Presented by

  • Jonathan Starr

    Jonathan Starr

    Program Manager at NumFOCUS's Open Source Science Initiative as well as a perpetual contributor to open source projects, companies, and organizations that enable open science.

Abstract

As we continue to map the digital knowledge and tooling ecosystems, we keep asking ourselves, "who will use what we're building." FOSS contributors, funders, supporters, organizations, and users all come immediately to mind, and we've built for their uses. The recent addition of over 10,000 papers as well as their relationships with FOSS software, researchers, and research institutions, however, has led us to begin exploring the relationships between knowledge discovery outputs, the tools used in the knowledge discovery process, and the UN's 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). We are asking ourselves the questions: What knowledge, discovered recently or decades ago, supports the advancement of the SDGs? What FOSS tools are used in knowledge discovery that supports the advancement of the SDGs? Who develops, maintains, and grows the communities behind the FOSS tools used in knowledge discovery that supports the advancement of the SDGs? What communities, organizations, institutions, and industries support the people who develop, maintain, and grow the communities behind the FOSS tools used in knowledge discovery that supports the advancement of the SDGs? What is the impact of a change (addition of funding, loss of funding, tooling innovations, etc.) in the network of actors and infrastructure behind SDG progress? What data points are most valuable for answering these questions? Ultimately, how can we track, analyze, and visualize the data, data that we know exists, in a way that can inform actionable, sustainable outcomes in the advancement of the SDGs? And in this room at FOSSY, we'll be asking them out loud and discussing them with whoever cares to join.