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Ben Balter

@ben.balter.com
928 followers 369 following 2.4K posts

Helping distributed teams work in the open & default to async | Author of Open & Async | Ex-GitHub Director, Presidential Innovation Fellow, attorney

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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 17/08/2026
I built a CI pipeline for my book. Not a metaphor: ~5,500 automated tests, a linter that yells when I hyphenate "open source," and a build that spits out five formats on every git push. For a book I wrote by myself. Write-up: ben.balter.com/2026/08/17/h...
A GitHub Actions run of build.yml fanning out into fourteen jobs — lint-and-test, detect-duplicates, build-css, build-epub, build-kindle, build-pdf, build-html, build-docx, and Build PDF/X-1a, then validate-epubcheck, validate-ace, validate-links, validate-html, and validate-playwright — every one passing green, total duration five minutes eight seconds.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 11/08/2026
If you've worked with me, you're likely aware of my infamous reorg calculator. It uses over-engineered statistics to predict the next reorg and over a decade+, it's been scarily accurate. The code is now open source so that you can predict when your next "Reorg Tuesday" github.com/benbalter/re....
Kaplan Meir survival curve showing manager survival probabilityResult of monte carlo simulation and forecast ensemble
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 21/07/2026
Most companies didn't go remote — they digitized the office. Same meetings, same interruptions, now on Zoom. Open and Async is out today: the open-source way of working — in the open, in writing, async by default — turned into a playbook for your team. open-and-async.com
"Async is the operating system; remote is the hardware."

Open & Async
A new book by Ben Balter
The collaborative software development playbook for remote and distributed teams.

Now available.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 09/04/2025
Archived more than 4,000 inactive Slack channels today with a quick GitHub Action Copilot and I whipped up. I hope to open source “Slack Stale Archiver” after it’s been running for a bit. Encouraging people to post their favorite animated GIF to keep the channel active has been the best part so far.
Abstract image of a broom sweeping chat message icons.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 29/10/2024
If you’re at GitHub Universe, come say hey! 👋
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 15/03/2022
As a #PiDay-adjacent project, I hooked up an RGB LED matrix to an old Raspberry Pi, got it to pull events from my calendar, & now it sits over my shoulder in meetings, subtly counting down the time remaining at set intervals to keep things on track. Code: github.com/benbalter/meeting-matrix
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 04/09/2021
I don’t normally Tweet #bikedc, but the new 15th street bike lane isn’t even finished yet and it’s already delightful.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 28/07/2021
At long last, the feature that absolutely no one has been asking for is finally here: ben.balter.com now natively supports dark mode based on your browser/OS preference, in case you're looking for some late-night reading.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 14/04/2021
As gyms closed a year ago, I got a bike to stay active & get outside safely. Nearly 1k miles later, I've stuck to my goal of biking at least 1x/week (including a few not-so-fun 30°F weeks) & discovered parts of DC I didn't know existed. Here's to moar #bikedc in the year to come.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 06/03/2020
How we work is as important as what we work on. Sharing some team values we captured a while back, that continue to ring true today:
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 30/01/2020
One of my favorite aspects of Product Management is creating experiences that feel intuitive and natural for users, but that actually absorb a lot of complexity on their behalf. It's far from perfect, but here's an example of how blocking a user affects comments on GitHub:
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 09/01/2020
Friendly reminder that open source is run by volunteer humans who donate their time, passion, and expertise. If there's a project you ❤️, consider letting the maintainer know. Posts like these can make contributing to the open source community difficult some days...
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 11/12/2019
Contributors can now report disruptive comments to open source maintainers for review. Excited for how this feature could help improve communities on GitHub, but even more excited to finally close out a 2 year old issue and a 3.5 year moderation initiative t.co/RHs43G62KB
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 18/07/2019
If you're at #OSCON and are interested in learning about growing a safe, productive, and welcoming community around your open source project, please come check out my talk at 2:35 in E145/146: conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 23/05/2019
If you’d like early access to the new triage or maintainer roles on @GitHub (github.blog/changelog/2019-05-23-tr…) please let me know! (or find me at the Ask Product booth at #GitHubSatellite). Excited to hear what you think.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 06/05/2019
Had a free domain, so spent some time giving my Word (or Google Doc) to Markdown converter some love (including a shiny new privacy policy for transparency). Please enjoy the recently re-homed word2md.com for all your word-to-markdown converting needs. 🎉
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 15/03/2019
Corporate contributions to the third-party open source projects can still be a source of friction and ambiguity. We're beta testing a new platform-agnostic commit pattern we hope can help you contribute on behalf of your employer. We'd love your thoughts. t.co/p7LeDEKXO6
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 24/10/2018
Just merged this pull request into github.com. Feels good to remove legacy code in favor of open source.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 03/10/2018
Wrote up a quick tutorial for installing @AtomEditor on @googlechrome OS. blog.atom.io/2018/10/02/running-ato…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 12/09/2018
Got @AtomEditor (and Git) running on my Chromebook thanks to native Linux app support landing in beta (and it's snappy enough to be my day-to-day text editor). Could 2018 finally be the year of Linux on the desktop?
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 07/08/2018
Organizations can now verify the website that appears on their @GitHub profile. While not much now, really excited for what this feature unlocks. Check out @airbnbeng or @babeljs’s profile to see it in action, or read the changelog to learn more. t.co/U12yByK7AW
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 11/10/2017
At @githubuniverse? Come find me in the "Ask GitHub" area. Would love to answer product questions and hear how we can make your tools better
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 28/08/2017
Content as code: GitHub Pages now has tag to push readers to improve the page, used by default theme if open source. ben.balter.com/2015/09/13/github-pa…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 15/07/2017
Slides from my #WCDC talk "Ten-ish tips for growing an open source community around your WordPress plugin or theme" speakerdeck.com/benbalter/growing-o…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 20/04/2017
Pro-tip: Want to know who has you in their sidebar? Add a @SlackHQ-style notification custom emoji to the team and set it as your status.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 13/04/2017
Confused why evite/event websites don't offer "add to calendar" buttons once you RSVP/register (or send via gratuitous confirmation email).
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 31/03/2017
If you use @zoom_us for meetings at work, but hate constantly opening Google Calendar, you may find this CLI helpful github.com/benbalter/zoom-launcher
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 26/03/2017
Seems even the @washingtonpost print edition isn't immune from encoding challenges...
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 24/03/2017
Maintainers will now see "first-time contributor" badges if it's the author's first pull request to the project. Be sure to welcome them!
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 16/03/2017
Curious what you can or can't do with an open source project? We'll now explain the repo's license in non-legalease. github.com/blog/2335-open-source-li…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 21/09/2016
GitHub now shows what open source license, if any, a project is licensed under (and the code itself is open source). github.com/blog/2252-license-now-di…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 23/08/2016
Initial release of Jekyll Admin is out. Congrats to @mertkahyaoglu48 on a solid @gsoc ship. github.com/jekyll/jekyll-admin/rele…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 18/08/2016
Interested in trying a prerelease version of Jekyll Admin? It's easy & we'd <3 your thoughts github.com/jekyll/jekyll-admin/issu…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 16/08/2016
Updated my repo of DC Maps w/ a fresh export. Some interesting data. Here's every ATM in DC. github.com/benbalter/dc-maps
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 09/08/2016
OH: A reorg is the organizational equivalent of "have you tried turning it off and on again?"
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 03/08/2016
Thanks to @mlinksva, @GitHub's open source license API now contains case-sensitive SPDX IDs: developer.github.com/v3/licenses
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 28/07/2016
My greatest contribution to open source to date (h/t @adampetrie for doing the actual leg work).
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 10/05/2016
Want to see the difference between open source licenses? @mlinksva created this great table choosealicense.com/appendix
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 28/04/2016
The government GitHub ecosystem via @evonfriedland emanuelfeld.github.io/blog/2016/04/…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 11/03/2016
It's now easier to contribute to @jekyllrb w/ friendlier contributing docs & affinity teams jekyllrb.com/news/2016/03/10/making…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 05/02/2016
Technology is the easy part. My talk on open source as a vehicle for organization change speakerdeck.com/benbalter/the-techn…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 15/11/2015
Pro-tip: When the pilot begins his PA announcement with "well folks...", you're gonna have a bad time.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 07/11/2015
Slides from "政府の中でオープンソースの文化を育てる方法" (How to foster open source culture in gov) #cfjsummit speakerdeck.com/benbalter/how-to-fo…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 03/11/2015
Discovered while doing some cleaning this weekend. Even still remember what "ROT" is /cc @Digital_Gov, @sheiladcusa
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 02/11/2015
Looking to share Markdown files from private GitHub repos with just a url? Meet Over Sharer github.com/benbalter/over-sharer
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 30/09/2015
Honored to accept a @codeforamerica tech award on behalf of GitHub (but really the gov users using it to rethink gov)
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 10/07/2015
Some open source <3 on nsa.gov today as @NSAGov officially joins GitHub www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/…
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 05/05/2015
First Presidential Innovation Fellows Alumni meeting. Lots of smart folks. Lots of smiling faces. Good stuff to come
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 21/04/2015
Emailed @lockitron 2 weeks ago to cancel and still haven't heard back. The red lock icon really instills confidence.
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Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 20/04/2015
I found a typo in the official version of the 2015 budget CR. Do I win a prize or something? www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congres…
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