Scott Jenson ‘Part 2 of 2: Open Source Design Movement: How Designers can help change the game’

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[00:00:00] Scott Jenson: There's a well known product management phrase that, you know, months of programming can save you. Days of critical thinking. And the idea there is that, you know, how do we talk about it? How do we have a conversation that saves us time, that avoids you having to program anything at all because we know it's the wrong direction.

[00:00:17] Scott Jenson: So a little bit of planning, a little bit of discussion, um, a little bit of model making can usually elevate the conversation so that you can have a better conversation.

[00:00:30] Gerry Scullion: Hello, welcome to Bringing Design Closer, and this is Hate cd. My name is Jerry Scott and I'm the founder of this Estate City. I'm a service designer educator. Design coach and podcasts are based in the wonderful city of Dublin, Ireland. Our goal here is to have conversations that inspire and help move the dial forward for organizations to become more human-centered in their approach to solving complex business and societal problems.

[00:00:54] Gerry Scullion: A huge thank you to the people who you have subscribed. To become a patron over the last number of weeks. It's truly [00:01:00] appreciated, and my goal here with having this model in place is to meet the needs and meet the costs to produce everything on this eight cd. And we're still quite a distance away from doing so, but every little helps.

[00:01:10] Gerry Scullion: You wanna learn more about doing this, you can check out. This is hcd.com for more information in this conversation. I caught up in the second part of my conversation with Scott Jensen to explore. How designers can actively get more involved in the free and open source movement that we spoke about. In episode one of this conversation, we speak more about why this is of such an interest to Scott and he gives awesome advice to others who want to get involved.

[00:01:34] Gerry Scullion: If you haven't listened to episode one on this one, he can go back to the link in the show notes. It's well worth listening. It's a really good episode, and I hope you enjoy it. Let's get straight into it. Scott, I'm delighted to welcome back. Um, you are, um, one of the most listened to podcasts of 2022, um, from last year.

[00:01:54] Gerry Scullion: We, we had a great conversation about fo. I'm delighted to welcome you back. If you just dialed into this episode, folks, and you haven't listened [00:02:00] to episode one, it'll be in the show notes. I thoroughly recommend listening to Scott, especially because we're gonna be building on that conversation and talking a little bit more about free and open source software and.

[00:02:12] Gerry Scullion: We call that foz. So if you hear us talking about Foz in this, um, that is what we were referring to. So, Scott, for people who are, uh, more familiar with your work, maybe give us a bite size on, uh, what you are up to at the moment.

[00:02:28] Scott Jenson: At the moment, I am working, uh, I'm, I'm Semiretired and I'm working on ways in which I can get more actively involved.

[00:02:37] Scott Jenson: So I have got a couple of irons in the fire and I hope to make an announcement in a few weeks as to the next project. I'm starting. Yeah, but you,

[00:02:44] Gerry Scullion: you've been so kind of prolific in your career over the last 20, 30 years in especially in the space of user experience. It's really interesting to hear your take on Foz in particular.

[00:02:59] Gerry Scullion: So [00:03:00] I'm gonna start off the, the conversation here. I wanna understand why Scott cares so much about Foz. What is it about Foz that really, um, sort of piques your interest?

[00:03:13] Scott Jenson: Sure. Uh, what I will also just say up the top is that Open Source has many names, right? Open Source Free and open source FOSS and free.

[00:03:22] Scott Jenson: And, um, and also F L O S S. So there's many ways referring to it. I might just say open source, just to be be more clear. Um, the main reason I am I was attracted to it is that I have done. Quite a bit of research and work into next generation ux, and I have found that in the commercial operating systems, there is very little appetite for kind of moving and trying new things.

[00:03:49] Scott Jenson: So I really wanted to go to open source to say, Do some of this work and to say, let's just build something, something out. Let's try it out. And when I started an open source, I [00:04:00] just went to a couple small projects just to get started, just to try it out. And uh, by the way, I maintained an open source project at Google.

[00:04:06] Scott Jenson: Um, so I was doing it as a maintainer, but, but as trying to do UX and open source, I had so much trouble and so much drama that I ended up talking about it and writing about it. And that's where. I actually found myself getting a lot of traction, so I just gave my third talk at FOSS back last week on UX and Open Source, so I've been.

[00:04:27] Scott Jenson: And people seem to want to talk about it more. So I'm finding a bit of an audience there, but I'll say I'm kind of reluctantly talking about it because I wanna get to the research. Right. But I'm talking about it as a general point because there just seems to be so much to talk

[00:04:39] Gerry Scullion: about. Now, you just mentioned there, you just dropped it in that you were doing a talk at Fast Pack and I was the third one.

[00:04:46] Gerry Scullion: Okay, so this was a trilogy. It's like, um, the George Lucas of Star Wars, the first one.

[00:04:52] Scott Jenson: It's o overstating it just a bit, but yes.

[00:04:57] Gerry Scullion: Um, so you've just done Return of the Jedi. Um, so [00:05:00] the first one, let, let's talk about the first one. The first talk you did, I understand, was really discussing the problem. Now let, let's talk a little bit more around that.

[00:05:08] Gerry Scullion: What, what problem were we focusing on in that first talk? It

[00:05:12] Scott Jenson: was just how UX people are like trying to get in and they just keep bouncing off of it. And there's a whole series of things that kind of prevent UX people from getting involved. And, uh, if you do get in and someone asks you, so for something, 90% of the time they're like, Hey, we're so glad you're here.

[00:05:32] Scott Jenson: We would love for you to rework all of our icons. So, and like, and it's like, okay, you know, icons are fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but like, there's so much more to UX than just icons. Yeah. Uh, the comment I make my first talk is imagine you're as a programmer, imagine that the only thing people wanna talk to you about is unit tests.

[00:05:51] Scott Jenson: Unit tests are great. You need to do unit tests, but if you just, if you only talk about unit tests, it gets a little old. And so my point in the first talk was to say, UX is bigger than icons [00:06:00] and what does that mean and how do we do that? So that's what I, I just wanted people to understand why UX people were bouncing.

[00:06:06] Scott Jenson: Yeah.

[00:06:06] Gerry Scullion: And what, what kind of feedback were you getting after the first talk at Fastback about, um, trying to educate the, the Falls community or the open source community about what user experience or what design can be for them.

[00:06:20] Scott Jenson: I think if, if there's one thing I have learned, because as a UX person, you understand that your first job is to ask questions, right?

[00:06:30] Scott Jenson: To not come in with answers. To try not to be arrogant, which is hard for me sometimes, but the idea is to just ask questions. And so I, I've discovered that open source is huge and many different types, and so there is no one size fits all. And so just understanding that and realizing that. A lot of projects don't want to do UX and that's perfectly fine.

[00:06:56] Scott Jenson: Um, yeah, and some of them want more of it, and so to me it's just all [00:07:00] about having a conversation and to say, let's talk about it and see if we can find ways to improve it. So I got good, good traction on that first one, which is why I felt it was helpful to follow up with additional talks.

[00:07:14] Gerry Scullion: So for people out there listening, this episode is really focused about cult arms, really for the design community.

[00:07:21] Gerry Scullion: If they want to get involved in this, uh, in this new world of the open source world, we wanna figure out some pragmatic ways that you can actually get involved. Okay. Now, in the, in terms of engaging with these, with these businesses and these softwares, um, Well, what advice do you give to people who you meet who might want to offer their help?

[00:07:45] Gerry Scullion: Because if you've got organizations there and software, uh, businesses and they, they kind of think of user experience as just being iconography or whatever it is, um, they're not really gonna be able to put out job descriptions that are really gonna resonate with the more [00:08:00] mature, um, designers out there.

[00:08:01] Gerry Scullion: So how do you imagine, what's the best way for designers to approach that, um, to get in and also what's the, what's the type of typical engagement model there are they. Are they able to pay or is it, um, equity? What does that look like in your, in your experience?

[00:08:18] Scott Jenson: I, I'll go back to my last point, which is to say there's.

[00:08:21] Scott Jenson: Such a wide variety. Yeah, I mean, um, there are some, um, projects, for example, that will, uh, there's government programs, for example, that will pay for UX designers, uh, to do consulting for free. So I'm talking to a few on that right now. Um, there's a lot of open source, uh, that is fairly well funded, like say pen, pot or audacity.

[00:08:44] Scott Jenson: For example. Yeah. Um, and there's a, a lot of things that are entirely volunteer. So, cause it's such a wide landscape, I don't think there's a simple answer to that. Yeah. But to answer your original question, which is what do you want to do as you, how do you approach it? I would argue that there is [00:09:00] enough out there that you should go to the project and.

[00:09:04] Scott Jenson: Make sure the project says the word ux, somewhere on its contribution guidelines. You know that there's asking for UX because there are projects that are much more forward looking. So my, my last talk said, hmm. Open source has got such a black eye. So many people say Open software has terrible UX and there are some good examples of that.

[00:09:24] Scott Jenson: Yeah. But I do believe that there are some open source projects that have got great UX and I called out like Audacity or Meta Muse, uh, and the operating systems like Nome and Endless or Good to other Goods examples. So there's lots of projects out there that are trying and so. Look around and try to find a project that clearly asks for ux, and if you don't see it, then don't waste your time.

[00:09:47] Scott Jenson: Yeah, because I have tried to help out projects that didn't have mature UX, and it was really painful. So go to the good ones.

[00:09:55] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Okay. Fair. Fair enough. That's, that's solid advice. [00:10:00] Um, so we'll put a link to some of those ones that you've just mentioned there into the show notes as well. That last talk that you were speaking about in, in the sort of prelude to the conversation, you focus mostly around culture.

[00:10:12] Gerry Scullion: Tell us a little bit more around the topic and maybe expand a little bit more about what you mean by the culture. Well,

[00:10:22] Scott Jenson: Part of the issue I've been having is I have been slowly getting an audience in social media. You know, I've switched mostly from Twitter to Mastodon these days. Yeah. Since I've been getting a lot of really great conversations on Mastodon, and whenever I do make comments, I tend to get a lot of reply guys, you know, in the comments that kind of take me to task and people keep telling me to understand that those people are not necessarily the entire open source community.

[00:10:46] Scott Jenson: But I did get a lot of comments about. You know, centralized planning is bad and you know, you should all be op, it all, all should be bottom up. And so I was trying to just tackle that question, especially given the fact that I [00:11:00] interviewed about the, these eight of these companies to see how they were doing UX and they were all doing planning.

[00:11:05] Scott Jenson: And when I mentioned that I got an awful lot of very strong comments on Macedon about how evil planning was, and I'm like, guys, planning happens all the time, right? If you submit a a, a change to an open source project, a pr, um, yeah, it gets rejected. Okay? Being rejected, it can be rejected. That's a form of planning.

[00:11:23] Scott Jenson: It's just micro planning. And so my point is you guys are planning, you just don't like to call it that. So let's realize that effectively planning is a floating point. Not a boo if you don't do it or you don't do it, there's levels of planning. Yeah. So let's talk about lightweight, simple planning and realize that you, if you move the conversation upstream from the code check-in, you'll get better quality discussions.

[00:11:47] Scott Jenson: You will save an awful lot of effort and your're, all of a sudden your US designers are no longer arrogant. I heard that a lot. UX designers are arrogant and I would argue they're not necessarily arrogant, they just. Don't [00:12:00] understand the culture or the constraints. Mm. And so by having these conversations earlier, you get UX designers that get it, that understand what you're after, and they pro produce solutions that you want as a maintainer.

[00:12:11] Scott Jenson: So that's what I mean by culture is, yeah. Realizing that UX is a team sport.

[00:12:17] Gerry Scullion: It's interesting because it's, you mentioned that some of these projects are kind of side of table, they're volunteer based and a lot of the developers that are working. In those kind of projects are more than likely really talented developers.

[00:12:31] Gerry Scullion: They're coming from established organizations where they are encountering design and they're encountering designers. So for them to bring that sort of perspective of where design is at into their side project is kind of really, um, It's, it's, it's interesting to hear you say that, like, you know, where do you think it's coming from?

[00:12:53] Gerry Scullion: Is it coming from Agile? This whole kind of, um, mentality of, uh, being able to do things on, on the fly and [00:13:00] just working with each other and, and, well, what's, what's really causing this? What's, what's underpinning that, uh, dislike and disregard for the craft?

[00:13:08] Scott Jenson: Well, I, I wanna be really careful. I, I don't think that the entire open source community is like this at all.

[00:13:14] Scott Jenson: Yeah, I see. I, I, I think what I'm noticing is what we see, frankly in political discourse, that social media tends to magnify the stronger voices, the more vo, you know, the more angry voices. So I do think that maybe I'm just talking to. Grumpy people online and I really had to be careful, you know, as to how I interpret that.

[00:13:36] Scott Jenson: So I would push back a little bit in your talk to say, I actually think that there's a lot of really good open source projects that really want to do the right thing and are really working well. And that's what I mean by the fact that. We should just realize like, head towards the good projects. Yeah.

[00:13:50] Scott Jenson: Like I, I kind of don't wanna talk about the bad projects because they're gonna do their own thing and I don't want to argue with them. I'm gonna be like, Hey, the [00:14:00] projects that care about UX that do that are doing more planning. They're gonna do awesome. So let's just focus on them. Yeah.

[00:14:07] Gerry Scullion: I, I have a really, um, Adam Lawrence, who's is a good friend of mine from this service design doing, he has a great phrase where he calls the lumpers and the splitters, and there's always gonna be people out there who, who really, you know, Split atoms and really focus on, on the wrong things.

[00:14:26] Gerry Scullion: And then there's the lumps, the people who really are on your side who get it, they're part of the, the same sort of vision. So I like what you're saying there in terms of like, let's focus on the, the lumps. You don't focus on splitters in that analogy folks. So, um, Let, let's talk a little bit more around, uh, that word that you mentioned there a second ago begins at p and ends and planning.

[00:14:48] Gerry Scullion: Planning. I wanna understand, I wanna understand, um, where you feel the, the pressure point is there and where the pushback is [00:15:00] in planning. Okay. And, and how, how can we elaborate, uh, the conversation around that?

[00:15:06] Scott Jenson: I think what. There is some belief that it's better to just simply program it up, see what it's like and talk about it.

[00:15:17] Scott Jenson: And so there's this, uh, a belief that if you talk too much, you're gonna bike shed, you know, the whole bike shedding argument. Um, there's Wikipedia article and bike shedding if you wanna look that up. Okay. Um, and, and, and, and, and I want to. Agree with it in spirit, but the idea that you would stampede into a bunch of coding isn't always necessarily the right answer.

[00:15:39] Scott Jenson: Mm-hmm. And so there's like two. Wrong extremes to run off and program the whole thing and see what happens and to run off and bike shed and, and analyze it to death. And so UX designers are lumped into the analyzed category. Yeah. And, and developers are lumped into the golf and program and obviously the answer is somewhere in between.

[00:15:57] Scott Jenson: There's a well-known product management phrase [00:16:00] that, you know, months of programming can save you Days of critical thinking. And the idea there is that, you know, how do we talk about it? How do we have a conversation that saves us time, that avoids you having to program anything at all because we know it's the wrong direction.

[00:16:16] Scott Jenson: So a little bit of planning, a little bit of discussion, um, a little bit of model making can usually elevate the conversation so that you can have a, a better conversation.

[00:16:27] Gerry Scullion: It's usually the focus on prototyping. And the understanding that what they're actually creating is a prototype. Uh, that, that sort of discourse is really powerful when you have to develop it on board.

[00:16:39] Gerry Scullion: Because the, the reason why I, what I like to say to developers is like, would you like to be building something and knowing it's the wrong thing and knowing that you're gonna have to flush it down the toilet in six months? And they're like, no. And they're like, okay, well let's do the least amount of work that's gonna give us the most amount of reward back by prototyping and, and to, to lean into the service design.

[00:16:58] Gerry Scullion: Mindset is the first shit he [00:17:00] drafts. And we really lean into that whole kind of thing of saying, listen, look, we're, we're not putting much skin into the game here. We're just trying to get some experiments. We just wanna try and see what works and what doesn't work. And having those kind of conversations versus talking from designer speak, like designer reads, really, really goes a, an awful long way.

[00:17:22] Gerry Scullion: Um, so in terms of your talk, you, you spoke about. Culture and planning. Okay. And I know you, you mentioned the reply guys, which I've never heard before, but I really like, um, cuz you paint a nice picture of these, uh, people just constantly replying. Um, what was the, the questions and what was the feedback that came back from the talk?

[00:17:43] Gerry Scullion: Um, the re the recent talk at Foz back,

[00:17:46] Scott Jenson: well, because it was virtual. Um, and most people were actually in the conference themselves. Oh, of course. Un un unfortunately. Um, I got very little feedback, so, um, I, I am hoping that once it goes live on [00:18:00] YouTube, which should be in a day or two. Yeah, yeah. Um, I, we'll get a lot, lot more.

[00:18:03] Scott Jenson: By the way, I just wanna add to the last comment about prototyping. Um, one of the ways I think as a designer is that you Yeah. Try to speak the developer's language. And I think, again, everybody's heart is in the right place. Right. It's, it's really important to be generous in your conversations, um, and always assume best intentions.

[00:18:22] Scott Jenson: So when the, the, when a programmer wants to go, often code, I don't disagree with their desires. All I say is there's ways of prototyping that it's faster than compiling code. Yeah. Right. And so it like wire frames or whatever you want to come up with. So I'm saying this, you know what I wanna prototype too, but I can prototype a hell of a lot faster than you.

[00:18:43] Scott Jenson: Yeah. Um, and so let's try to do these really fast, sketchy things and just see where the conversation goes. And then we can talk about pro. So it's about everybody wanting the same thing, but just having slightly different ways of doing it.

[00:18:56] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, absolutely. And it's also the fidelity, [00:19:00] I mean, using fidelity as a, as a lever to really enable conversations.

[00:19:04] Gerry Scullion: If it's really high fidelity and it's in code, people will believe that it's finished and it's polished and it's ready to be shipped. Um, the quality of the feedback that you give back is, is much lower than Yeah. If it's in a paper form or whatever it is. So, so leaning into that is a really, it's a really solid, uh,

[00:19:23] Scott Jenson: way to approach.

[00:19:23] Scott Jenson: And one of the things I do, so I, I do mentoring on ADP List, which is a UX design mentoring program. And one of the comments I was I make often is that if your manager or your company is constantly demanding high fidelity mockups, You've got a problem. Yeah. Right. Because you're gonna be, I mean, you can do it, but you're gonna be wasting so much time.

[00:19:46] Gerry Scullion: Absolutely. We've gone around in circles, so, so Scott, like, you know what, in terms of the, the designers that are out there that are listening, I know several who have said to me like they listened to that and they wanted to get involved. Are there any job [00:20:00] boards out there where you may be able to point people to, or how can they find these, uh, These opportunities.

[00:20:09] Gerry Scullion: Uh, I know you mentioned about, you know, searching and then looking for the word UX and and so forth. But do you know of any resources that are out there that, um, that designers listening could actually just go to and see if there's a, a jobs board that might be a handy place to start?

[00:20:26] Scott Jenson: There is, um, a small, uh oh.

[00:20:30] Scott Jenson: Uh, Website called open source design.net, um, which is, um, definitely, uh, up, up a start. Um, their jobs board isn't very active, um, but they have a few small things to get started and, um, that's one place to start. Um, and, uh, it's a, it's a nice community there and I think that they're, they're trying hard to do that.

[00:20:53] Scott Jenson: But, um, I definitely think that there is, um, A definite need there, uh, to be able to [00:21:00] have more ways for people to do that. Uh, uh, so I, I think that that, um, there is no strong answer to give to you on that one, unfortunately.

[00:21:10] Gerry Scullion: That's okay. If you, if you hear of any other jobs and you want me to share them in the newsletter, we can always put them in.

[00:21:16] Gerry Scullion: This is Hate City newsletter cause it's, it's something that I believe in. I love the idea of open source software being much better. Okay. It's better for, for everyone. It challenges those conventions of capitalism, which I really, really like. And ultimately it, it kind of, Better as us as a practice as well, I believe.

[00:21:36] Gerry Scullion: Like, you know, like pen pot. When I looked at it afterwards, when we spoke to you the last time, I couldn't believe it. Yeah, I couldn't believe that some of this stuff is just available there. We don't get to see it in our feeds. Surprise, surprise in social media because, you know, they don't have these massive budgets of marketing spend to, to push when they're competing against the Adobes or any of these other [00:22:00] huge, uh, design platforms.

[00:22:02] Gerry Scullion: So, um, Scott, like, you know, in terms of what you're gonna be, you know, working on next. You just gave your return of the Jedi talk, your, your last talk Athos. Um, where do you see your efforts being, um, best placed in the next six to 12 months in this space? Because you're, you're design veteran as you like to say.

[00:22:24] Gerry Scullion: I don't like the word veteran, but you're mega experienced in design coming from Google and Apple and Symbian. Um, where, where do you think all that experience can be best

[00:22:33] Scott Jenson: leveraged? Well, that's a, yeah, that's my own personal journey and, um, and I'm trying to find a place where I can feel like I'm having an impact.

[00:22:41] Scott Jenson: And like I said, I, I, I don't have anything to announce just yet, but, okay. What I will say is I think that there are a few. Programs out there that are trying to do the right thing. I don't have them off the top of my head. Yeah. So I will give them to you afterwards and you can put them in the notes. Um, mm-hmm.

[00:22:57] Scott Jenson: I believe that there is, uh, [00:23:00] a, um, uh, a pro, there's a program in Europe I will link to, uh, that is doing some work. So I, I would just argue that, um, you have to find. What you want to do. So, so for example, um, if there is a utility that you like and you want to help out, that is awesome, right? But at the same time last year, I actually went with a company called Ink and Switch, and they do open source research, uh, and trying to advance ux.

[00:23:31] Scott Jenson: And so we did a project on coming up with kind of a decentralized version of Google Docs. And our paper was just published two weeks ago. Ah. Um, and so that was an example of me doing research with a small group of dedicated people. Um, I will admit that it was paid work, um, and, uh, but all the research is open.

[00:23:51] Scott Jenson: All the code is open, and the, the goal is to build out these technologies. So that was one project I was really in. [00:24:00] Glad I did, and I know I'm always looking for projects like that because there's. Supporting open source, which feels like regular production work, but done through the culture of open source.

[00:24:10] Scott Jenson: And then there's what I'm trying to find, which is more open source research. You know, we're kinda pushing the edge and that's a little harder to find and that's something that I'm still exploring.

[00:24:21] Gerry Scullion: It's interesting because being able to do that work, um, it's really interesting. Okay. But it comes somewhat.

[00:24:29] Gerry Scullion: And this is not speaking about you, but from a place of privilege, being able to do that stuff wor working on it

[00:24:35] Scott Jenson: freely. Oh, I completely agree.

[00:24:38] Gerry Scullion: So like w w with people out there, um, who are listening and they're, they want to do it. You know, many people, myself included, need to, um, work on stuff that brings money, unfortunately, into the situation.

[00:24:53] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Totally with, with these organizations. What's, what's the endgame apart from, and I know you're gonna be, [00:25:00] I know, I know the answer straight away when you're gonna say that with the endgame. Um, is it a case where the bigger organizations tend to look at these, uh, and either take the, the business and, and try and procure it or.

[00:25:18] Gerry Scullion: Is it a case of just trying to fly under the radar and look at a, at a, at a way to commercialize it further down

[00:25:25] Scott Jenson: the track? So I am, there's a whole, if you, if you search for the word open core, Open court, any, you'll find, I think there's a Wikipedia article about it and there's a couple of articles about it.

[00:25:37] Scott Jenson: And so pen pot, for example, is that way. Um, which is, there's a group of people that are funded that have money, that hire people. It's a company, but everything that they do is open source. Okay. And um, and then there's projects that are entirely volunteer driven. And I would argue that there is, and this needs to be [00:26:00] discussed more in the community, but that the funded projects that I interviewed tended to have much better user experience, practice and maturity than the volunteer ones.

[00:26:09] Scott Jenson: Right. Which is not a surprise, and it's also not a surprise that a lot of the reply guys hate the open funding model thinking, and it's not pure. Right. And I don't, that's a, that's a philosophical conversation. I mean, that's at least a two pint conversation and we need to be careful about getting into the details of that one.

[00:26:29] Scott Jenson: But what I will say is that there are companies that are. Or like, say for example, the blogging platform ghost, you know, another really good product, uh, completely open source, and they make money by doing a server on top. Uh, Nabu Casaa is a company that's doing an iot, OT service, which I think is fantastic.

[00:26:48] Scott Jenson: Um, and they have an completely open source model for controlling devices in your home. All the data stored locally, Goes to nowhere in the cloud, you're entirely in control, but they have a little service that you pay for five bucks a month [00:27:00] that funds the entire war operation. So this idea of having everything be done in an open source way, but having a side gig that pays for it, I think is a very powerful model.

[00:27:10] Scott Jenson: Yeah. And it doesn't produce. Billions of dollars, but it produces enough enough that you can have five to 10 people. And so part of what I think people need to do is when you are looking for jobs, just see if they're, they have an open source component to them, right? You don't have to be Linux, you know, which is kinda like the ultimate, you know, example of pure open source there.

[00:27:34] Scott Jenson: There's an awful lot of smaller operations that are doing variations of this, um, that might be worthwhile to people to

[00:27:39] Gerry Scullion: check out. Okay. No, that's good cuz that, that's, I know that was one of the burning questions from the last, um, episode that we did. Like, okay, I'd, I'd like to do it, but at the same time, you know, I got bills to pay and I was like, okay.

[00:27:53] Gerry Scullion: Well I'll ask, ask Scott now before we wrap up this conversation. Um, You, [00:28:00] you and Master On are one of the most pro prolific master honor. Okay. Um, in terms of being on there and talking and sharing content, who do you look to in this space to also follow? Absolutely. If anyone's on Master on Follow, Scott Jensen, fantastic.

[00:28:18] Gerry Scullion: But who else do you follow in this space to really stay up to date on it?

[00:28:23] Scott Jenson: Um, I would argue that there is just a ton of people out there. Um, what, what's what I like about Macedon is that you can follow hashtags and, uh, so I would just follow hash, open source and hash UX or UX design. And then you have a, you're exposed to the whole.

[00:28:44] Scott Jenson: Panel plea of people that are, are having the discussion. And what I like again about the, the mast on web client is that I actually have, uh, follow a hashtag that has open source and ux. So therefore I can get a subset of the posts and I can see what people are [00:29:00] talking about. And that's where a lot of the good discussion happens.

[00:29:03] Scott Jenson: Okay,

[00:29:04] Gerry Scullion: Scott, is there anything else you wanna cover off before we wrap up this episode? Are you, you happy enough that we've covered off the main topics?

[00:29:12] Scott Jenson: I think we've covered, you know, most of them. I just, I just want to end up by stressing that. As I said in the beginning, open source is huge and it has a wide variety of things, and I don't want anyone coming away thinking that I had a simplistic answer for any particular thing in open source, but to say, depending on what side of the elephant you're talking about, there's a different answer.

[00:29:33] Scott Jenson: So it's just, it's, it's a huge space.

[00:29:37] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, absolutely. Um, again, listen, look Scott, thanks for making time for the myself and the listeners on This Is Hate cd. As I said, the, the first episode that we did was really, really popular and uh, I know a lot of people always love to hear from you. So, We'll put a link to your own website into the show notes as well for people to stay up to date with [00:30:00] everything that Scott is doing, and um, also to the ma on as well.

[00:30:05] Gerry Scullion: So encourage people to get on ma on, get away from that sewer of Twitter that I like to call it at the moment, um, and get over onto mass on folks. That's where all the interesting and all the nice people seem to be living these days. All the court kids. And all the cool kids. Scott, thanks so much for your time.

[00:30:21] Gerry Scullion: I really appreciated your vulnerability and your openness about chatting about this topic. Thank you.

[00:30:26] Scott Jenson: Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[00:30:31] Gerry Scullion: And there you go, folks. I hope you enjoyed that episode, and if you enjoyed it and want to listen to more, why not visit? This is hate cd.com where you can learn more about what we are up to and also explore our courses while through there. Thanks again for listening.

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