal somebody duplicates 20 hours of work or $100,000 in funding. So just knowing that a tool already exists and not reinventing the wheel itself is already important, even if they don't necessarily contribute to that. So I think a network of Ospo's can kind of level set expectations and what open source is what the real advantages are in the social and public sectors, and then also help with that culture change at the top level, you know I think there is. It's top because when you work in tech for social good you understand pretty quickly that the tech is a very small portion of the solution, and that's okay. It's increasingly important but the policies the systemic biases that just the ability for people to thrive in economies and ask people who they are, and with respect to human rights is really where that core of that work lies. So this tag is increasingly important. And so, UN and other organizations need to understand that by proxy they are becoming tech service providers that is part of their job. And so we need to adapt things that are, you know, well known kind of standard bears things that are working in the private sector where possible, even if you have to change some things here and there. And Ospo's are one of them, you know they're every single major corporation that builds technology either has an Ospo or is probably thinking about one now so there's a reason for that. And just kind of wraps their head around that and other social sectors organizations wraps their head around that and gets by on top level, then the funding and then the personnel, you know the staff will come with that. Now that's great and I think that you know even having being able to take those learnings from the non tech sector and bring them closer to the tech community at large and will have, I mean that surely would have a benefit for the entire industry as well as as well as the tech sector aspect. After you had your hand up there do you want to pop in and make a comment and then he's on my review too. Super quick is one thing. I'm not going to speak to exactly what the public sector needs but I think also one thing that is important to keep in mind now it's a bit Eurocentric because that's what we work with but the European Commission for example has been engaged in encouraging the sharing and reuse of software products between governments for many years. There's an established program under the isa squared initiative. And so it's also important to not kind of connected to not reinventing the wheel there is a lot of experience. There's a lot of things that have been done. There are a lot of good models to build on and share more globally and bring those up. And again, I think the Osprey conversation is to a large extent just about taking that next step, critically look at how the processes work and decreasing those transaction costs and then finding ways of sharing the best practices globally from how these things are done. And for us to be, you know, have the humility to listen to how other countries and other networks and collaborations have worked to also bring that into how we do things in Europe. Excellent point, Esther. Thank you very much. Hey, you were also waving there earlier. Yeah, what I wanted to add is, I agree with Bastia that time is actually quite essential. But there is a natural thing that happens here because that organization such as the Commission and many others, if I look at the number of requests for information to talk and present, we have received from member state public services. Many of these public services realize how open source is strategic, and it's a very natural fit to public services. And in fact, together with the European Parliament, the Commission Ospo is, and I can't really talk too much about it because we're still fleshing out all the details, but we're going to start this big project to build an information network. So the goal there is to allow public services to to share reuse to pool resources, knowledge, ideas, practices, because it's a contribution to society. It's cost savings to the citizens and it makes things so much easier in an organization such as the European Union. And it's the only way for the European Union to capitalize on this network effect and open source is such a practical tool. So this is going to happen for sure. We look forward to hearing more about that. And thank you. Hey, and Maurizio, you also had a comment make. Yes, just just a very quick one I'm informing from a very high, you know, perspective, the open source language for me resonate very well with the charter of the event and the charter of what, or what we should be doing here and and what we should be doing is to bring in people together, talking to each other and if my one of my ask is that the open source language will be the same in all countries in the world so that we could then talk to each other and understand each other much better so that that's my wish. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. Well, we have come to the end of our time, which is always too short when we get to talk to these wonderful people. But I would love to thank our fabulous panelists here today. Thank you, Aster. Thank you, Hayes. Thank you, Maurizio. Thank you, Mala. Thank you, Bastian. It's been a fantastic discussion. And I want to leave the audience with, I suppose, maybe two things. One is if you are perhaps in a public sector, also we're thinking about that or want to network with more of these wonderful people. If you check out the Ospo plus plus network, we hold monthly monthly calls community calls and and we'd love to hear from you I think that the next one is September 30, which I think maybe tomorrow when this is played. And but check it out on Ospo plus plus.com. I will also say that, you know, I would put a call out really for everyone who may not be in a public sector organization but actually maybe in a corporate Ospo to have a think about how you and your organization can potentially add to this network effect that we've discussed and the potential there because you know there really is an opportunity for us all to come together now to to look at the global problems to look at the local problems. But but to actually deliver real value to citizens beyond, beyond the idea of just creating technology for an industry or private sector. And this is what this opportunity presents for all of us so I call on all of you to, to hopefully have a think about how you can work together in the future. And with that, I'd like to say thank you to everyone, and I'm hoping you're all having a fantastic time in Ospo con and I wish I was there. Bye everyone. Thank you.


Hi everybody. Welcome. Welcome to Brain Club. I'm Mel Hauser. I use she they pronouns. I'm the executive director here at All Brains Belong. I'm really glad you're here. Let me share screen, get us oriented. You know for some folks it's your first ever Brain Club so welcome and if you're returning to Brain Club welcome to you too. So tonight our panel discussion on making work work for your brain. Brain Club of course is our intentionally created education space to provide education about neurodiversity and related topics of inclusion. It's a way of trying to bring people together based on a shared vision of what's possible and contribute to systems change by shifting social norms, developing shared language and shared culture. It's a place where people can collectively learn and we like to say unlearn together. Feel safe and for many experience something that's quite different from the outside world and promote new ways of thinking and being. We think that then you go out into the world and that's that's where systems change happen. That's how we collectively change the world. And although All Brains Belong does have a variety of other types of programs this one is not for medical or mental health advice. It's also not a support group. This is an education space. All forms of participation are welcome here at Brain Club including observation. You can participate with your video on or off even if it's on we don't expect anything of you. We certainly don't need you to like look at the camera or sit still or any of those other neuronormative constructs. So feel free to walk or move or fidget or stim or you know whatever whatever works for you. And you're welcome to communicate however you are most comfortable. There will be a portion of tonight's Brain Club where we have a pre-recorded community panel and that will run about 25 minutes. So during that time we'll ask that you stay muted. Though the chat box will be open for participation if you'd like to but after that we'll have plenty of time for discussion and you're welcome to communicate however you're most comfortable. In addition to affirming all aspects of identity we protect the space by asking that if you're going to name anything that is distressing to you or was distressing to you and sometimes that does come up when we're talking about work. We just ask that you discuss the impact of your experiences not the specific events so as to keep the space safe for all participants. Closed captioning is enabled you just have to toggle it on if you'd like to use it. So depending on your version of Zoom you might see the live transcript closed captioning icon but if you don't see that look for them more dot dot dot and choose show subtitles and you can also do the same and choose hide subtitles if you want to turn them off. And that's my visual support to remind myself to actually open the chat and put it in a place where I can see if anybody's using it. Hi everyone. Speaking of the chat one of the things we think is important about neuro inclusive space is naming and negotiating conflicting access needs that is when multiple people's access needs conflict and are mutually exclusive. So the chat box I think is a place where that happens. So for many brains the chat box is a way of being able to communicate without mouth words. It's also a way that you have a thought and you get it out. You don't have to hold on to it so it eases working memory. It's also a way that you know someone says something and then you're kind of thinking about it and like 10 minutes later you have a thought about it. You can share it in the chat without feeling like the moment has passed. So it's a way of engaging that expands access. And at the same time we acknowledge that for many brains the chat has a lot of visual clutter associated with it. It's super distracting. Some people have a startle response to pop ups and sometimes it moves quite quickly and it's hard to follow. We would say that the main idea is going to be up on the screen. The chat is optional. So just invite you to if you can open the chat box window if you're on a computer and like put it somewhere else like where you can't see it. But if that's not available at the first time it pops up try leaving it open. Don't close the window. Other messages will replace the old message but it won't pop up anymore. And if you want a little bit about it's kind of a fancier trick but if you can look next to the chat box icon on your toolbar and your zoom toolbar you see this upcarat. If you click on that it'll give you a way of disabling chat previews. So it defaults to have the checkbox but if you click on that word show chat previews it will uncheck and then it won't it won't pop up anymore. All right that's that's what we got for navigating conflicting access needs in the chat. Okay so um on on to our main event uh so we're continuing our March theme of systems change from the ground up. What we know um is that one size fits all does not work for all and that neurodivergent people are more likely to struggle to access all kinds of critical resources. If we've been trying to unpack um Sierra I'm going to make you as a backup co-host. I'm getting distracted. By the way you made me co-host now. Oh is that is that what happened? Oh that's a lot of sense. I just figured you were like doing something. Nope I'm here. Hello. How long? Now you're co-host. I made someone else co-host. Great so anyway um uh anyway so employment is is is one of those critical resources which is why um we talk about employment a lot. We didn't start it we didn't start out that way though like when we did you know we we knew we'd have a medical practice. We knew we'd have social connection programs um but that's kind of all we thought we do here at All Brains Below and it was our community um and our community advisory board that said no we got to talk about work. People wanted to talk about how work was not working for them and you know now that's why this is like this this huge bucket of what we do here in terms of both educating employers to appreciate the strengths of people with all types of brains and to create environments for people with all types of brains can get their needs met and thrive and direct employment support programs. What we know um is that neurodivergent people are more likely to struggle with employment in these examples there's a lot of literature related to autism and ADHD but that's it's not specific to autism and ADHD but autistic adults are uh four to eight times more likely to be unemployed. 75 percent of ADHD years have employment related challenges and given what we know about the bi-directional relationship between employment and health this is an important missing piece of the health equity conversation. What we know is that many people do not have their needs met at work and when we think about the social model of disability where it's not issues or deficits of the individual but this is this is uh disability is relative the amount of disability that someone experiences is relative to the barriers in the environment. There are so many barriers to access in workplaces and when we think about all of the different types of access needs access needs being anything that is required for meaningful full participation in one's environment or community everyone with all types of brains has access needs it's just that um you may be more or less likely to have your access needs met by the defaults of a given workplace and when we think about some examples of the different types of access need considerations and work the environment including sensory processing communication executive functioning mobility motor coordination technology there's all kinds of things and all of this can be framed according to access this is what I need in order to do my work. Lizzie if um I think this is part of our our social media post from today so if you at some point if you could throw a link to that in the chat if folks like want the slide I mean assuming that anyone would want the slide I think it's on I think I think it's on Instagram right now all right um what we don't want and I'm sorry but I feel we need to fix this sometimes when we import slides it changes all the colors and now you can't read it what we don't want is we don't want the square peg being hammered to to fit into the round hole because what happens you break the peg and there's so many people who are being stuffed into containers that don't work for them so like we don't want this we we we need something different um but but how do we get there and that's that's what's a nice conversation is going to be about um I also want to name and we we we touched on this last month at brain club when we talked about redefining relationship to work and if you can't talk about relationship to work without talking about class I don't think you can talk about work at all without talking about class and I think that um unjust allocation of resources is a huge problem many people don't have their basic needs met and so you know housing food like all these like you know basic safety um but also even even above that foundational foundation of the pyramid it's access to networks the social capital that that is um is is is so much a part of um the off ramp out of like a bad work situation um being able to tap into a network of other people to help you do the thing and so part of what we want to invite tonight is the consideration of like well what what what what like how do we think about networks and um can even at a grassroots level um a network of people you know that you connect with a network of organizations uh like like one of our panelists went hardest here today from the center for women and enterprise just there's all kinds of people um who can help that piece even if someone does not feel as though their current network is it is a sufficient escape clause from their current situation and um that's not surprising that so many people don't feel like they have an out from bad work situations especially when we think about all of the different ways that humans are othered in our society and the intersectionality of those things so when we think about being marginalized for race gender sexuality class ethnicity disability educational status like so many things um that's all part of of of this equation as well um but uh what what we're about to do is um uh in just just a minute david's gonna play our panel discussion and um we'll be hearing from uh five members of our community um uh talking about how work systems might be reimagined and some of the things we might think about and again as the video is playing you're welcome welcome to use the chat and uh with that david take it away i think about all the people that i know who are like dude i can't live like this anymore i don't know i have no skill like i hear this a lot right i have no other skills like we get so caught in that like i can't see anything else and then there's the it's just the treadmill of like i can't i'm stuck like this won't move we're caught in systems that we prop up that we have to to navigate and cobble together and we think the system is bigger than us but the system but that really that it's us like we are the ones that have a uh a role in this and we we can disrupt it it is it's worthy of more conversation like what are the disrupting what are the parts of the systems that we have leverage and ability to advocate or disrupt and i say disrupt and not in the like a yeah not like in a burn the house down way right like in a reimagining way right like either we scaffold something or we develop something that like we we can be creative like we don't have to do things the same way because we've always done them that way the idea of shifting social norms through community connection with this vision of like what what like can i rethink some things in my life that aren't working for me or maybe are working for me and can i learn about my access needs in that way there's there's a role for business and employers there's a role for the worker in this in this conversation there's a role for our government partners and for for people in the the space of policy and and there's an advocacy role here really drilling into what are the benefits of workplaces and the benefits of being a worker and who are those benefits for and who are they not for like how are things by design right now either working or not working where are those gaps in our in the safety nets that support workers or that could support everyone but i this is where i start to think about we talk about benefit cliffs we talk about the sort of the that increasing space where workers are earning more but not having safety nets that keep pace and therefore in in an unintended consequence of actually taking people out of work right the idea of like we want people to be in the workplace but if they don't have the supports they need for stability in their housing and stability in their health care they will only work so much where they can't keep working and they will come out because that's how they get their basic needs met and the resources they rely on and that's a stuck place for a lot of people who who would like to be unstuck yes so maybe like thinking through like what is what is what would benefits be how would we support access to work and all the different definitions of that access to work and what are the benefits that we have currently and how what are the gaps with those benefits i i don't know that's my mind goes there sometimes mostly because having worked with workers over time i've seen how systems and benefits including social security taxes irs like different different systems can can cause big challenges for workers and or not support workers right and i think that like that stuff's just so confusing if you design systems based on data like top down like starting from like starting really local like within your business you know so like i have five employees so i really want to know what those employees need right so like i'm gonna put together this proposal of like i want to get this dental plan and i want to do this whatever but it's like what do you actually need can you look at this like is this actually gonna meet what you need if not we're gonna find something else and i think like that's this is an important consideration for work that it is often overlooked is how it matches a person's individual values and that can happen in a lot of ways you can directly approach a value like i like helping other people and work in human services but i think sometimes we we fall short at expanding that definition if you like helping people you can also work in retail or in customer service uh so overlaying what your values are with what the job is and how it feels and and operates practically so part of that is assessing your values and those will change over time and there's no right and wrong values necessarily so it's there's a level of self-understanding in that exploration and they use exploration intentionally because work can be a way to explore those values or how to tap into them but there comes a time where i think people don't realize that maybe they're really good at doing something right but they don't enjoy it but it's what they do and they're getting money doing this but at the end of the day they're just like that wasn't a fulfilling day sure i was good at this but this isn't is this really what i want we all all people to an extent want to contribute something and and and and offer and help in some way uh you might want to find a way to meet that psychological need through your work where you can contribute and and and help others or you may have robust opportunities outside of work i think it's very often we talk about like like what we do like for work rather than who we are and the gifts we have to offer to our communities so being able to share our gifts sometimes our gifts might be tied to the work that we do but sometimes our gifts are not tied that we could be artists we can be we can be other things in our lives that often don't get to be shared in our workplace or in our communities that's what i thought i was supposed to do you know i thought that i was supposed to find this job and that i would just be really good at it and you know it would be amazing it was hard like you know you're in the trenches and we are like struggling in this like oppressive power system that tells people that their value comes from what they produce and like you work for the system and all that anyway so um uh you were starting to say something about entrepreneurial mindset yeah yeah yeah and i think that one of the key because like honestly formal formal entrepreneurship still follows this same like like expectations right and perceptions as the traditional workforce which are rooted steeped in and hung from an entirely capitalistic and um entire experience right thinking about why we even exist like the center for women in enterprise or sbdc's it's because even our language around entrepreneurship is exclusive right like entrepreneur that's a big word like right like let alone like funding mechanisms like all of the language we have built up to prop up this illusion that this is this exclusive experience you told us like you know you had this job and you had this job and this job and you're like oh my relationship worked how did you actually come to decide um to start limelight restoration we always sort of wanted to own a business like we had thought of different ideas like maybe being realtors or something two years before we started limelight restoration my husband he was already working for a surf pro and they needed like an office manager and i was looking to get out of the role that i had um gone into so i ended up working with him at surf pro for like a year and a half which is this is also the same place that i was fired from the only place that i've ever been let go of and a lot of it had to do with the dynamic of the way the leadership was there was a lot of um complaining from leadership and sort of like making people feel bad for not having jobs like it was very negative and i think my pda and my autistic side really didn't like it morally and so i started to have an attitude and they didn't like my attitude still the relationship that he had with them was great and i was four months pregnant and he came to me and said the owner of surf roe is retiring and i either have to find a new job or they want to sell us the business and so i was just like okay like parallel play to me means first adopting and adapting the mindset that goes into entrepreneurship which honestly there's like a whole breadth of literature around how entrepreneurship is actually a myth like there's no such thing as the self-made person like they have connections like they had a wealthy person in their network right like so what's it look like for the rest of us entrepreneurship for the rest of us is i think building a values-based life and like an entrepreneurial mindset that allows us to be flexible adaptable and really be able to like come up with a definition of enoughness like what does enough look like for me in my life and it's not just money right like we go immediately to there's never enough money is that true though like what do i want the quality of my connections to look like what do i want the quality of my time to look like you have to you have to be able to have the the spaciousness to zoom out to reimagine and when you're like in the weeds in the chaos you can't even do that so you like stick to the systems because it preserves your bandwidth even though that known quantity is ruining your life taking a full-time job at u-haul might not be ideal but taking a four-hour a week job at u-haul gives me these benefits it's not that bad i actually like the people there and i'm also uh signing up for one craft fair where i'm gonna just test it out selling some of my stuff or like you know what i really want to be doing bodywork i don't have any formal training but uh i can help my friend out a couple days a week right like what's really also standing out for me is the idea of it's like the um it's almost like like a self-ethicacy piece um you know i think for me like you know as as someone who suffered in a life that wasn't working for me a work life that wasn't working for me suffered like longer than really was indicated um uh because i didn't necessarily ever think that i could start a thing um i think i mean of many i mean i have so much privilege you know i'm i'm white i'm educated you know and i think that what the consequences of those aspects of privilege are that i've had at least um experiences of like the just even the idea of like consulting other professionals i had done that before in other ways or the idea of like i have felt like i had like a little bit of like mini mastery over like whatever the thing if you've never had that i think that it's very hard to even imagine that you could like forge this interdependent life of your own meeting what do you think about that yes a hundred percent yes absolutely and um i'm thinking a lot i love that you said that word interdependent i love that that is awesome because what that makes me think of is again coming back to like there are so many alternative one of the things that i thought you were going to say which is why listening is important because you didn't say this i thought what you were going to say is one of the consequences for the privilege that you have it have experienced i don't want to say enjoyed because like a consequence was you had a set set of expectations that have been bestowed upon you for generations right you have medical training like you are entrenched right in like a set of this is how it's always done this is how like routine expectations and and so yes i there's a lot of mindset burdens that we have and so okay i'll just pull for my own experience this is my first full-time job this one that i'm in right now i've been here for eight years so like i should stop saying that because now i've had a full-time job for eight years but like before that i pieced together my life based on and when i was in it it felt bad like it felt i felt ashamed like because i wasn't like i wasn't getting the you know promotions from other because like i was making the decisions based on what i wanted to be doing exploring and and enoughness for us is like a holistic approach to how we want to live our life you know and so i think the entrepreneurial mindset can be then adopted and we adopt that when we have formal structures in place that allow us to make decisions that we feel comfortable with that often um there are jobs roles positions out there that don't name our gifts but that we have the offer that would be beneficial to our communities and so we call that opportunity creation where we take people's gifts and create opportunity for that for them to maybe possibly make a living out of that thing and be able to thrive i've not heard that term before and i would love to hear like and if you want to talk about this at brain club i could add this out if not like tell me what does what does that look like that sounds incredible oh so i'll give you i'll give you a really great example and i'll just i mean i think i can name names i don't i don't think she would mind at all but i'll i'll name the names because i think it's an excellent recent example of opportunity creation which we have many so anna anna is a um a latina woman in the state of vermont who um when we were trying to do not try when we were putting together a bipod financial wellness empowerment program she had some expertise in this area and so we along with another individual shonda were able to create financial 101 102 103 financial wellness series for bipod people through the intellectual through the vision of the root but the intellectual property of these individuals and be able to share that in an affinity space with bipod to help um lift them up in their financial literacy wellness awareness and education this now has turned into now anna is employed by windham and Windsor housing trust and she is starting the bipod financial empowerment program that is her own gifts that will go with that will get you out the state buying these um tools and resources and awareness to primarily our bipod communities and so not only did she get to share gifts she got to make connections and relationships and she got got to be paid what she is worth for and valued for who she is no it's identifying the strengths of individuals within your community and investing in them not only are they serving the like you're investing in them they are investing in the community and you've created like together you've created something that didn't exist before which is that is incredible I also think about the bartering thing I think about like right like alternative resourcing talk about that like so this is what I'm thinking about like so from this idea of system change from the ground up like parallel play with the economic system you know in some just needs to involve some some creativity right so you just named several examples of that and I think that it have you have you ever read I'm going to edit this part out but have you ever read the book impact networks no oh my gosh one of my one of my board members impact networks I'll send you a link um it's it's it's the structure of it's like a structured approach to intentionally shifting beyond like social networks to like intentional impact like the social change so the idea of like learning networks versus action networks versus movement networks and it's like anyway like game changer book anyway um cool but um where was it going why don't I bring this up we were talking about parallel play with the economic system yeah so um they talked about the idea of asset mapping the idea so like within your community right so like you know not you know but but I think that it's almost like I can not I don't want to say economic asset mapping that's not what it's like it's like what's what's all the people's zone of genius that they are looking to actually do and yes like the earned money or something from and if you knew all the things you have to zoom out to say like all right so if I've got four people in my community well maybe their zones of genius don't necessarily like they don't necessarily need each other's zone of genius for the thing that each of them are trying to do but if you zoom out you have a broader pool and you say this is me and this is what I this is my gift to offer to the world and you put enough people together like isn't isn't that how it happens yes oh my god no okay so I have I'm familiar with the work that came out of impact networks um and asset mapping is actually a really cool community development tool that has that so like so you can pose a problem that you have to solve right an easy one is usually like I have to get to California to get an ice cream machine or something you know I mean like I have to get and I how am I going to do this and then you set people out into like little groups of like three or four and they write down on post-it notes one for post-it note what is one physical thing you have access to so sometimes people are like a pointer a cell phone a blub right like stuff like that what are three spaces or like locations you have access to and who are three people that you have access to right and it might be like Bernie's daughter's sister right like whatever right like and and then you put them together and try to solve this collective problem and it's hilarious right those people will be like oh we're gonna get a car from the like anyway it doesn't matter like they put yourself you're doing collective problem solving too I'm sorry I went so far down breaking love this keep going oh yeah the asset mapping I had found to be a really awesome resource especially in communities where we're exploring entrepreneurship or exploring like work like having a new relationship with work when there's not a lot of um high morale in in their perceptions of work because they're like young right like they're like I have nothing to offer the world what am I going to do like so that that um working with noraday verse folks a lot of times it's like yeah but nobody gets x y and z right um I've also seen it in um uh women who are on have been on public assistance for a long time and how like really low morale they get around system both systems working for them and them work working within the system right um and so I have found that to be a fun um like a game like it's a game right and it's just the the because so many people need to like have been like the over rehearsal pathways of independence like it's it this exercise is like explicitly um you know focusing people around this idea of interdependence so you are and I think you know just like reminding a little bit if someone has and this is like what this month's spring club has been about in various degrees um uh the the idea that like if you don't have the experience of being able to show up as your full self and feel like you can authentically like you know belong to a community of people um you're never going to be able to enter into these stories you know these these you know these kinds of problem collect collective problem solving where you are both like like the group is advancing but the individuals are actually getting their needs met as as people are being appreciated for their gifts and they are being like they're entering into this network where now you know if they're connected with an organization that has relationships with other people and now they have relationships with other people like that's how they that's how their opportunity grows because now it's not just one client it's like bad clients and I think that's how that goes for anybody um but I I also wonder about how do people even like um how do they how do we even know who's out there with a gift that we don't have a relationship with yet whose whose future could be like jump started if only um their network could get bigger when you start building something especially around food where you're just kicking it and people are bringing all different kinds of foods from their culture like oh oh what's your culture or how did you make that oh that's really neat like you just you get a different vibe and a different understanding of who people are and you realize oh my god they're like actually uh I'm I want to be a caterer but I just haven't had that opportunity so when Soul Food Sunday came about I was like I was like I'm gonna bring my fabulous dish and then all of a sudden we're talking about we're talking about hiring you for catering so I again it all really boils down to relationships but finding entry ways that if you will are more low bar that are more accessible to people that they can just show up as their full authentic selves what would it look like to turn the monthly because there's a monthly employment focused spring club every month we've been doing it that way since May 2022 what would it look like to create like a learning network around neuro-inclusive employment through the container of brain club um I mean that would just be that would be really interesting that it's it's it's like you're really inviting in people who are looking to reimagine and the focus is on reimagining it's about it's about brainstorming right no pun intended like of like really coming together and doing that so I don't have any concrete ideas because I think that both both you all and us have that foundation of those visions and ideas I think it's just about having that think tank to come together to see to see more of what's possible because exactly what you said is like now we're not paying Anna anymore those that money is coming from a variety of other different places and that's what we can do is we can leverage our relationships and connections with the resources that all of us have when we come together and we're really willing to make that commitment to each other so I think that's what's most important there we have it another um big thank you to our community panelists Connie Beale Jason Cabo Bianco Sheila Linton Summer Stelter and Gwen Piccolo Hart um and Gwen is here with us today hi Gwen hey everyone it's so nice to be here with you um just so you know I've got a an associate here this is George um and uh he'll be with us do they do amazing um I want to um I'm scrolling up in the chat to try to find um Christina's comment um I think the standard system set up to enact change in the workplace is a top-down approach people with high up need to approve changes but this but with this system change really happens because the systems are too large right and so um that's that's that's that's exactly why we wanted to have this conversation about what would it look like kind of to identify if in a world where everyone did have access to the resources they needed to do the thing that they really wanted to be doing like what would that thing even be when with the maybe Gwen could you say a little bit about about cwe and like what you do and the people you work with totally we're in the middle of a hard moment here so let's see oh yeah yeah do your moment um no that's okay let's see let's see georgia often rises to the occasion so um I just I think it's an amazing group here and um mel is doing something revolutionary and it's so cool to be watching this build um so I'm with the center for women in enterprise we are an economic development non-profit here to help lift up the women who lift up the world and we do that through individual business counseling and tons of different types of training experiences we really believe that's funny um and we really believe in connecting people to their um to their peers because so often in the entrepreneurial development experience it can feel really alienating um and alone and and um we are not alone so we are home to what's called vermont's women's business center which is a um a partnership with the small business administration and so we're able to offer most if not all of our programs at no cost and nobody's ever turned away for for lack of funds and so what who we really work with are people who are at a transition in their life either they're in business and they are looking um they are facing an imminent growth challenge maybe they got a big purchase order from uh like a regional grocery chain or something like that um uh or they're in uh experiencing um stagnancy in their business we also work with people who are like I can't work in this work anymore the workforce has failed me and I know that I have more um to offer and and uh I can't live like this anymore and so we really work with people at the startup through the first five years of um of business and uh and all of our entrepreneur all of our counselors are entrepreneurs themselves so have been there where our clients are clients are thanks Gwen um yeah so so and I I I think you know at the end there when Gwen mentioned the idea of like people who are at this place of like the workforce has failed me and um I think you know I I just I I think that there's a lot of people who like don't see themselves being able to start their own thing even as a as a side gig even Sierra do you have your microphone up there instead of down here yeah you you know my headphones very well um I I think that one thing that this conference has done for me is just reframe the idea of like networking I think networking for me was always like this idea of this is the one way to build community in your like employment and career space and networking has the biggest limbic reaction for me and I despise it and I hate it and I look at a kit networking classes in college and it it it just doesn't doesn't work for me and I think hearing all these panels was really helping to see in all the different ways that like yeah exactly um all the different ways that like networking and building community in this employment realm can can really look at how it really looks like mutual aid a lot of the times more than uh like professional network conference thing really right and it's it's and like I think like what Gwen said in her comments around like you know the word entrepreneur like means like it has these these connotations association as opposed to a mindset of just like okay I'm gonna like flexibly try to do a thing right so um and and yeah I think I think that's Sierra that's really well said like you know I and you know I'm pretty new into my current gig or but but even you know things like all right well I really really want you don't know this but I really want our employees to have short-term disability insurance but we don't like have that and I don't know how to get it and like anyway so I like emailed someone that I know who who like might know someone who knows how to do that like it's it's it's like who do you know who might know something you think you need to know and mapping those kinds of like brain resources out from the comfort of your I mean hopefully the comfort of your own environment yeah right and so a lot a lot of people talking in the chat about thank you summer that's that's what I learned it's awesome um that's great thank you see we just networked right there what's coming up for for others around community networking redefining work Laura I feel like one thing that I've learned I think a lot from you again mel is like not being afraid to reach out to people who seem so big and daunting and terrifying sometimes that like worst thing that's going to happen in most cases they're not going to respond at all but that reaching out to them often they like they are real people and they often do respond and often they are nice and that that can be helpful I feel like when it like when it took me six months to work up the nerve to reach out to you to introduce myself to you that happened can I jump in again the other thing that I feel like is coming out for me is like thinking about my own research and thinking about working with like um community members in research and so I do I do research and I started working with autistic folks to help like collaborate as research partners a couple years ago um and I think when I first started doing it it was very much I'm sorry there's so much background rice here I think it was very much like that that bottom up thinking I feel like I had this idea of like it'll be good to do this and you know I can say I did it and that's good and I feel like it's been transformative for me to actually um hear perspectives from people affected by what I'm doing and make it really truly so much richer and better and I wish there was a way to translate that message to employers that like that bottom up approach isn't just about like lip service to this it's like it actually is transformative and makes everything better and more efficient and more like there is actual like dollar value and in working bottom up and it would be great to be able to like get that message across in some way in a bigger systems way absolutely um you know and I I think that you know Laura when you when you first started doing the work of even like you know being able to you know you got grants to compensate people to share their lived experience right and then when we worked through like these are actually the the the minutiae of what is required to you know like you got to like come to a place and fill out a form like in the middle of COVID and like really let's think about the whole workflow of what are all the people interfacing with and you really come to know your processes better so like when I do neuro inclusive employment trainings um like that's that's a thing that's a thing that we do is we work through like all the the workflow of how people are flowing through the organization and so you're really like you know sometimes processes they just they just get stagnant and they just stay this is the way we've always done it so we always do the thing right yeah yeah that is the stuff that that that that absolutely is what gets what gets in the way um and and and I think that when employees have their needs met they do better work and you know probably are less likely to quit their jobs so when we think about the you know the economic cost of turnover neuro inclusive employment is is win-win but I think that you know um and I I I want to name um I was actually having the same thought for seeing then you then you then I looked over in the chat and I saw that you like I'm I'm skimming but I think you're writing what I was about to say and that's like really cool but but um yeah it's the idea it's but the idea is really um it's really painful um with the idea that when so many people have so much work trauma that interferes with being able to zoom out and reimagine just so stuck yeah not just workplace things Arianna so not just not just workplace trauma but trauma there's just so much trauma of all kinds yeah I'm muted I can hear you okay good okay I mute myself all over the place and then I lift my hand okay um I've been uh thinking about this about employment since attending all brains belong and realizing um and the revelation that I'm autistic and uh I'm approaching 60 and I I I had to close I was the counselor for a couple of decades uh amongst other things like many autistic people I had many irons in the fire I did many things and I burnt out quickly so I would usually only stay at a place for eight months less than a year there was one agency I worked at for 26 years but it was really part time and I would move in and out of positions but I listened to a podcast yesterday uh square pegs podcast um it's hosted by an autistic woman and all the guests are autistic and the guests yesterday was talking about employment and how uh the day also did all these weird and wonderful things to to make a livelihood before settling into something that is sustainable and uh and that I'm thinking about my generation people in their 60s their 70s their 80s who have gone through their life not having the language or even the knowledge that they're autistic or ADHD or somehow neurodivergent and now I have no security I was I I've lived in poverty my whole adult life I've figured out how to make do and I'm I kind of like my life like I look back on it and it's weird and wonderful but it's not without its perils and it's trauma um I really don't know what my point is I think I'm just really right now really tender hearted and soft and thinking about older generations who are now just getting the realization that they have struck what the struggle was through life and there's no nest egg yeah I want to take a minute and process what you just said I think I think um exactly what you just said and all those layers of you know it's like all the the the the emotional experience like the the more layers that you're unpacking and shifting your narrative so complicated and I think doing go ahead Monika pardon me for interrupting I one more the point that I did want to make was I worked somewhere for 26 years and I was an integral member of that team yet I am the only one of that staff who does not own a home who did not own a vehicle who um yeah a whole bunch of other things but I'm the only one out of that team who does not have financial security because I was seen as less productive as the other ones or less I had just as much education but I was less smart because my smarts show up in a different way I don't know it's complex right which I think everybody here gets but I just I have I'm really pissed off that I worked there for the same amount of time as everybody else and um I have no security from it got friends but okay and to me what you just named Monique I mean that's so indicative of like I think we talk about this at brain club a lot right like when society sends the message that you know your value is what you produce like that's really messed up oh there's so much love in the chat going on right now Monique check it out anything you want to add it's okay if not and you might be frozen oh that's what that's wonderful there's lots of people really relating to what you said um well I think building building on Monique's comment next week is our monthly book chat um for those of you who are new to brain club we do we most months the last week of the month we do a book chat most people have not actually read the book we're not expecting you to read the book that's what we design the whole thing so you don't have to read the book and so we highlight themes and anyway and then we have conversation about the themes so we will be discussing unlearning shame um Dr. Devin Price's new book so it's up um how we can reject self-blame culture and reclaim our power I think uh I think it's the perfect perfect next step um to reimagine to reimagine thank you all so much for being here and thank you for being part of our community we look forward to seeing you next week