On October 25th, 2024, we hosted the first-ever thoughtbot Open Summit, a virtual day-long celebration of Open Source, collaboration, and community. Inspired by Hacktoberfest, this free event brought together developers from around the globe to work alongside thoughtbot team members and maintainers on some of our favorite open source projects. We hosted over 12 hours of hacking and great talks!
Igniting more open source collaboration in the community
Open source has always been a core part of thoughtbot’s DNA. It’s how we share what we learn, give back to the community, and grow together as developers. thoughtbot Open Summit was born out of a desire to make contributing to open source more accessible and inspire more developers to join in.
For many participants, it was an opportunity to:
- Collaborate closely with maintainers of projects like Administrate, Belt, FactoryBot, and Langchain.rb.
- Build new skills with hands-on projects.
- And for a lucky few - win a limited edition t-shirt!
Highlights of the thoughtbot Open Summit
The event featured four tracks, each led by thoughtbot contributors:
- Administrate: A Rails engine for creating flexible admin dashboards, hosted by Nick Charlton and Svenja Schäfer.
- Belt: A CLI for React Native Expo apps, led by Rakesh Arunachalam and Oluwatomi Oluwafemi Alu.
- FactoryBot: A Ruby library for setting up test data, with Sarah Lima, Silumesii Maboshe, Fernando Perales, Stefanni Brasil, and Aji Slater.
- Langchain.rb: A library for building LLM-powered applications in Ruby, led by maintainer Andrei Bondarev.
The schedule also included four talks:
- Opening Keynote: Setting the stage for a day of innovation and collaboration from Silumesii Maboshe.
- Commit Messages to the Rescue: Aji Slater dives deeper into an important topic for open source projects - Commit Messages!
- Why Work in Public: Stefanni Brasil talks about how contributing to open source helps developers to work in public, and why that’s important.
- GenAI Landscape: Andrei Bondarev was our guest host for the AI track. He is the creator and maintainer of Langchain.rb, an open source tool that enables you to build LLM-powered applications in Ruby. To kick off the Langchain.rb session of thoughtbot Open Summit 2024, he set the stage with a discussion of the Generative AI landscape.
Watch the recordings on YouTube
If you missed the live event or want to revisit the highlights, we’ve got you covered. All the talks and coding sessions are now available on our YouTube channel in a playlist.
Looking ahead
The success of thoughtbot Open Summit 2024 has us already looking forward to the next one. We’re inspired by the incredible energy, creativity, and collaboration we witnessed during the event. It’s a reminder of the power of open source to bring people together and create lasting impact.
If you’ve been inspired to contribute to open source or want to join our next event, stay connected by subscribing to our newsletter. Let’s continue building great things together.
Thank you to everyone who joined us, from maintainers and thoughtbotters to first-time contributors and seasoned developers.