Keynote: The Inner Work of Being a Public Good

In 2023, Drupal was formally designated as a Digital Public Good—a high-quality, open-source digital solution recognized for having a high potential to address the critical development needs and urgent global challenges named in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2015, all members of the UN agreed on 17 SDGs to build a world of peace, dignity, and prosperity for a healthy planet. The target for reaching these goals is 2030, but our progress has been far too slow. It’s not a matter of not having the technology to do it—it’s a people problem.

In this year’s NEDCamp keynote, Whitney Hess will share an emerging framework called the Inner Development Goals (IDGs)—an open-source project backed by a nonprofit organization (sound familiar?) with the purpose of identifying the individual and collective skills necessary for business leaders like us to develop within ourselves in order to drive systemic, sustainable change. 

We will explore the five dimensions and 23 skills being developed by a global collective of researchers and practitioners. We will look at the free, open-source, co-created library of tools and resources to help practice inner development. We will learn simple yet powerful exercises each of us can integrate into our daily lives, and discuss how to effectively bring these practices into our organizations and our technologies.

Drupal is poised to accelerate our progress toward a sustainable future. It’s up to each of us to do the work from within.