Laura Hilliger (She/Her)

1563 points

Laura Hilliger is a writer, educator and technologist. She’s a multimedia designer and developer, a technical liaison, a project manager, an open web advocate who is happiest in collaborative environments. She’s a co-founder of We Are Open Co-op, an Ambassador for Opensource.com, is working to help open up Greenpeace, and a Mozilla alum. Find her on Twitter and Mastodon as @epilepticrabbit

Open Source Champion Emerging Contributor Award 2016 People's Choice Award 2017 Author Maker Open education Web developer Wordpress Community Manager Creative Commons Geek Contributor Club Open Organization Ambassador

Authored Content

Is your open team fully awesome, or too cool for school?

Whether you're teaching a piece of software or a concept, facilitating a workshop to hack on a project or product, or even organizing a donor night for your local nonprofit…

How to gain merit, regardless of your job function

"It's important to recognize that informal leaders do emerge. And in less structured, less hierarchical organizations, they are a key part of the overall management system."…

bees in a hive with words intelligent swarming over them

11 steps to running an online community meeting

Open organizations explicitly invite participation from external communities, because these organizations know their products and programs are world class only if they include…

Greenpeace makes 7 shifts toward open

Spark organizational culture shift by articulating a strong ethos from the start.

Open organizations need calm, calculating catalysts

The last chapter of T he Open Organization talks about how a leader in an open community has to be a catalyst, "an agent that provokes or speeds significant change in action."…

8 tips for creating cultural change in your organization

When working to open up organizations or projects, I've learned that one of the most difficult things to do is to get people out of their comfort zones. We adults have spent a…

Authored Comments

LauraHilliger

3 Feb 2016

Announcing the 2016 Opensource.com Community Awards winners

I'm so, so honored to be on this list with all of you. Humbled. Thank you and congrats to all!

LauraHilliger

2 Feb 2016

Becoming a master of organizational jujutsu

I have been thinking about bending the hierarchy to my will lately as well. I think there are some differences, though, when the people driving towards open organizational change are doing so on a mandate. Especially when the mandate is from people who haven't worked inside an open and agile structure before.

The leadership contends that innovation, disruption and distributed power structures are necessary for the good of the company/org. However, without focused leadership development, they can only talk the talk.

Let's put it like this - there are times to utilize the hierarchies and times when ignoring them completely is the right call. It's an art to know which is which, but failing often and failing out loud is a good way to practice what we preach.