Open source has given us some of the most powerful tools in the world, but it can give us more. Too often, we build alone or in silos, driven almost entirely by engineering, with our thinking around design and product rarely integrated. That limits not just usability, but the scale of impact we can make.
Michael Henning, in this talk, examines why true cross-disciplinary collaboration is harder in OSS than in commercial work, and how we can change that. Michael shares small but transformative shifts in process and mindset that unlock massive creative potential, welcome more diverse contributors, and deliver tools that don’t just match but surpass the best commercial offerings.
The challenge: to raise the bar and redefine how open source is built, setting a new standard for what is possible, together.
About Michael
Michael Henning has been working at the intersection of design and engineering for more than 25 years. Along the way, he has helped shape multiple products from idea to exit, mostly in the messy, creative world of early-stage startups and developer tooling. His recent goal is to pay back all his learnings to the FOSS community by reshaping how we build open source. Through experiments like contribute.design, with small, practical steps to make design a natural part of FOSS, he aims to raise the bar for the tools we create.
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