Talks
Slides and, when available, recordings of talks I've given.
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The impact of AI on open source software development
05 June 2026
Five experienced open source practitioners cut through the hype to ask what AI is actually doing to the communities, projects, and humans that keep open source alive. -
What happened to RubyGems and what can we learn?
31 January 2026
Lessons for non-Ruby projects on non-profits, governance, money and access in open source, drawn from the RubyGems dispute. -
Package Management Learnings from Homebrew
31 January 2026
Homebrew 5.0.0 released in 2025. Walk through the major changes in 5.0.0, improving expectations based on other package managers and what they can learn from Homebrew's approach. -
Ruby on (Guard)Rails
24 October 2024
The guardrails I love in the Ruby ecosystem and why you should use and love them too. -
Using "modern" Ruby to build a better, faster Homebrew
17 May 2024
Learn why Homebrew now ships its own Ruby, modern Ruby tooling we rely on, how to make Homebrew faster and how we are improving Homebrew. -
Homebrew's Evolution
04 February 2024
I look back at the last year of Homebrew and forward to what we expect to build in the next year. -
Open Source: boundaries, burnout, business
22 November 2023
Discussion of the current state of maintainer boundaries, avoiding burnout and economic/business aspects of open source software. -
Homebrew's Great Migration: moving to GitHub Packages with zero downtime
27 June 2023
Deciding between available options, compromises between Homebrew and GitHub, the hard deadline and using “soft power” to affect change. -
Building Effective Relationships
16 March 2023
In this talk I discuss the types of relationships to build as a staff+ engineer, deciding whether to start/stop/continue them and how to do this whether colocated or async and distributed. -
Homebrew: What's Happened and What's Next?
05 February 2023
What we've done since last FOSDEM, some of the features in development and how to test them before they are released. -
The Best Project
29 September 2022
The best project I ever worked on and what we can learn about software from the lessons I learnt. -
Ignorance, Incompetence and Insignificance: The Ingredients To Build Great Software
27 July 2022
Some heuristics to build better software, quicker by learning from the past, the present and the future in your software projects. -
Staff+: Career Progression Without Management
26 March 2022
The traditional route for progression in the software industry is from a senior-level individual contributor (IC), e.g. a senior engineer, into a management role. -
Homebrew: A Packagers Deep Dive
09 November 2021
A deep-dive on the interesting (both good and bad) aspects of the Homebrew package manager that will be interesting to other package manager maintainers or enthusiasts. -
Open Source Economics (is not what you think)
27 October 2021
What open source economics aren't, are and the solutions for open source economic problems. -
Robot Pedantry, Human Empathy
09 June 2021
What I’ve figured out to manage large numbers of open-source contributions pleasantly and efficiently. -
Homebrew: macOS Big Sur and ARM
06 February 2021
Changes needed to work on Big Sur and to support a new CPU architecture. -
Homebrew: Features and Funding
02 February 2020
How Homebrew introduces new features and encourages donations. -
Being Productive at GitHub
19 September 2019
Tips and tricks for being (more) productive as an engineer working at GitHub. -
Building Homebrew in Ruby
19 April 2019
Learn about things Homebrew loves, hates and struggles with because it is built in Ruby. -
Homebrew 2.0.0
03 February 2019
The major features and community changes in Homebrew 2.0.0. -
How To (Not) Fail At Using Open Source Software In Your Organisation
02 August 2018
Learn how to use open source software in your organisation without succumbing to the most common of pitfalls. -
Working with others using Git and GitHub
17 January 2018
The basics of using Git and GitHub to collaborate on a multi-person software project. -
Effective Open Source Interactions
03 August 2017
Everyone is using open source software now but most people have not figured out how to interact effectively with the open source software community. -
Helping Yourself with Open Source Software
08 June 2017
Learn what open source software is, why you should contribute and what effectively run open source projects look like. -
The Power of the Open Source Community
22 May 2017
What makes an open source project successful, and what workflow tools GitHub has been building to help communities become happier places. -
Why People Don't Contribute To Your Open Source Project
10 May 2017
How users generally progress from filing bad issues to filing good issues to making simple contributions to making complex contributions to maintaining an open source project. -
Homebrew - Getting to 1.0.0
04 February 2017
Learn about what went into Homebrew 1.0.0, how we got Homebrew ready to ship such a major milestone and why we decided to declare a 1.0.0 release after all these years. -
Remote Working: What, Why And How?
22 September 2016
Learn what remote working is, why employers and individuals should do it and how to do it effectively. -
How GitHub Builds Software
31 July 2016
See every step how we ship changes to github.com starting from a new, empty MacBook. -
The Open Source Contributor Funnel
28 June 2016
Learn how to encourage and increase participation in your open-source project. -
How To Become A Ruby Developer
23 June 2016
A webinar where I talk about Ruby, Rails and demonstrate submitting a pull request to Homebrew. -
Managing A Healthy GitHub Community
18 March 2016
Learn how to grow your open-source project’s community and ensure that it remains a healthy, happy and fun place. -
Homebrew - Things We Do Differently
30 January 2016
Some of the things that Homebrew does well, badly and the special challenges that OS X packagers need to deal with. -
GitHub For New Young People
27 June 2015
An introduction to GitHub for young people. -
Homebrew Kickstarter
17 May 2015
The video for the Homebrew Kickstarter project. -
Homebrew - Manage And Merge Many Pull Requests
12 March 2015
My workflow as a Homebrew maintainer. -
Homebrew - The Good, Bad And Ugly Of OS X Packaging
31 January 2015
Some of the things that Homebrew does well, badly and the special challenges that OS X packagers need to deal with. -
Building GitHub Enterprise (And Other Things) With GitHub
18 November 2014
The GitHub Enterprise development workflow. -
How I Got Into Programming
23 October 2014
A brief overview of how I got involved with programming and ended up working as a software engineer. -
Advanced Git (And GitHub)
30 September 2014
A walkthrough of some useful but rarely known features in Git and GitHub. -
GitHub For Beginners
28 March 2014
How to setup and use GitHub and the GitHub desktop applications. -
Career Hacks For Software Engineers
26 March 2014
How people in the technology industry can get paid better and get their dream job by learning from my career mistakes. -
Software Architecture, Process And Management (In the Real World)
20 March 2014
How software architecture, process and management plays out in the real world with some best practices and things to avoid. -
Homebrew
10 June 2013
How to install, use, file bugs, create and contribute packages to Homebrew with some history of the project along the way. -
HTML5
05 June 2012
An outline for non-web developers of the new technologies in HTML5. -
How to make OS X users not hate you
05 June 2012
How to avoid the common usability failings of cross-platform OS X applications. -
Git For Beginners
29 February 2012
An overview of the essentials required to use Git. -
CPack
29 February 2012
Cross-platform packaging with CPack. -
Advanced Git
29 February 2012
A walkthrough of some lesser-known advanced features in Git.