Building a Safer Software Industry, Together
The software industry is on a precipice: In 2024, with rising interest rates driven by macroeconomic forces, many firms made decisions to cut back on staff and look for more efficiencies in their operations. While said macroeconomic (and sociological) forces putatively drove those cuts, the scientific realities around stretched, highly complex socio-technical systems remain the same: they will fail. It is in this world that we choose to shine a light on resilience—the adaptive (and fundamentally human) capacity that we have available to us in unprecedented, unanticipated situations. Any organization capable of this form of resilience will have a distinctive competitive advantage in the decades to come.
Today’s announcement that we’ve formed the Resilience in Software Foundation (RSF) has been months in the making, tactically speaking, but it has been forming in the corners and crevices of our industry for decades. Multiple people who are passionate about Resilience Engineering (RE) in the software industry have been meeting regularly to ideate what a democratically-led, inclusive, supportive community space could look and feel like for us. It would be easy to assume that simply some meetings and filing of paperwork were behind the creation of RSF (and there has indeed been a lot of paperwork!). Dig a bit deeper, though, and the work by various leaders in the field of Resilience Engineering in the software industry have brought us to this point now, when we are ready for an official Foundation. At its core, RSF is a place where we can continuously nourish and grow a vibrant community to discuss the practical world of applying resilience concepts in action, and advocate for these practices in our industry.
The Resilience in Software Foundation aims to transform our industry by supporting and growing Resilience Engineering throughout the industry, becoming a home to expertise, knowledge sharing, and research. We’re excited to launch with individual, student, and corporate memberships available. We have a strong Code of Conduct, borrowed from Rands Leadership Slack, and a solid initial set of bylaws heavily borrowed from our friends at Usenix. We have articles of incorporation filed in Delaware, and have submitted our paperwork so we’re officially a 501c3. We have a board of directors, and a group of moderators for our rapidly growing Slack community.
Not too shabby for a bunch of safety nerds (mostly) holding down day jobs.
We would love for you to join us! For access to our Resilience in Software Slack community, and discounts to future events, please join us as a member. If you have questions about our group and aren’t in our Slack yet, you can email us at [email protected].
Colette Alexander
President, The Resilience in Software Foundation