Breaking into Open Source

Abstract:
We use it at work, we use it at home, in 2017 open source is all around us. Most of us only see the end result whither that be the apps we use or the binaries we import in our projects. This talk will give a behind the scenes look at all that goes into open source projects. Learn the differences between projects run by individuals, foundations and companies. Find out ways to contribute even if you're not a coder. Finally learn about some of the common processes and responsibilities associated with contributing to an open source project. Over the past 20 years open source has had a huge impact on the future of software development. It's been said the best way to predict the future is create it. Come find out how to be a part of the future today.

Bio:
Bob Paulin is an independent consultant and speaker that has been developing open source software for the past 10 years. Bob has presented at large international conferences such as ApacheCon, JavaOne and Devnexus. Bob is actively involved in the Chicago developer community as the Chicago Java User Group President and Devoxx4Kids Chicagoland Organizer. As a passionate open source advocate Bob donates his time to Apache Felix and Apache Tika as a committer and PMC respectively. Bob helps his clients perform modular development/design, automation for continuous delivery, and build forward leaning web applications. When not coding, Bob enjoys coaching football, robotics, and spending time with his wife and 3 kids.

Michael Minella is a software engineer, teacher, speaker, and author with over 15 years of enterprise development experience. He currently works for Pivotal as the project lead for the Spring Batch and Spring Cloud Task projects as well as an instructor at DePaul University. Michael has spoken on a number of java, Spring, and big data topics and is a JavaOne Rockstar. He was a member of the expert group for JSR-352 (java batch processing). Michael is the author of Pro Spring Batch from Apress and the popular Refcard JUnit and EasyMock.

Outside of the daily grind, Michael enjoys spending time with his family and enjoys woodworking, photography and InfoSec hobbies.