Ben Balter writes about technology leadership, open source, and modern collaboration at scale. His essays blend engineering mindset with management, community building, remote work, and transparent communication—shaped by years of experience at GitHub and in public-sector tech.
175 articles from this blog
Five best practices for engaging external communities in open source projects, particularly within government or large organizations.
Five best practices for fostering internal collaboration and culture to succeed in open source projects, especially within large organizations.
An explanation of Jekyll collections, a powerful feature for organizing non-chronological content like products or recipes on a static website.
Explains why government agencies often fail with their first open source project due to cultural and procedural mismatches.
A tool called Word Diff enables version control and collaboration on Microsoft Word documents using Git and GitHub by converting them to Markdown.
Explores how an organization's core optimization goal, like developer happiness or process, shapes employee behavior and culture, using laptop stickers as an example.
Explains why government agencies can't use standard online service terms and how to negotiate custom agreements for the federal market.
A guide to 14 simple tools that make GitHub and open-source collaboration accessible to non-technical users and organizations.
Explains why HTTPS is crucial for security, privacy, and as a tool against censorship, even for non-sensitive web traffic.
Explores the cultural divide between technical developers (geeks) and non-technical managers (suits) in government IT and how startups invert this hierarchy.
Analyzes the cultural and technological barriers to modern software development practices in government IT, contrasting it with the private sector.
A former government technologist argues for a strong White House open source policy to boost innovation, efficiency, and taxpayer ROI in federal IT.
GitHub shares 15 rules for effective asynchronous communication and collaboration in a distributed, tech-focused workplace.
Explains the role of a Government Evangelist at GitHub, focusing on helping government agencies adopt open source software and practices.
A former government developer and attorney analyzes outdated federal IT workflows and advocates for adopting modern, open-source practices and updating laws.
Explains why government contractors should adopt open source software for cost savings, best practices, and competitive advantage.
A guide for government attorneys on open source software licensing, covering common licenses, legal issues, and best practices for agency participation.
Explores the critical importance of URLs for collaboration, institutional knowledge, and transparency, especially in tech and government contexts.
Critique of outdated government software procurement practices and the need to adopt modern version control and delivery methods.
Explains why simply releasing government source code isn't true open source, which requires licensing, community, and collaboration.
