Open Source Bristol – March 2022

We established the Open Source Bristol group in 2020, looking forward to the day when we could get together in person—and that day is at last on the horizon! We’re really excited to be hosting March’s event at Scott Logic’s Bristol office, with four fascinating talks from five speakers lined up:

• Eriol Fox, Product Manager & Designer at Simply Secure
• Tariq Rashid, Founding Director at Digital Dynamics
• Tim Spann, Developer Advocate at StreamNative
• John Kinson, Head of Sales, EMEA at StreamNative
• Alex Birch, Lead Developer at Scott Logic

// How to book your place

This will be a hybrid event. If you would like to attend the event in person, please register via this Meetup page.

The venue is accessible to wheelchair users, including lifts to the Scott Logic office where the event will take place. We don't want anyone to feel excluded from attending our events. If you have any special requirements, please let us know in advance by contacting Claire Cocks ([ccocks@scottlogic.com](mailto:ccocks@scottlogic.com)).

If you would like to watch the live stream instead, please register on Eventbrite and we'll send you the live stream details.

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AGENDA

18:00 // Refreshments and networking

18:30 // Welcome and housekeeping

18:35 // 'Building a Scalable Event Streaming and Messaging Platform using Apache Pulsar for Fintech' // Tim Spann and John Kinson

Today, companies are adopting Apache Pulsar, an open-source messaging and event streaming platform. Pulsar’s scalability and cloud-native capabilities make it uniquely positioned to meet a range of emerging business needs, including AdTech, fraud detection, IoT analytics, microservices development, and payment processing.

Tim Spann and John Kinson will share insights into the modern data streaming landscape, how Apache Pulsar fits into it, and how it can be used for Fintech. John will also talk about the origins of StreamNative as a Commercial Open Source Software company, and how that has shaped the go-to-market strategy.

19:05 // 'Reviving Google’s lost fluid engine' // Alex Birch

We’ve all played a game with Box2D physics (e.g. Angry Birds). Google forked Box2D to add fluid simulation, but diverged irretrievably in the process. Can we salvage Google’s contributions, and bring both these C++ projects to the modern web using WebAssembly and TypeScript?

19:30 // Break

19:45 // 'How Open Source projects can attract more users and participants – Some thoughts' // Tariq Rashid

The open source development community has no shortage of technical expertise and enthusiasm for technology. Too often, this means that open source software is developed primarily by enthusiasm for technology, rather than around the needs of users.

In this short talk, Tariq will suggest ideas for how open source projects can attract and keep more users by designing around user needs, and gain more contributors by encouraging skills other than coding to participate.

20:10 // 'Design contributions to OSS: Learnings from the Open Design workshops project' // Eriol Fox

Open Design's first phase was a collaboration between Adobe, Designit and Ushahidi, looking at increasing and sustaining design contribution to open source and advocating for OSS in design, and design in OSS. In Eriol's talk, they will cover the history and problems Open Design looked to solve, and present the learnings and tools that engage designers not yet ‘on-board’ with OSS as an ethos or movement.

Eriol will look into some of the abstract, deeper motivations for design professionals to contribute but also some practical tips on structuring issues, labelling and maintaining design (and extended functions like research, UX and product management). You’ll leave with a set of tools and methods you can apply to your OSS to engage with designers.

20:30 // Refreshments and networking

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If you are interested in presenting, please contact Claire Cocks ([ccocks@scottlogic.com](mailto:ccocks@scottlogic.com)). We particularly welcome talk submissions from women speakers, speakers from ethnic minorities, and speakers from other under-represented groups.

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By registering for the event in person or online, you agree to abide by our Code of Conduct which you can find in the 'About' section: https://www.meetup.com/open-source-bristol/