Faculty Spotlight: Langdon White
Langdon White is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (CDS). He comes to CDS with a bit of a different background. Rather than working in research and academia, he has spent his career, before joining the faculty, in industry. He has served as CTO, Chief Architect, Vice President, software advocate, architect, and software engineer in a variety of types of companies from startups to Fortune 50. Most recently while at Red Hat, he worked on re-architecting Fedora (a Linux Distribution) for more flexibility in a containerized world. Prior to joining BU, through the Red Hat Collaboratory, Langdon served as an Engineer in Residence for BU Spark! & the Hariri Institute in addition to teaching CAS CS 200 (which prepares students for internships or jobs in the software development industry).
He has experienced the transition of software from being the purview of businesses to an integral part of all aspects of our daily lives. However, he also recognizes that the participation and distribution of the changes have not been equitable. He believes two major movements can help relieve these problems.
First, Open Source. By putting the means to create and use software in the hands of anyone who wants access to it we remove arbitrary barriers to entry. To support Open Source, he uses open source software almost exclusively, contributes where he can, and promotes its use by others. In addition, he started an annual free Open Source conference, DevConf.US, with support for people from all walks of life to speak and attend. Right here at Boston University, he started a monthly meetup about Open Source called BOSSI (BU Open Source Software Initiative).
Second, teaching differently. In CDS we are experimenting with new learning models - recognizing that not everyone comes to the table with the same background or goals for what they want out of computing and data science. He has also run two successful Twitch shows and built an associated Discord community which is opening up interesting new possibilities for connecting people. However, he has yet to figure out content for a TikTok channel.