First, one goal is to explore life as a “FOSS Academic” – someone who uses Free and Open Source technologies to do academic work. I’m hoping that my discussions of FOSS technologies in an academic setting help others – students, professors, university administrators – understand the benefits and values of FOSS in the academy. I’m not a developer, but I am a professor who’s been using FOSS to do his job for over a decade. I call this goal of exploring FOSS tools in the academy Goal 1. Second, this blog has Goal 2: writing a book about a FOSS topic. After some consideration, I decided to write a book about Mastodon and the fediverse, titled Move Slowly and Build Bridges, which came out from Oxford University Press in 2025. Sometimes, the two topics will collide in a single post. My intent here is to be more open about my own research process and writing.