I joined a panel at PyLadiesCon 2024 about PyLadies in open source, together with Melissa Weber Mendonça, Yaa Nuamah Kusi-Fordjour and Natalia, hosted by Abigail Mesrenyame Dogbe.

We interviewed Jessica Tegner from Denmark to hear about her journey in technology, from modding Minecraft servers to becoming an open source maintainer.

Playing video games like Minecraft led her to learn programming and to solve problems with coding and technology. She lost the rest of her vision in 2018, but it does not stop her from continuing to tinker with tools and technology. In fact, it motivates her into creating and improving tools to be more accessible to the users.

Open source is only possibly through open collaboration, and collaboration is only successful through open-mindedness to new and different perspectives.

Wait haven’t I done this before?
The answer is yes. And that’s because I got to give this talk again, all be it in a shorter version, at the Open Source Summi North America 2024.

How do you help your contributors and co-maintainers get better? How do you decline someone without breaking their spirits? How do you make sure that contributors flourish and learn, while still pointing out areas of improvement in a constructive and non-destructive or disheartening way?

Open source is only possibly through open collaboration, and collaboration is only successful through open-mindedness to new and different perspectives. Yet, there are still many challenges when it comes to diversity in open source. How do we intentionally diversify while still being genuine? What can we do to make it feel authentic