Success, Open Source and You: Maximising the impact of your open-source contributions

Friday 21 Feb 2025, 15:00 → 18:00 Europe/Zurich

503/1-001 - Council Chamber (CERN)

The CERN Open Source Program Office (OSPO) invites you to a lecture from Dr. Dawn Foster (Director of Data Science, CHAOSS project) on the topic of “Making the most of your open source contributions”. With more than 20 years of experience in community building, strategy, open source, governance, and metrics, Dawn has valuable insights about achieving success with open source software.

Following Dawn’s presentation, the OSPO would like to shine a light on open-source contributions to projects that are not directly managed or owned by CERN. Often, such contributions don’t get the same visibility as CERN open-source projects, yet their impact can be just as great. In the final hour, members of the OSPO will stick around for some hands-on knowledge sharing in the form of a hackathon. Whether you want to make your very first open-source contribution, or are an experienced open source maintainer, come join us in celebrating open-source collaboratively!

1 Making the most out of your OSS contributions

Navigating open source projects can be a challenge for both new and experienced contributors. This talk will cover contribution best practices that will help new contributors get started while also helping experienced contributors improve their interactions with open source projects. We'll discuss how to use metrics from the CHAOSS project to consider the health of the external projects you contribute to and identify areas that might indicate that a project is at risk of becoming unviable in the future. But the advantage of working in open source is that we can identify potential risks and work within projects to make them more viable, and this talk will discuss how to improve projects from within. By the end of this talk, you'll have learned tips and tricks for becoming an even better open source contributor.

Speaker: Dr Dawn Foster (CHAOSS Project)

Making the most out of your OSS contributions CERN.pdf

Recording

Video preview

2 Highlighting Contributions to Open Source Projects

Discover the diverse open-source contributions made by members of the CERN community! In this session, speakers will share their experiences working on projects that are not directly managed by CERN, showcasing the broader impact of their work and inspiring others to get involved.

Speakers: Dr Arne Wiebalck (CERN), Philip Elson (CERN), Thomas Oulevey (CERN), Tomas Roun (CERN)

Arne WIEBALCK - Contributing for the long haul - OSPO 21FEB2025.pdf

Phil Elson

Phil Elson

Recording

Thomas Oulevey - 2025-02-25 CERN & CentOS Project.pdf

Tomas_Roun_CPython_Babel.pdf

Video preview

3 Mini Hackathon for Open-Source Contributions

Whether you're new to open source or a seasoned contributor, join us for a hands-on mini hackathon focused on making real contributions to open source projects. Together we can look at different ways to engage with projects, collaborate with peers, and gain practical experience. Bring your laptop, a collaborative spirit, and enthusiasm for a project to which you want to contribute!