Building a culture of openness

Culture comes about via practice. Recursively said, practice is culture.

This talk is about the culture of peer review that we have developed at Hasgeek since 2010. Peer review is the system of where past speakers and practitioners from the industry provide feedback to the work and ideas of their peers. This vision - of creating a culture of peer review in technology - started with building the user interface of the "funnel" to enhance discovery of new ideas and practitioners. Over time, the user interface and the practice of "funnel' became a verb, just like Google and ChatGPT are today i.e., funnel became the way of discovery, review and filtration of ideas.

In this talk, I will consolidate the learnings of this journey of peer review to share insights about openness (in interactions and building communities) and the culture of volunteering.

1. Openness is desired, but it is highly disconcerting because it is unclear to most community organizers how to actually make openness happen. Through this talk, I will share the practical ways of building a culture of "opening up" conversations - and continuously developing a culture of exchange and feedback.

2. Volunteering, especially in India, is looked upon, as a student level activity. However, for communities to develop and grow, volunteers have to be discovered and nurtured from all walks of life. I build upon the recent learnings of inducting and working with reviewers as volunteers, and demonstrate how a strong volunteering pipeline can help in building healthy communities.