CHAOSSMonthly - October 2025

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CHAOSSMonthly Newsletter - October 2025

👇 In this Issue

• CHAOSScon EU CFP Last Chance!
• Daylight Saving Time FAQ
• New Working Group: AI Alignment
• New Practitioner Guide - Assessing Viability
• 4 New CHAOSScasts
• CHAOTIC of the Month: Winifred Young
• Sunsetting 2 Working Groups

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📅 It's Not Too Late to Submit Your Talk to CHAOSScon EU!

You still have a little time before the CFP for CHAOSScon EU closes. It will be closing on November 2 at the end of day anywhere on earth, so submit your talk as soon as possible!

CHAOSScon Info:

• Date: January 29, 2026
• Venue: Almost confirmed, but it will be in Brussels (in conjunction with FOSDEM)

🕐 Daylight Saving Time FAQ

In the US (which is where many CHAOSS meetings are "based") Daylight Saving Time happens on November 2. (In many places it's happened already, and in some, it won't happen at all). Here are some FAQs to help alleviate confusion.

👉 How do I know if my meeting will be changing?
Most CHAOSS Meetings are tied to US Central/Chicago times, and will be observing the end of DST on Sunday, November 2.
Exceptions to this are CHAOSS Africa meetings and the CHAOSS Asia Community Meeting. They are tied to regional time zones and do not change with Daylight Savings.
You can also double check any meeting by clicking on the calendar entry and noting the meeting details as in the attached screenshot.

👉 How do I know which countries observe Daylight Savings and when?
This is a pretty comprehensive list.

👉 How do I know if my meeting will now coincide with another CHAOSS Meeting?
Because some meetings change and others don’t, there is a chance for conflicts to happen. Currently there are no unexpected conflicts happening on the calendar, so you can continue to use the Zoom link appropriate for your meeting. (In most cases that is https://zoom.us/my/chaoss).

🤖 New Working Group: AI Alignment

Aligning AI models and data with human-centered results, addressing ethical considerations in terms of open source community health, and the role of CHAOSS metrics in providing insight into AI usage and development are just a few of the related topics being discussed in this new CHAOSS working Group.

Led by Emma Irwin and Sean Goggins, this group is just forming. If you'd like to help impact the future of. this group, or be a part of these conversations, we encourage you to join this group in the following ways:

• Slack Channel
• Repo
• Meeting Minutes
• Calendar link to subscribe

👩‍🏫 New Practitioner Guides Released

@geekygirldawn, @GaryPWhite and the Data Science Team have released a new Practitioner Guide: Assessing Viability. This Guide aims to help you and other teams within your organization understand the viability and risks associated with the open source software you are using.

Thanks to all who contributed to this Guide, and the associated Metrics and Metrics Models!

🎙️ Four New CHAOSScasts Released

Since our last CHAOSSMonthly, there have been 4 CHAOSScasts released:

👉 Episode 119: Guest Episode - Sustain asks how Ecosyste.ms maps open source dependencies. In this special guest episode, host Richard Littauer from Sustain is joined by guests Ben Nickolls and Andrew Nesbitt to discuss the ecosyste.ms project.
👉 Episode 120: Practitioner Guides: #5 Demonstrating Organizational Value. Hosts Dawn Foster and Harmony Elendu join guest Bob Killen to discuss strategies for communicating the business value of open source efforts to leadership, framing contributions in a way that resonates with organizational priorities, and prioritizing investments in critical projects.
👉 Episode 121: Package Metadata Working Group with Andrew Nesbitt and Damián Vicino. In this episode, host Alice Sowerby chats with Andrew Nesbitt and Damián Vicino about CHAOSS's new Package Metadata Working Group.
👉 Episode 122: Meet the 2025 CHAOTICS of the month!. Georg Link and Alice introduce a special feature showcasing the “CHAOTICS of the Month” who are members recognized for their exceptional contributions to the CHAOSS community. In this episode, they chat with David Lippert, Victoria Ottah, and Cali Dolfi.

Catch up with the latest episodes on your favorite streaming platform or via our website: https://podcast.chaoss.community/

🥳 CHAOTIC of the Month: Winifred Young

Please join us in celebrating our CHAOTIC of the Month: @Winifred Young 🎉

A little about Winifred:
Hello everyone! I am a software developer in the financial technology space based in Lagos, Nigeria.
I enjoy talking about women’s football/soccer, playing my keyboard, colouring, talking about my experience(s) with having mobility challenges being an ambulatory walking stick user, and sharing my thoughts on how physical events can be more accessible. I am also neurodivergent with Autism and ADHD, so I am navigating life with that.

What Winifred works on at CHAOSS:
At CHAOSS, I am an event badger, a member of the accessibility and disability-inclusion working group aiding efforts to make CHAOSS and open source at large more inclusive and accessible. I also contribute to the education working group.

Winifred's advice to newcomers:
Newcomers should not be afraid to ask questions but should calm down to read available documentation. They should also try to join meetings that interest them and feel free to express their opinions.

You can connect with and learn more about Winifred on:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/winifred-young-00244a24b/
• X (fka Twitter): https://x.com/ywes_

🌆 Sunsetting 2 Working Groups

It was decided this month that two of our inactive working groups would be archived. These two groups are:

• Communications Working Group
• Project Managers Working Group

Should there be interest and the capacity to bring these back to life, we can certainly do so in the future. But for now, these groups have been archived.

👯 Community Reminders

Add your Community Contributions via an Issue on GitHub

We now have an easier way to add your community contribution to our community-contributions.md document. Simply open an issue using the CHAOSS Contribution Issue Template, and when you submit your issue, your contribution will be added.

Looking for Podcast Questions and Ideas for CHAOSScast

Alice Sowerby, Harmony Elendu, and the CHAOSScast team would love to hear your questions, comments, and ideas for new episodes of CHAOSScast! Feel free to send an email to [email protected] with your thoughts.

CHAOTIC of the Month Nomination Form

Have you noticed a fellow CHAOTIC doing something amazing for CHAOSS? Has there been someone who is going above and beyond? If you'd like to nominate them for CHAOTIC of the Month, now you can! With our CHAOTIC of the Month feature, we like to celebrate their contributions to CHAOSS and enable our whole community to get to know them a little better. It's a great way to show appreciation for our fellow CHAOTICs so don't hesitate to nominate someone through our CHAOTIC of the Month Nomination Form.

Upcoming Meetings

Please refer to the CHAOSS Community Calendar for details on all upcoming meetings. Meetings should show in your local timezone, but you can convert to another time zone here. You can also subscribe to individual meetings on the CHAOSS Community Calendar by right-clicking the .ics file and adding to your calendar as a URL.