This post is Part 3 of a 4-part series on pyOpenSci at PyCon US 2026. Part 1 covers community and connection. Part 2 covers the Maintainer Summit.
This year marked our fourth sprint at PyCon US. If you want to really understand what pyOpenSci is about, our sprints are the place to look.
When we held our very first sprint at PyCon US 2023 in Salt Lake City, it was my first time running a formal sprint. I missed the introductions to the sprints and pyOpenSci was not well known in the broader Python community–yet. One person showed up. Read more about that first PyCon experience. This year, ~20 people showed up throughout the day. That arc — from a single contributor to a buzzing room of people at round tables — tells you everything about our community.
If you’re curious about how we run sprints, our PyCon US 2024 sprint recap walks through beginner-friendly setup, issue tagging, and supporting newer GitHub users.
Beginner-friendly, always
pyOpenSci sprints are intentionally beginner-friendly and welcoming. We get a mix of people. Including those who are newer to sprinting, a little nervous, maybe unsure if they belong. We also get seasoned contributors who are looking for a way to give back to the community. That mix is exactly who we want in the room. We thrive on seeing people come in unsure and leaving with confidence, new skills, and a new sense of belonging, even if it’s just a little bit more. Our strength is in meeting people where they are and giving them the skills, support, and confidence to make their first open source contributions in a safe, welcoming space.
But also our content is technical; so it’s important to have experts to review, and validate contributions, contribute new lessons and educational content updates and to help support newer contributors. And what is so special about those experts is they just show up and dive in and know how to help others in a way that is welcoming and supportive.
What keeps us going
One of the most meaningful things about running sprints year after year is watching people come back to join us. We have sprinters who showed up for the first time at a previous event — maybe SciPy or another PyCon US meeting. They might have been nervous, or just finding their footing, working through their first pull request. Then they return with more confidence and skills they’d built in the time between. Watching that transformation happen over multiple sprints, seeing people go from uncertain beginners to contributors who can hit the ground running, is everything.
That’s pyOpenSci. That’s why we exist.
Building community through collaboration
This year we also saw something wonderful: sprinters connecting with each other and deciding together what to work on. One collaboration that emerged was a translation project — contributors working together to make our Python packaging guide available in Portuguese.
Starting a Portuguese translation of our packaging guide means our resources will reach an entirely new audience of scientists and researchers over time. This translation work started because two people showed up to a sprint, connected, and decided to work together to make our resources more accessible. And that wouldn’t have been possible if one person, Felipe, hadn’t contributed the translation infrastructure to our guide back at a sprint in 2024!
What an incredible full circle moment!
Co-sprinting with Hatch
This year we decided to share a room with Hatch, one of our favorite Python packaging projects, and its maintainer Cary Hawkins. Having a co-sprint with a project we genuinely love and recommend brought even more energy and expertise into the room. This got me thinking about how we might be able to support projects that we love more through future sprints.
What’s next
Sprint day is my favorite day of any conference — even when I’m exhausted, even when the week has been long. There is nothing like watching people make their first contributions, find their confidence, and connect with each other over shared work. For me that connection fills my soul as it encapsulates the true spirit of open source and the heart of pyOpenSci.
Our next sprint will be at EuroPython in Poland in July — a joint sprint with EuroPython and EuroSciPy. I’ll also be keynoting there, so I hope to see many of you in the room.
If you’ve been thinking about sprinting with us for the first time: come. We’ll be there, and so will a community that genuinely wants to see you succeed.
This is Part 3 of a 4-part series on pyOpenSci at PyCon US 2026. Part 1: community and connection · Part 2: Maintainer Summit · Part 4: generative AI and open source (coming soon).
Connect with us!
There are many ways to get involved if you’re interested!
- If you read through our lessons and want to suggest changes, open an issue in our lessons repository here
- Volunteer to be a reviewer for pyOpenSci’s software review process
- Submit a Python package to pyOpenSci for peer review
- Donate to pyOpenSci to support scholarships for future training events and the development of new learning content.
- Check out our volunteer page for other ways to get involved
- Explore our Python Package Guide for comprehensive packaging guidance
- Keep an eye on our events page for upcoming training events
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