Times are hard right now. Communities like pyOpenSci matter more than ever. We saw it at PyCon US this year — the political strain, the GenAI hype cycle and anxiety, the rapid changes reshaping open source. People are tired. People are frustrated. But here’s what else we saw: people still showing up. Still connecting. Still supporting each other.
When things get hard, when the ground shifts beneath us, we need each other more than ever. We need spaces to connect, to learn together, to solve challenging problems as a community. PyCon reminded me why I love this work so much.
I’ll never forget my very first PyCon in Salt Lake City. I was intimidated. It’s a really big conference, and I only knew a few people. That first sprint? We had one person show up who wasn’t already part of our community. He sat down and spent the entire day working on our website, helping us improve our infrastructure. He gave his time to help a nonprofit organization like pyOpenSci grow.
Read more about that first PyCon experience in Salt Lake City.
Fast forward four years to Long Beach, California. We filled rooms with our open spaces. We had tables of people sprinting, working on pyOpenSci projects, learning together. People who attended multiple sprints with us — people I remembered struggling to submit their first pull request, now confident in their GitHub skills. This is what community support looks like. This is what pyOpenSci’s mission is all about: helping people grow.
PyCon US has become my favorite conference. Not because of the topics covered or how it’s organized, but because of the people. The people who were strangers a few years ago and have now become my closest friends and colleagues. The hallway conversations. The way people show up for each other.
Even in a hard year — especially in a hard year — I left the conference feeling fulfilled, feeling whole, and so grateful for the friendships and relationships I’ve deepened over time.
Coming up in this series
Part 1: The sprints — From one person in Salt Lake City to a room full of contributors working together. This year’s story about growth, learning, and community reminded me why this work matters.
Part 2: Generative AI and open source — GenAI was everywhere at PyCon this year. Not as hype, but as a real challenge the community is wrestling with. Between our open space, the Maintainers Summit BoF, and Amanda Casari’s powerful closing keynote, a theme emerged: the path forward is human.
Part 3: The Maintainers Summit — A full day dedicated to the people who keep open source running. Hard conversations, shared struggles, and the kind of solidarity that only happens when maintainers get in a room together.
What it all comes down to
If there’s one thing that tied all of these experiences together, it’s this: the humans are what make open source work. The tools change, the challenges evolve, but the connections, the learning, the care people bring to this work — that’s the irreplaceable part.
More soon.
This is Part 1 of a 4-part series on pyOpenSci at PyCon US 2026.
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