6/23/2025 Andrea Greggo and Jed Taylor
Written by Andrea Greggo and Jed Taylor
An education program to help IIDAI leaders build open source projects will debut in the fall semester. This program is sponsored and delivered by the IIDAI Impact Open Source thrust to achieve the following objectives:
- Provide Foundational Training – Educate UIUC project leaders on the best practices in open source project management, governance, licensing, and community engagement.
- Enhance Collaboration – Build on our success by creating a network of open source leaders in IIDAI who can share knowledge, resources, and provide mentorship.
- Sustainability and Impact – Equip project leaders with longer term support for securing funding, increasing adoption, and ensuring long-term project viability.
The open source education program is designed to provide a baseline education on the key principles for building successful open source projects, including:
- Validating your project
o Helping team identify key stakeholders and value propositions to ensure your project solves a real problem and validate its potential use
o Set clear goals and a vision for why open source is the best way to meet those goals - Making your project attractive to the community
o Prioritize documentation and accessibility to empower adoption of your project
o Leverage “help wanted” and “good first issue” labels
o Foster an inclusive and welcoming community
o Develop and publish a well-defined Contributor Ladder
o Lower the barriers to contribution by meeting people where they are (skillset, time-zone, computing resource availability) - Building trust in your open community
o Practice transparency and open communication to build trust
o Build leadership and share ownership through governance and foundational alignment
o Maintain momentum and visibility through roadmaps and concrete objectives
o Adhere to a defined and published Code of Conduct - Making your project adoptable to end users
o Invest in quality and sustainability
o Choose the right license and infrastructure
o Create demos and make it easy to use your project
o Include continuous integration automation to ensure your code compiles and installation works at all times.
By focusing on these principles—solving real problems, fostering a welcoming community, lowering barriers to contribution, and maintaining transparency and quality—a new open source project leader can lay the foundation for a successful project with a thriving, engaged community. The goal of the IIDAI Open Source Impact thrust is to empower project leaders and their teams to drive adoption, gain maintainers, and create active, engaged communities.