Sustain

Episode 43: Investing in Open Infrastructure with Kaitlin Thaney

Jul 3 '20

Panelists

Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer

Guest

Kaitlin Thaney
Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI)

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, we have Kaitlin Thaney, who is the Executive Director for Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI). Kaitlin will tell us all about IOI and what she’s doing there. She also explains the history of the Mozilla Science Lab and how her team came up with it. How has COVID impacted the organization, especially since her first day of the job was when New York City went into lockdown! Download this episode now to find out!

[00:01:17] Kaitlin tells us what Invest in Open Infrastructure is and what she’s doing there.

[00:04:17] Eric wants to know is this organization built to create essentially just the technology behind these infrastructures or is it primarily ways of sharing data? Kaitlin explains the end goal in simplistic terms.

[00:09:50] With Kaitlin’s background and previous organization’s that she’s worked for (Wikimedia, Mozilla, and Creative Commons), Justin wants to know how those former employers shaped her for what she’s doing now as an Executive Director.

[00:16:41] Kaitlin explains Mozilla Science Lab. She also has a call to action called “Get credit for your code!” She talks about this and how she and her team came up with it.

[00:21:35] Richard asks Kaitlin to tell us what Elsevier is and how they represent what’s happening in academia now. Also, since she started this initiative before COVID happened, she tells us how she’s adapted, how she’s changed, and what’s happening moving forward.

[00:28:21] Pia wants to know from Kaitlin what the broad impact COVID has had and what are her plans going forward, and how are folks thinking about this?

[00:33:12] Richard gives a s/o to the Schmidt Foundation for funding Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI).

[00:33:42] Kaitlin lets us know how you can get involved with her project if you are a software developer, work at a university, or a researcher. Also, how you can find her and where can you sign up.

Spotlight

[00:34:35] Richard’s spotlight is BibTeX.
[00:35:02] Justin’s spotlight is Undraw.co.
[00:35:28] Eric’s spotlight is Betterhelp.com and Therapistaid.com (both worth checking out)
[00:37:55] Pia’s spotlight is Excalidraw.
[00:38:43] Kaitlin’s spotlight is a portable Informed Consent Toolkit from Sage Bionetworks.

Quotes

[00:13:55] “You all know the deep roots that Open Source has, and software and the internet have in science. But beyond those initial stories, I think there’s an interesting kind of proof space that this sort of work allows for, because in terms of moving decisions forward, it’s not just talking about researchers. It also touches those in the education sector, universities, policy makers, for profit tech, and non-profit tech. All of these various elements that by their very nature, help bring and incubate different solutions that you can then apply to broader society.”