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.
183 articles from this blog
Explains why applying closed-source, meeting-heavy workflows to open source projects leads to failure and advocates for asynchronous, transparent collaboration.
A guide on using GitHub Pages to create a custom, branded website for showcasing an organization's open source projects and efforts.
Explains best practices for copyright notices in open source projects, covering dates, copyright holders, and legal necessity.
Explains how to apply continuous integration (CI) and automated testing to website content using tools like Travis CI and HTML Proofer.
A 2015 analysis of U.S. .gov domains, tracking trends in HTTPS usage, IPv6, server software, CMS adoption, and common IT issues.
A GitHub staffer shares eight key technical lessons learned from six months of hands-on work with GitHub Pages.
Explains the distinct missions and approaches of two U.S. government tech modernization groups: 18F and the U.S. Digital Service (USDS).
A critique of government agency workplace culture, listing 19 reasons why technologists avoid public sector jobs and offering solutions.
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.
