About

Jump to: About me, Bio, Really short bio, Contact

About me

I’ve spent most of my twenty-plus years in the tech industry leading software development departments and teams, providing technical management and leadership consulting for small and medium businesses, and helping companies understand, use, release, and contribute to free and open source software in a way that’s good for both their bottom line and for the community.

I am the author of Forge Your Future with Open Source, the first book to detail how to contribute to free and open source software projects. Think of it as the missing manual of open source contributions and community participation. The book is published by The Pragmatic Programmers and is available as eBook, paper book, and audiobook .

The book is #1 on the BookAuthority list of 18 Best New Software Development Books To Read In 2018.

Over the years I’ve founded and lead some useful but non-standard free/open source projects, including the FOSS Governance Collection (founder and maintainer), FLOSS Foundations website and directory (admin, moderator, and maintainer), and the Public Speaking Repo. I’m a frequent advisor for FOSS projects and communities, including for national organisations such as OpenUK.

Currently I live in lovely Portland, Oregon with my amazing cats, Osgood and Nigel. I am not interested in relocating.

Bio

VM (aka Vicky) spent most of her twenty-plus years in the tech industry leading software development departments and teams, providing corporate strategy, technical management, and leadership consulting for businesses, helping companies understand, use, release, and contribute to free and open source software in a way that’s good for both their bottom line and for the community.

She is the author of Forge Your Future with Open Source, the first and only book to detail how to contribute to free and open source software projects. The book is published by The Pragmatic Programmers and is available at https://fossforge.com.

Vicky has been a moderator and author for opensource.com, an author for Linux Journal, the Vice President of the Open Source Initiative, and is a frequent and popular speaker at free/open source conferences and events. She’s the proud winner of the Perl White Camel Award (2014), the O’Reilly Open Source Award (2016), and two Opensource.com Moderator’s Choice Awards (2018, 2019). She blogs about free/open source, business, and technical management at {anonymous => ‘hash’};.

Really short bio

VM (Vicky) Brasseur is an award-winning free/open source advocate and corporate strategist, international keynote speaker, and writer. She’s the author of Forge Your Future with Open Source, the only book detailing how to contribute to free/open source (FOSS) projects. Aside from articles in various publications, she also writes about FOSS, business, and their intersection on her blog.

Contact

There are innumerable ways to get in touch with me, but the most effective is to send email to contact@ at my domain.tld (vmbrasseur.com).

Zoom, Signal, Facetime, and other contact points available upon request.

I almost never see or respond to Mastodon DMs or Linkedin messages. I am no longer on Twitter. Seriously, just email me.

Stuff I use

I maintain a list of hardware and software that I use over on this page.