Sīlavāpi (Ruth Cheesley)

There is a moment in the Sāmaññaphala Sutta where King Ajātasattu walks into Jīvaka’s mango grove and stops dead.

If you’d glanced over my shoulder this month, you might have caught me reconciling membership records, scheduling award deadline reminders, drafting a kickoff for a community AI initiative, or being sternly reminded to stand up by an app of my own making.

This site you’re reading has just been rebuilt from the ground up.

Over the last three months I’ve had the great privilege of taking a sabbatical and attending an 11‑week residential ordination retreat up in the mountains of Aragón in southern Spain.

Over the past week, something beautiful has been happening in the Mautic community.

There’s a particular kind of vulnerability that comes with asking for help.

I’ve been taking digital notes on my dharma practice for over fifteen years.

In this ongoing exploration of Buddhist ethics for leadership, we’ve journeyed past the diamond pillar of non-harm, the gold pillar of generosity, and the crystal pillar of contentment.

Last night I experienced a lovely case of personalisation and knowing your customers done right.

In this series exploring ancient ethics for modern leadership, we’ve looked at the ‘Diamond Pillar’ of non-harm and the ‘Gold Pillar’ of generosity.

In my last article, we explored the unsettling concept of digital colonialism, and how the marketing stacks of many businesses have become subject to the control and extraction of proprietary platforms.

In my last post, I explored the ‘Diamond Pillar’ of the First Precept – the foundational practice of cultivating non-harm and kindness in our leadership.

I’ve been thinking about how we build trust in open source - not just through transparent code, but through transparent practices.

In my previous articles on digital sovereignty and data sovereignty in the marketing technology landscape I established the foundations for understanding control over your digital assets and data.

In my previous article on digital sovereignty, I explored the overarching concept of how organisations can maintain control over their entire digital ecosystem.

The world is digital, there’s no getting away from that.

In my last post, I explored the Four Samgrahavastus – ancient Buddhist principles for unifying a community that I’ve found to be super relevant to leading open source projects like Mautic.

Open source communities face unique challenges.

This blog shares my journey with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and celebrates the achievement of completing a 50 mile run to raise funds for Breathworks.

A free conference, with 885 talks comprising of 365 hours of content over two days all of which are live streamed, recorded and made available within days, entirely organised by volunteers and with over 8,000 attendees - sounds impossible, right?

It’s Monday morning, you’ve just spent the entire weekend at FOSDEM in Belgium, and now the Eurostar departures lounge is filled with a disproportionate amount of people wearing hoodies and using laptops covered in stickers … it must be the SOOCon Eurostar

Ever felt like you’re at the foot of Everest when you decide to create a huge project or a long-term collaboration for an Open Source project?

Another quarter of significant change in the Mautic project, we’ve lots going on in many different areas.

Another busy quarter has flown past, here’s a round-up of what’s been happening in the community!

Like many Brits, English is the only language I speak fluently.

Mautic has grown quite a bit since we first implemented the Mautic Community Governance Model in 2019.

Saying thank you is a great way to recognise and appreciate the time people have spent making a contribution to an open source project, but how do you actually do it?

Another busy quarter has flown past, here’s a round-up of what’s been happening in the community!

Last weekend I had the great delight of welcoming a good friend to run a women’s day at the Ipswich Buddhist Centre.

Last weekend I headed over to Brussels on the Eurostar like hundreds of other open source enthusiasts, for the first in-person FOSDEM event since the global pandemic.

Yesterday I shared on my Instagram feed about having to switch all my training over to bike-based for cardio and lower body/core for strength training due to injury, so I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned along the way about preventing injuries fr…

Another quarter and another year has passed, and what a year it has been!

Often as an Open Source project grows there becomes a need to allocate funding resources to specific projects, teams or initiatives.

With any Open Source project, once you have an established logo and brand you want a way to get that out into the world on swag for your community to proudly share, in a way that does not burden you as a maintainer.

In my job I have the great privilege of travelling quite a bit, sometimes long distance.

Another action-packed quarter has passed, let’s dive into a roundup of what we’ve been up to!

Pretty soon after setting up Ubuntu Studio on my laptop (which I plan to use for my music recording and composition) it became obvious that all was not well in JACK land.

Having started to learn the flute three years ago and taking up piano during lockdown to help me with learning how to compose, I’ve increasingly been tinkering with open source digital audio tooling to record and tweak various musical endeavours.

It’s hard to believe that three years ago today I was nervously preparing for my drive to Reading to pick up my laptop and have my induction training on the first day of my new job as Mautic Community Manager.

I certainly wasn’t expecting to be playing with toy unicorns, ribbon, jewels and pine cones during our first in-person meeting of the Breathworks board since I joined back in 2021, but a few weeks ago that’s precisely where I found myself!

In Mautic, we make use of the open source tool DDEV heavily as a tool to help you get a local development environment spun up quickly.

This weekend after a culmination of nearly a year’s training, I completed my first ever marathon - and indeed ultramarathon - race at Endure24 Reading.

Where did that quarter go?!

During my training for Endure24 I started to pick up small but frustrating problems with my body - painful hip flexors and quads, a Mortons Neuroma, and struggling to progress further than about 8 miles.

As a fully remote worker at Acquia, I always jump at the chance to meet up with fellow Acquians, especially when we get to spend the day working together to create something to benefit others.

It’s that time again!

On GivingTuesday, the Mautic project—an open source marketing automation platform—shared its intention to allocate part of its budget each year to financially support the other open source projects on which it depends, as part of the Back Your Stack initi…

With the way things are going it is more likely than not that event organisers are going to have to deal with at least one attendee testing positive for covid during their event at some point.

Let’s kick off a roundup of all the awesome things that have happened this quarter!

The organisations that partner with you to contribute to your open source project deserve recognition.