Session: Bootstrapping an Open-Source Program Office at Blue Cross NC

Are you at the early stages of expanding your Open-Source environment but can’t figure out which tentacle to grab first? Is the problem everybody’s problem and nobody’s problem all at once? Are you passing up opportunities – or worse yet, swallowing unknown gallons of risk?

This talk will tell the humble story of starting an Open-Source Program Office at Blue Cross NC. You might resonate with our starting point where someone somewhere needed to grab the ball. I’ll share how we laid the groundwork at a grassroots level, gained sponsorship, and eventually reoriented a half dozen functional areas so they could take advantage of Open-Source Software without incurring undue risk. You’ll hear the who, the how, and the what. We’ll celebrate some modest successes and lessons learned.

Session Speakers:

Paul McLaughlin

BS and MS in Ceramic Materials Engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Jumped to IT after three years of engineering. Twenty-five years applying IT at what was then the [Read More]