Fostering collaboration: communication techniques for building a thriving team culture

Effective communication is crucial for building a productive and positive work environment. Whether your team is co-located or remote-first, creating a culture that fosters inclusivity, trust, and collaboration requires actionable, repeatable techniques.

In this session, we'll explore strategies that transform workplace communication, grounded in empathy, clarity, and trust—three pillars that drive organizational success. Drawing on real-world examples from Open Strategy Partners—how we've succeeded and learned from our failures—we'll demonstrate how these approaches help teams thrive by strengthening internal relationships, improving client interactions, and enhancing overall productivity.

You’ll learn how we've applied practical techniques like the “Positivity Pass,” proactive feedback, and non-violent communication to build a culture that encourages psychological safety and open dialogue. From fostering gratitude to handling conflict constructively, we'll show you how to implement these tools to support sustainable, long-term success.

Learning Objectives:

Implement communication techniques to foster inclusivity, trust, and collaboration in both remote and in-person teams.

Use empathy and clarity to create a psychologically safe space for your team, driving better interactions and outcomes.

Navigate communication challenges ethically and constructively, building a culture of trust and mutual respect.

Grow your agency: A content model that connects

Build trust, sell easier, help potential customers self-qualify (or disqualify) all before they ever contact you! Come to this session to learn an actionable, straightforward content for your website. Building trust first makes selling easier.

The “Agency House” is a six-part content architecture model for making your website your best sales tool. If you are a small agency or freelancer, your house can help you spend less of your precious time selling and more time delivering the work your clients love. Whatever the size of your company, if you want to shorten your sales cycles, building trust and long-term relationships, the Agency House is there for you, too!

In this session, we’ll show you what content you need and how to structure it to make a positive impact on your business:

- Improve Sales Flow: Back up any pitch or conversation with resources on your website. Help prospects self-qualify and be closer to closing when they get in touch.

- Improved Search Results: Google explicitly says content quality matters, and that they define quality content based on expertise, authority, and trust.

- Connect with Leads: People looking for an agency partner are looking to solve a challenge or a problem. Make sure your expert help is there for them when they come looking.

You’ll leave this session with a structure and methodology to help see your site in a new light.

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##Synopsis
The right content, in the right places on your website can build trust with your future customers today.

##Learning objectives
- Create content architecture and content to reduce your time-to-close by building trust with potential customers.
- Improve your search rankings and expert brand-awareness by creating high quality content relevant to you and your audiences.
- Connect with people looking for help with the problems you solve.

##Content focus area
Content & Marketing

##Target audience
Agency leads, marketing and communications professionals — or anyone who has to wear these hats alongside other responsibilities.

##Prerequisites
The information in the session is aimed more at agency businesses, but is relevant to many communication challenges.

Getting to fact-based product marketing in B2B tech

Communicating the value of complex technology can be as challenging as building it. In this session, we will show you a practical application of the "DIKW Pyramid" — Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom — to capture the technical truth of your product or service offering and turn it into compelling content and effective communication strategy.

We'll go into actionable detail about applying DIKW to content:

1. DATA: Observe and collect an accurate library of product features.

2. INFORMATION: Connect the features, for example, in logical-functional groups, and describe their value to your target audience.

3. KNOWLEDGE: Add experience and expertise to the mix to distill the information into product positioning, messaging, and a base for content marketing planning.

4. WISDOM: Apply what you have learned to make decisions, answer questions about your product, or refine your roadmap. Prioritize topics, personas, and campaigns. Generate content ideas.

Join us for this informative session to learn how to create clear, compelling product communications that will resonate with your audience and lead to successful product adoption.

If you have a product or service offering or want one, come along! We can save you time and false starts, giving you a process to capture your offering's essence and turn it into great content and communication strategy.

**Content Focus Area: Strategy, Content, and Marketing

**Target Audience: Product owners, founders, and anyone who needs to capture the value of a complex technical offering in communications.

Garbage in, garbage out: Content strategy and writing in the age of AI

If you are asking yourself:
- What is AI good for right now in content creation?
- Should I be using AI to replace my MarComms team?

This talk can help find the answers!

We update this short talk to the current state of play, -tech, and the market every time we present it. The last version presented in public was compiled in mid-December 2023.

Using up-to-date information and examples, we cover:
- The current state of AI and its impact on content
- Why content strategy is essential to content success
- Why good, long-form, opinionated content is so important now
- How to do content strategy in the age of AI
- How to create good content in the age of AI

**Spoiler alert: As of mid 2024,
- AI can be helpful, but it is not the answer to all things content.
- AI is most often brilliant at reductive tasks, helping us humans get a better handle on understanding large amounts of data, for example.
- AI can often help a good and experienced digital professional produce better work. AI cannot make a brilliant [writer, developer, what-have-you] out of a non-[fill in the blank].
- AI can add some value and efficiency to your processes.
- AI cannot replace human diversity, creativity, experience, or insight.
- Use AI when and where it makes sense.
- AI requires guided input and human creativity to produce valuable output.

This session is quick and informative, with room to expand and go into detail, so it could be anything from a 10-minute lightning talk to a 40-minute presentation. We've gotten great responses to it. And the slides are fun!

Getting to open source sustainability: The next 20 years of FOSS success

Open source is either entering a new phase or is at a breaking point. For the next 20 years to be as successful as the last, we need to shift our mindset. We cannot treat open source like a startup anymore, surviving on pizza and maintainer burnout. Sponsorship and patronage models are not sustainable business models. So, what’s next?

Proprietary software vendors are winning pitches in government and other spaces that should be no-brainers for open source solutions. To counter this, we must educate stakeholders about open source’s fundamental freedoms, business advantages, and potential to create positive change economically and socially. Open source needs to be the default choice—as a unified brand—followed by choosing a specific project, not the other way around.

Developers and companies take FOSS for granted, assuming it’s “just there” like public infrastructure. However, open source is “free as in puppy,” not “free as in free lunch.” We must change this mindset to foster collaborative support for sustainable open source practices. Additionally, we lack universal sustainability best practices for maintainers and projects of all sizes.

In this session, we will explore what the next phase of open source could look like. We’ll discuss future governance models and the creation of an open source sustainability toolkit, offering standardized best practices, funding models, and community support structures. Join us as we look back at our origins and examine how to protect, respect, and promote open source moving forward.

##Audience Takeaways
- Understand the importance of promoting “Open Source” as a unified brand to compete against proprietary systems.

- Learn strategies to shift the mindset around open source, highlighting its responsibilities and potential for positive change.

- Explore ideas for developing universal sustainability practices for FOSS projects of all sizes.

- Gain insights into governance models and tools to support the next phase of open source sustainability.

##Synopsis
Open source is at a turning point. To ensure its next 20 years of success, we need sustainable practices, stronger branding, and better education on its values. This session explores how to educate, develop support structures, and create a unified vision to protect and promote open source’s future.

AX: Turning your B2B tech strategy into content that converts

Content marketing success hinges on more than just creating content—it requires a strategic approach that connects with your audience and, in the best case, motivates them to engage with you further. In this session, we’ll explore the intersection of technical truth, strategic content planning, and communication built on empathy, clarity, and trust. We like to label the sum of those things “AX,” or Audience Experience.

We will show you how to link your product’s unique features with your audience’s needs, allowing you to craft messaging that resonates, with frameworks like the OSP Value Case and Value Map. We will define and demonstrate what makes “good” content and explore techniques for creating content that captures attention and drives action, whether generating leads, building trust, or fostering long-term relationships.

This session offers practical insights into transforming your content strategy into a marketing engine that converts, guiding you to communicate your product’s value in ways that matter most to your target audience.

##Takeaways:
- Understand how to align technical truth with audience needs to create impactful, fact-based messaging.

- Create “good” content using a structured approach rooted in empathy, clarity, and trust.

- Develop strategies for content marketing that drive conversions, from building trust to generating leads.

- Collaborate across marketing, technical, sales, and business teams to create content that delivers on your goals.

##Synopsis:
Learn how to turn your B2B tech strategy into content that converts. We’ll explore Audience Experience (AX)—the intersection of technical truth, strategic planning, and empathetic communication. Discover frameworks to craft messaging that resonates, builds trust, and drives meaningful engagement.