Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 17/08/2026I 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... 141
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 11/08/2026If 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.... 130
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 21/07/2026Most 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 152
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 09/04/2025Archived 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. 030
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 15/03/2022As 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 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 04/09/2021I don’t normally Tweet #bikedc, but the new 15th street bike lane isn’t even finished yet and it’s already delightful. 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 28/07/2021At 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. 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 14/04/2021As 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. 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 06/03/2020How 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: 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 30/01/2020One 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: 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 09/01/2020Friendly 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... 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 11/12/2019Contributors 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 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 18/07/2019If 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… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 23/05/2019If 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. 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 06/05/2019Had 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. 🎉 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 15/03/2019Corporate 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 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 24/10/2018Just merged this pull request into github.com. Feels good to remove legacy code in favor of open source. 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 03/10/2018Wrote up a quick tutorial for installing @AtomEditor on @googlechrome OS. blog.atom.io/2018/10/02/running-ato… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 12/09/2018Got @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? 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 07/08/2018Organizations 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 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 11/10/2017At @githubuniverse? Come find me in the "Ask GitHub" area. Would love to answer product questions and hear how we can make your tools better 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 28/08/2017Content 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… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 15/07/2017Slides from my #WCDC talk "Ten-ish tips for growing an open source community around your WordPress plugin or theme" speakerdeck.com/benbalter/growing-o… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 20/04/2017Pro-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. 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 13/04/2017Confused why evite/event websites don't offer "add to calendar" buttons once you RSVP/register (or send via gratuitous confirmation email). 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 31/03/2017If 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 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 26/03/2017Seems even the @washingtonpost print edition isn't immune from encoding challenges... 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 24/03/2017Maintainers will now see "first-time contributor" badges if it's the author's first pull request to the project. Be sure to welcome them! 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 16/03/2017Curious 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… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 21/09/2016GitHub 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… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 23/08/2016Initial release of Jekyll Admin is out. Congrats to @mertkahyaoglu48 on a solid @gsoc ship. github.com/jekyll/jekyll-admin/rele… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 18/08/2016Interested in trying a prerelease version of Jekyll Admin? It's easy & we'd <3 your thoughts github.com/jekyll/jekyll-admin/issu… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 16/08/2016Updated my repo of DC Maps w/ a fresh export. Some interesting data. Here's every ATM in DC. github.com/benbalter/dc-maps 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 09/08/2016OH: A reorg is the organizational equivalent of "have you tried turning it off and on again?" 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 03/08/2016Thanks to @mlinksva, @GitHub's open source license API now contains case-sensitive SPDX IDs: developer.github.com/v3/licenses 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 28/07/2016My greatest contribution to open source to date (h/t @adampetrie for doing the actual leg work). 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 10/05/2016Want to see the difference between open source licenses? @mlinksva created this great table choosealicense.com/appendix 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 28/04/2016The government GitHub ecosystem via @evonfriedland emanuelfeld.github.io/blog/2016/04/… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 11/03/2016It's now easier to contribute to @jekyllrb w/ friendlier contributing docs & affinity teams jekyllrb.com/news/2016/03/10/making… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 05/02/2016Technology is the easy part. My talk on open source as a vehicle for organization change speakerdeck.com/benbalter/the-techn… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 15/11/2015Pro-tip: When the pilot begins his PA announcement with "well folks...", you're gonna have a bad time. 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 07/11/2015Slides 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… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 03/11/2015Discovered while doing some cleaning this weekend. Even still remember what "ROT" is /cc @Digital_Gov, @sheiladcusa 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 02/11/2015Looking to share Markdown files from private GitHub repos with just a url? Meet Over Sharer github.com/benbalter/over-sharer 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 30/09/2015Honored to accept a @codeforamerica tech award on behalf of GitHub (but really the gov users using it to rethink gov) 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 10/07/2015Some open source <3 on nsa.gov today as @NSAGov officially joins GitHub www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/… 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 05/05/2015First Presidential Innovation Fellows Alumni meeting. Lots of smart folks. Lots of smiling faces. Good stuff to come 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 21/04/2015Emailed @lockitron 2 weeks ago to cancel and still haven't heard back. The red lock icon really instills confidence. 000
Ben Balter @ben.balter.com · 20/04/2015I 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… 000