We're Back and We Have Plans

This is a short episode to share where we've been the last year and what's coming up for us this year. We're getting ready to launch a new learning community focused on self development and leadership for building communities. Catch up with us.

You can get in touch with us to ask questions, leave comments, or provide suggestions on our website, https://osiolabs.com/.

Osio Labs is tinkering with Open Source Inside and Out. We’re on a mission to empower anyone to build websites using open source tools, and to create an open and sustainable business.

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Hey everybody, this is AddisonBerry and you're listening to
the Osio Labs podcast, the showthat explores the question,"how
can we create sustainablebusinesses that care for people
and make the world a betterplace?" Today, it's just going
to be me talking in your ear.
It's been a little over a yearsince our last episode was

(00:26):
published back in January of2024.
The time since then has been abit of a rough ride for us at
Osio Labs., and, and now, likefor many people, there's a lot
of uncertainty going forward.
So I'm gonna restart things withthe podcast a bit by giving a

(00:47):
rundown of what's been going onwith us and then sort of what's
coming up.
So just to go back a bit, backin 2023, a year and a half ago,
we started to see a prettyserious, steady decline in our
revenue.
And by the end of 2023 cominginto 2024, so about a year ago,

(01:11):
we realized that the financialsituation had just changed.
The market had shifted and wewere not going to be making
enough revenue to support ourexpenses.
And so that ended up leading usto doing layoffs in February of
2024.
And we went from a team of fivedown to a team of three, which

(01:35):
was, obviously very hard on anumber of levels.
And we really needed to kind ofgather the wagons and figure out
what we were doing, in terms oflike, what is the direction of
the company?
How are we going to manage withonly three people trying to do

(01:55):
the work of five people?
We ended up having to say"no" toa lot of projects and ideas and
interesting things because wesimply needed to reprioritize
the work that we were doing andfigure what we were going to do.
Part of that, you know, is thepodcast, getting suspended, I

(02:15):
guess, as it were, and a numberof other things that we were
working on, As we sort ofsettled into those new
priorities and found our footingand kind of healed in some ways,
I guess, we also started lookingat new revenue that we would be
able to bring in to helpstabilize the company going

(02:36):
forward.
One of the things that we did,which many people in the Drupal
community know, is that we areworking on, we have a contract
for, creating documentation forthe new Drupal CMS project that
is out.
So that's been great to just,you know, really dive back into
the community that we depend onand that we, that we love and

(02:56):
that really gives us a lot ofhope.
Another thing that we did,though, was moving away from the
Drupal world specifically, andwe ended up running a beta
course on leadership trainingfor open source, which is a, it
was a live cohort so we had agroup of people who joined.

(03:19):
It was a great group.
There was a lot of really gooddiscussions, and we would have
live online meetings every weekover a six week period.
Anyway, the course was really,it was fun.
It was great to engage withpeople and talk about things
that I think are just reallyimportant in the world, in
general, and then specificallyin our open source communities

(03:42):
or in volunteer communities.
And so, we talked about, like,half of the course was basically
about self awareness, becausewho you are is how you lead.
And we looked at things likevalues and resilience and
motivation and things.
And then the second half wasabout community and how all of
that internal work plays outwhen you're interacting with
other people, like communicationand mistakes and trust, stuff

(04:05):
like that.
And then we specifically lookedat some open source challenges,
because working in volunteercommunities is a totally
different ball of wax in manyrespects from corporate
leadership or, you know, careeradvancement in that way.
And we wanted to create somespace to actually address
what's, you know, what kind ofchallenges come up when just

(04:28):
dealing with communities,volunteer communities, people
who want to come together toaccomplish something, but don't
have a whole bunch of resourcesand restrictions that you can
find sort of in the businessworld.
So anyway all of that went onand was really good and it, we

(04:49):
ended up, towards the end oflast year, really feeling like
we were doing good and movingforward.
Even though there's still a lotof financial uncertainty and, as
I said, there's- I thinkeverybody's aware that there's a
lot of that for everybody goinginto 2025.
So that brings me to where weare now and what we're looking

(05:12):
to do going forward.
Of course, we still have ourDrupal community and Drupal
project work, but the big thingthat we're going to be focusing
on this year is, since theleadership training was a big
success, we want to do more ofthat So we're planning to launch
a new learning community thatfocuses on self development and

(05:34):
leadership for buildingcommunities, especially from a
volunteer, open sourceperspective.
And initially, it'll be a placeto go through like some self
paced courses and have a groupof like-minded folks to talk
about it.
So sort of exploring new things,trying new things out, and then

(05:55):
having a community to discussthat with in terms of"what does
that mean?" How does that impactyou?
What's the implementation?
What's the effect?
And then, over time, we'replanning to offer things like
group coaching calls and liveworkshops, live cohorts like the
course we did last year, bookclubs, resources, like, all of

(06:15):
that stuff- sort of see aspeople come together what are
the things that the communityneeds, and then how can we
provide that and work on thatstuff together.
One thing that is going to be apart of this community from the
get go is going to be anewsletter that of course talks
about these topics and rounds upsome good resources and shares

(06:37):
that.
And that brings me back to thispodcast, because for now, this
podcast will be the home for theaudio recordings of the
newsletters.
So that way, folks who need orprefer audio can get the same
information.
And so you can choose whetheryou want to have it written or

(06:57):
if you want to have audio.
And that information that we'regoing to be gathering in the
newsletter, I think is alsoreally pertinent to this podcast
and then we may also end uphaving interviews or group
discussions like we have in pastepisodes, but we're just going
to sort of see how that unfoldsthroughout the year.

(07:19):
But at the very least, we'llhave a regular newsletter audio
episodes coming out on thispodcast.
So the new Osio Labs communitywill hopefully be launched in
the next month or so, and we'llannounce it in, you know, all
the usual places on the internetas you do.

(07:40):
And then the next episode ofthis podcast will announce the
community and how you can getinvolved with it.
And so that will also be likeour first newsletter and just
also the community will have a,you know, a free access and then
you can pay for certain extrathings, but we want to make it
open and accessible to as manypeople as possible.

(08:03):
So, that's what's in the works.
That's what's coming down thepike for us and we're we're
excited to really focus onbuilding community, because I
think that that is- it's alwaysbeen really important, I think
it's extra, extra important inthese times, and people coming

(08:25):
together to figure out how tobuild those communities, what we
need within ourselvesindividually, and how to work
with other people is going to bea skill that we need to have as
many people engaging with asabsolutely possible.
So, I look forward to seeinglots of new faces in our
community once we launch it, andwe will let you know about that

(08:47):
in the next episode.
Thanks for listening.
If you have questions, comments,suggestions about what to cover
in the podcast, newsletter,about this new community idea
we're talking about, anything ingeneral, you can always find us,
on our website at osiolabs.
com which is O S I O L A B S Andyou can contact us through

(09:17):
there.
And, of course, you can always,subscribe to this podcast to
make sure you get theannouncements and the
newsletters as they come out.
Thanks a lot.
Have a great week.