The first-ever UC Open Source Contributors & Maintainers Virtual Meetup welcomed faculty, staff, and researchers from across the University of California system into a shared space for connection, discovery, and collaboration. Organized by the UC Open Source Program Office (UC OSPO), this meetup marked the beginning of a new effort to build bridges across campuses and celebrate the growing ecosystem of open source work throughout the UC system. UC Berkeley was well represented, with participants bringing a range of experiences and projects that speak to the university’s long-standing contributions to open science.
The gathering featured three breakout groups designed around stages of open source involvement: maintainers, contributors, and those excited to start. In the newcomers group, a participant asked about the learning environment and whether it was “tolerant” for people just beginning their journey. The conversation that followed captured one of the meetup’s key values: making space for curiosity, patience, and growth. It was this kind of open environment that sparked valuable conversations, including a moment when a participant’s question about geospatial work led Kirstie Whitaker, BIDS Executive Director, from the Contributors group to highlight the GeoJupyter (GitHub) project, a collaborative effort to reimagine geospatial interactive computing through open tools. “GeoJupyter is an open and collaborative community-driven effort to reimagine geospatial interactive computing experiences,” Kirstie shared. “It was so fun to meet more open source geospatial developers and brainstorm how we can connect our work.” This spontaneous exchange is exactly the kind of connection the UC OSPO is working to cultivate: unexpected yet generative intersections across fields and campuses.
UC Berkeley attendees included open source educators, developers, and project leads whose work spans both curriculum and cutting-edge research. Silas Santini, a contributor to Berkeley’s open source curriculum, reflected on the thoughtful design of the event: “I was pretty happy with the size of the meetup and that everyone had a chance to talk and raise any issues or questions.” Their work focuses on openly licensed curriculum used in foundational data science courses such as Data 8 (GitHub) and Data 100 (GitHub), along with a rich collection of modular resources housed in the Data Science Modules repository. Nearly everything in these repositories is available under open source licenses, making it easy for instructors, institutions, and independent learners to adopt or adapt these materials freely.
Nomi Harris, Program Manager of the Berkeley Bioinformatics Open-source Projects (BBOP) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, also joined the meetup. BBOP’s work reflects decades of leadership in open science under the direction of PI Chris Mungall, a long-time advocate and creator of open-source tools in bioinformatics. Their team has led a number of high-impact projects, including the Gene Ontology and the Monarch Initiative, both of which support community-driven research infrastructure. Their most recent efforts focus on using AI and machine learning to accelerate scientific discovery, continuing a tradition of openly sharing tools that benefit broad scientific communities. Nomi also chairs the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC), now in its 26th year. Reflecting on how much has changed since BOSC was founded in 2000, she noted how open source has shifted from a fringe idea to a core expectation for publicly funded research. Nomi hopes to stay involved with UC OSPO and help elevate open source work across the UC system.
Jarrod Millman, UC Berkeley's OSPO Executive Director and Senior Open Source Scientific Python Developer at BIDS, joined the Maintainers breakout group and captured the spirit of the event: “It’s exciting to see open source momentum growing on campus, especially with a space that brings together such a wide range of experience. I’m looking forward to building more of these connections and making work at Berkeley more visible across the UC system.”
This inaugural meetup affirmed the value of a UC-wide open source community. From project leads to first-time contributors, the event created a platform for sharing important work, asking big questions, and forming connections that might not have happened otherwise. As the first in a series of three annual meetups, this gathering is just the start of something much larger, and BIDS will continue to support open science by contributing to conversations and efforts like this that promote accessible, collaborative research. Stay up to date and get involved in future events at ucospo.net and by subscribing to the BIDS newsletter.