• Ben Balter

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Attorney, open source developer, product manager

  • Your project’s README is your project’s constitution
    April 14, 2017
  • Using protected branches to empower non-code contributors on GitHub
    April 14, 2017
  • Three easy ways to show employees they’re appreciated
    April 04, 2017
  • Bikeshed honeypots
    March 01, 2017
  • How I Atom (for prose)
    December 23, 2016
  • The seven habits of highly effective GitHubbers
    September 13, 2016
  • Ten ways to make a product great
    August 22, 2016
  • Why you shouldn’t write your own open source license
    August 01, 2016
  • Removing a feature is a feature
    July 21, 2016
  • Books for geeks
    July 11, 2016
  • Twelve things a product manager does
    June 06, 2016
  • Moderating a controversial pull request
    May 11, 2016
  • The missed opportunity that is the White House Open Source Policy
    April 11, 2016
  • Optimizing for power users and edge cases is the easy part
    March 08, 2016
  • How to derail any meeting
    January 15, 2016
  • The six types of pull requests you see on GitHub
    December 08, 2015
  • Open source as Yelp for software
    December 08, 2015
  • Why open source
    November 23, 2015
  • Four characteristics of modern collaboration tools
    November 18, 2015
  • Why everything should have a URL
    November 12, 2015
  • The three biggest challenges in government IT
    October 18, 2015
  • Bringing open source workflows to the enterprise
    September 21, 2015
  • How to add an “improve this content” button to your GitHub Pages site
    September 13, 2015
  • How GitHub uses automated testing to empower developers to write less-corporate blog posts
    September 10, 2015
  • Five principles to guide any government IT effort
    August 23, 2015
  • The Zen of GitHub
    August 12, 2015
  • Speak like a human: 12 ways tech companies can write less-corporate blog posts
    July 20, 2015
  • Open procurement: procurement in an increasingly open source world
    July 11, 2015
  • Merge by committee
    June 22, 2015
  • Using GitHub Pages to showcase your organization’s open source efforts
    June 11, 2015
  • Copyright notices for open source projects
    June 03, 2015
  • Test your content
    May 22, 2015
  • Analysis of federal .gov domains, 2015 edition
    May 11, 2015
  • Eight lessons learned hacking on GitHub Pages for six months
    April 27, 2015
  • The difference between 18F and USDS
    April 22, 2015
  • 19 reasons why technologists don’t want to work at your government agency
    April 21, 2015
  • Five best practices in open source: external engagement
    March 17, 2015
  • Five best practices in open source: internal collaboration
    March 08, 2015
  • Explain like I’m five: Jekyll collections
    February 20, 2015
  • Why your agency’s first open source project is going to be a flop
    February 11, 2015
  • Diff (and collaborate on) Microsoft Word documents using GitHub
    February 06, 2015
  • What does your organization optimize for?
    January 27, 2015
  • The fine print nobody reads: what to do so government can use your service
    January 26, 2015
  • Hacking GitHub: 12 simple tools to help introduce open source to the uninitiated
    January 11, 2015
  • Why you should care about HTTPS, even if you have nothing to hide
    January 06, 2015
  • Geeks and suits
    December 18, 2014
  • The myth of government IT
    December 17, 2014
  • A White House open source policy written by a geek
    November 24, 2014
  • 15 rules for communicating at GitHub
    November 06, 2014
  • What is a Government Evangelist?
    October 15, 2014
  • What’s next for federal IT policy, IMHO
    October 15, 2014
  • Eight reasons why government contractors should embrace open source software
    October 08, 2014
  • Everything a government attorney needs to know about open source software licensing
    October 08, 2014
  • If you liked it then you should have put a URL on it
    October 07, 2014
  • Disclosed source is not the same as open source
    September 29, 2014
  • Our code deserves better
    September 29, 2014
  • Open source is (not) insecure
    September 22, 2014
  • Three things you learn going from the most bureaucratic organization in the world to the least
    August 24, 2014
  • Why isn’t all government software open source?
    August 03, 2014
  • Why FedRAMP actually makes it harder for government agencies to move to the cloud
    July 29, 2014
  • Analysis of Federal Executive .Govs (Part Deux)
    July 07, 2014
  • How to identify a strong open source project
    June 02, 2014
  • Open government is so ‘08, or why collaborative government is the next big thing
    June 02, 2014
  • Word versus Markdown: more than mere semantics
    March 31, 2014
  • Want to innovate government? Focus on culture
    March 21, 2014
  • Header hover anchor links on GitHub Pages using Jekyll
    March 13, 2014
  • Open source, not just software anymore
    January 27, 2014
  • Why no one uses your government data
    December 30, 2013
  • That’s not how the internet works
    November 21, 2013
  • Jekyll: Where content is truly king
    October 30, 2013
  • Ten Things You Learn As A Presidential Innovation Fellow
    September 30, 2013
  • Treat Data As Code
    September 16, 2013
  • Friction
    August 11, 2013
  • Everyone Contributes
    August 11, 2013
  • Bet on the little guy
    July 02, 2013
  • The technology’s the easy part
    July 01, 2013
  • How to convert Shapefiles to GeoJSON maps for use on GitHub (and why you should)
    June 26, 2013
  • An open letter to government CIOs
    June 12, 2013
  • We’ve Been Selling Open Source Wrong
    May 14, 2013
  • The store that sells only one thing.
    February 27, 2013
  • The next big thing is already here
    February 06, 2013
  • What is a ‘Hacker’?
    February 04, 2013
  • Introducing JekyllBot
    December 27, 2012
  • Securing the Status Quo
    December 26, 2012
  • Deprecate Management
    December 16, 2012
  • Why WordPress’s next version should just give it a REST already
    December 15, 2012
  • We’ve been trained to make paper
    October 19, 2012
  • Open Source is not a verb
    October 15, 2012
  • Open Source for Government
    October 09, 2012
  • Welcome to the Post-CMS World
    October 01, 2012
  • Government’s Release of Federally Funded Source Code: Public Domain or Open Source? Yes.
    July 26, 2012
  • The Demise of the Personal Dashboard
    July 10, 2012
  • Why You Should Always Write Software as Open Source, Even When It’s Never Going to Be
    June 26, 2012
  • Publishing Government Data That Developers Will Actually Use
    June 02, 2012
  • Free Yourself from the Tyranny of Sharepoint
    May 10, 2012
  • WordPress as a Collaboration Platform
    May 08, 2012
  • Enterprise Open Source Usage Is Up, But Challenges Remain
    April 23, 2012
  • Hacks/Hackers Swells to more than 10,000 Members
    April 19, 2012
  • CFPB Accepts First Citizen-Submitted Code on Behalf of Federal Government
    April 15, 2012
  • What’s Missing from CFPB’s Awesome New Source Code Policy
    April 10, 2012
  • WordPress for Government - A Problem of Perception
    March 05, 2012
  • PHP is Insecure (and Other Enterprise Open-Source F.U.D.)
    March 02, 2012
  • GitHub for Journalism — What WordPress Post Forking could do to Editorial Workflows
    February 28, 2012
  • Open-Source Alternatives to Proprietary Enterprise Software
    February 27, 2012
  • Towards a More Agile Government
    November 29, 2011
  • Making WordPress More Shareable, Sociable, and Likeable
    November 14, 2011
  • Federal Agility: a Cultural Solution to a Technical Problem
    November 01, 2011
  • Why Digital Talent Doesn’t Want To Work At Your Company
    October 29, 2011
  • Advanced Workflow Management Tools for WP Document Revisions
    October 24, 2011
  • Analysis of Federal Executive .Govs
    September 07, 2011
  • Why WordPress
    September 01, 2011
  • Enterprise, Open Source, and Why Better is not Enough
    August 31, 2011
  • WP Document Revisions — Document Management and Version Control for WordPress
    August 29, 2011
  • Google Analytics Tracking of JetPack (Sharedaddy) Social Engagement
    June 30, 2011
  • Groupon and LivingSocial: a Limited-Time Offer
    June 16, 2011
  • What’s Your Hosting Company’s Average Subpoena Response Time?
    May 10, 2011
  • Fair Use, Excerpting, and Copying Content in the Internet Ecosystem
    April 27, 2011
  • How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Code
    April 12, 2011
  • When all you have is a pair of bolt cutters…
    April 04, 2011
  • Regular Expression to Parse Word-style Footnotes into WordPress’s Simple Footnotes Format
    March 20, 2011
  • Using WordPress to Craft Your Personal Brand
    March 09, 2011
  • A Site By Any Other Name…
    February 03, 2011
  • GW Course Schedule and Campus API
    January 25, 2011
  • WordPress Emphasis Plugin: Highlight and Permalink Text
    January 11, 2011
  • Twitter Goes to Bat for WikiLeaks, RTs @FBI’s Court Order
    January 11, 2011
  • The Files “in” the Computer – Zoolander and the California Supreme Court
    January 04, 2011
  • Late-Night Infomercials: Guaranteed to Extend the 4th Amendment or Your Money Back
    December 20, 2010
  • The Internet is Series of Tubes (oh, and Tollgates too)
    December 01, 2010
  • Twitter Mentions as Comments WordPress Plugin
    November 29, 2010
  • Free Trade in China? Just Google it.
    November 29, 2010
  • Will Federal Contracting Officers Soon Have Their Heads in the Clouds?
    November 15, 2010
  • What Fourteen-Century Apple Pie Teaches Us About Sharing
    November 08, 2010
  • Removing the Barriers to Organizational Agility
    November 06, 2010
  • Does Every Cloud Have a Silver Lining?
    October 10, 2010
  • New Media Flak: Megaphone vs. Cocktail Party
    September 13, 2010
  • WordPress Resume Plugin
    September 12, 2010
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