I am Colin Dean, a software engineer and community builder who uses technology to unite people and help them discover the answers to their questions through meaningful and delightful interactions.

I speak at conferences and have run conferences and conventions since 2002 and non-profits since 2005. You can read more about me at my website, cad.cx.

I prefer to engage in English. It's OK to ask me to repeat myself because my Pittsburghese accent sometimes gets in the way. As of 2024, I have been a student of Esperanto since 2003 and Dutch since 2023, in order of familiarity. I've learned bits of some others ¹.

• Code & Supply (gitlab & github), Pittsburgh's premiere community of software professionals that hosts meetups, conferences like Abstractions and Heartifacts, and runs a co-working space oriented toward software folks.
• Code & Supply Scholarship Fund (gitlab), a non-profit that helps folks attend and speak at conferences in Pittsburgh and beyond
• Homebrew (github), the missing package manager for macOS (and Linux)

• Community Internet Solutions (neé Meta Mesh Wireless Communities) (github), a Pittsburgh-based non-profit bridging the digital divide by bringing Internet connectivity to those without it. RIP 2012–2024.

• Support free and low-cost software community events in Pittsburgh and a great hyperlocal compensation survey effort by joining C&S to keep the lights on as an individual or sponsor us as a business hiring or selling to software professionals.
• Remove money as a barrier to attending tech conferences by donating to CSSF to fund tech conference travel grants as an individual, corporation, or foundation.
• Connect low-income, overlooked, and underserved communities to the Internet by donating to CIS to help us build the generation non-profit Internet service provider.
• Deliver up-to-date software safely and securely to macOS and Linux developers worldwide by donating to Homebrew to help keep packages flowing, esp. if you're a company with a budget and you use Macs for development

You could also sponsor me on GitHub sponsors. I'll put the money toward one of these or several other organizations I care about.

Cheers!

I keep some projects here on GitHub and some on GitLab. I might have something on Sourcehut or Pijul Nest with old stuff on BitBucket and really old stuff from my early development days on Launchpad.