8 Conclusion
looking back and next steps
- We created this guide because nothing like it existed
- It is incomplete, and we’d like your help
- Share what you’ve learned by giving talks like (Boca 2024) or on social media
- Preferably Mastodon rather than X or Bluesky, because the latter are single points of institutional failure
- Share what hasn’t worked as well so that other people don’t have to find those landmines the hard way
- And sharing your experiences during difficult times protects your mental health (Pennebaker and Smyth 2016; Cullen et al. 2022)
- Take time to grieve
- The end of years of work will hurt, even if it is voluntary
- Your colleagues may be suffering as well
- And those who haven’t been hit (yet) may have survivors’ guilt
- Remember: people often become altruistic, resourceful, and brave in the wake of disaster (Solnit 2010; Yang 2024)
8.1 Organize
There’s no point surviving today’s flood if you drown in tomorrow’s.
— variously attributed
- The best way for researchers to take preventive action is to become active in professional associations and push them to take meaningful action
- Unfortunately, there aren’t meaningful professional associations in the software industry to join and push
- And the idea of doing this makes many people uncomfortable
- Membership in voluntary organizations has declined over several decades (Putnam 2020)
- Which means we’re out of practice
- Unfortunately, the bad guys aren’t
- Who is more likely to run for a school board seat: someone with a PhD in epidemiology or an anti-vax conspiracy theorist?
- Right now we have to focus on preserving what we have
- But playing defense is just a way to lose more slowly
8.2 Further Reading
- (Foster et al., n.d.) is one of the few end-to-end guides out there
- Repository Resilience
- Beyond the Bus Factor
8.3 Exercises
8.3.1 One Thing to Do This Week
Identify one concrete action you will take in the next five working days to make your project easier to close when the time comes. Write it down and share it with a partner, who will follow up with you next week.
8.3.2 Make a Pitch
- Draft a 90-second verbal pitch to convince one skeptical colleague to join a professional organization or sign onto a collective statement. The pitch must name a specific organization or action, not just the general idea of getting involved.
- Deliver the pitch to a partner playing a genuinely skeptical colleague: someone who is too busy, thinks individual action is futile, or worries about political exposure in their institution.
What objections came up? Which were hardest to answer? What would you need to know or believe differently to answer them convincingly?