title: Field Trip: GW OSCON
short_title: Lecture 09
subtitle: Modeling Macroeconomics | Lecture 09
label: lecture-09
date: 2026-03-24
description: Field trip to the GW Second Annual Open Source Conference (GW OSCON), hosted by the George Washington University Open Source Program Office.
tags:
- field-trip
- open-source
- GW OSPO
- GW OSCONAbout GW OSCON¶
GW OSCON is a two-day conference (March 23–24) bringing together researchers, engineers, and policymakers around open-source software. Sessions span AI-era software trust, civic technology, public health, and community sustainability.
Session 1: Panel (11:00 am – 12:00 pm)¶
“Code at Scale: Trust, Quality, and Sustainability in AI-Era Open Source”
Moderator: Prof. Lorena A. Barba (GW OSPO Faculty Director)
| Panelist | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Alex Miller | Data Scientist, Maryland State Innovation Team (Office of Governor Wes Moore) |
| Dr. Will Barnes | Research Assistant Professor, American University; Research Scientist, NASA Goddard |
| Dmitry Sagalovskiy | Co-founder & Co-CEO, Grist Labs |
| Jake Diamond-Reivich | CEO, Mito; Executive Council Member, Project Jupyter |
Session 2: Breakout Sessions, Room 311 (1:00 pm – 2:00 pm)¶
| Time | Speaker | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1:00 pm | Daniel Schuman | “Finding Legislative Data” |
| 1:20 pm | Pedro Vicente | “Civic Technology for the Web: Use Cases of DC311, WMATA Trains, and Congress API” |
| 1:40 pm | Jay Qi | “Making Data Ethics Actionable” |
Session 3: Lightning Talks (2:15 – 3:15 pm)¶
Ten short talks covering AI auditing, open-source governance, and community engagement. The instructor presented “Economics Informed Neural Networks.”
Learning Objectives¶
By the end of this session, students will be able to:
Describe the role of an Open Source Programs Office in a research institution
Relate open-source infrastructure (Python, Jupyter, QuantEcon, Econ-ARK) to the research tools used in this course
Articulate sustainability and trust challenges in AI-era open-source software development
Explain how open-source tools and economics intersect, from civic data to scientific computing