Three Ways to Engage with Open Source Program Offices

Share and learn by speaking at OSPOCon, joining Work Day activities, and more opportunities from TODO

Do you engage in open source-related tasks within your organization? You know that collaboration is key. Here are three ways to engage and network with your open source peers and leverage your organization’s open source program! 

1) Speak at OSPOCon, the premier event for OSPOs

Aiming to provide continuous education and ease OSPO adoption across organizations, the TODO Group, in collaboration with the Linux Foundation, launches OSPOCon 2022 Call for Proposals. OSPOCon is the premier event for Open Source Program Offices to share information, solve problems, and learn how to build effective Open Source initiatives within organizations. 

Why consider submitting a proposal to speak at OSPOCon?

OSPOCon is a go-to place where those working in open source program offices (or similar initiatives) in organizations can:

• Share best practices, tooling, and lessons learned
• Learn the newest OSPO trends
• Connect and learn from the wide diversity of open source professionals’ visions
• Take part in real-time discussions and give to get feedback from the community

Overall, people can come together to learn and share best practices, experiences, and tools to overcome OSPO challenges and similar open source initiatives.

OSPOCon NA and Europe are in-person and virtual events that are part of Open Source Summit conference umbrella. To submit a proposal  via the OSSummit CFP (people will also get access to all the other events in the Open Source Summit collection).

Please remember the CFP submissions deadlines for each of the events. We hope to see you in the upcoming OSPOCon series!

• OSSummit + OSPOCon NA: March 14th
• OSSummit + OSPOCon Europe: May 30th

2) Contribute to OSPO resources with the broader community in the new TODO Work Day Activities

TODO comprises individual community contributors and 70+ organizations with years of experience running open source programs. They all want to collaborate on practices, tools, and other ways to run successful and effective open source projects and programs. We have a wide range of ongoing OSPO initiatives where everyone (from the most seasoned OSPOers to students) can participate and become a contributor.

Why consider attending the next Work Day meeting?

A good practice to keep learning from OSPOs is to share knowledge and be inspired by other community participants that run open source initiatives when working on common tooling and resources. 

TODO organizes Work Day activity monthly meetings to ease community participation and work together with other OSPOers and open source experts on the various issues and PRs in the TODO Group GitHub organization.

Work Days have even a handful of things sorted by TODO project contribution level that we expect people to work during these meetings.

Learn more in the dedicated repo and review the upcoming meeting dates:

• Wednesday, March 9, 2022, at 16:30 PM UTC
• Monday, March 14, 2022, at 10:00 AM UTC

3) Study and discuss the status of OSPOs with OSPOlogy and TODO Sync calls

The OSPOlogy repo provides continuous OSPO learning and discussions with other OSPOers thanks to the OSPOlogy monthly community meetings, TODO Sync calls, and OSPO Forum.

• OSPOlogy Community Meetings: Everyone is welcome to attend and participate in the monthly public meetings of the TODO Group and the wider OSPO community,. People can bring new discussion topics via the OSPOlogy CFP submission.
• TODO Sync calls (Europe Chapter): This chapter was created to work together to improve OSPO adoption and education within Europe and discuss with the broader community the challenges European organizations face when implementing an open source program. EMEA-friendly time meetings are scheduled every last Thursday of the month at 3 PM (CET).
• OSPO Forum: A place to: (1) Ask questions you’re wondering about when it comes to OSPOs; (2) Share ideas about how to improve OSPOs; (3) Engage with other OSPO community members. Topics are filtered by:
• Learning and education
• Structure and strategy
• Security and compliance
• Tools

Bonus: Resources for practical OSPO implementation

We went through three popular OSPO networking spaces where people can engage with the different professionals involved in open source program offices or similar open source initiatives within organizations. 

The good news is that TODO Group goes far beyond a place to connect with other OSPOers. This group also drives open source education and adoption powered by course materials, research studies, and resources created by experienced professionals to keep learning about OSPOs, anytime.

Here is a list of the most popular resources that can help people find inspiration by the vision of open source professionals and guidance.

• [NEW]  The Evolution of the Open Source Program Office Study: provides a set of patterns and directions, as well as a checklist, to help implement an OSPO or an open source initiative within corporate environments. This includes an OSPO maturity model, practical implementation from noted OSPO programs across regions and sectors, and a handful of broad OSPO archetypes (or personas), which drive differentiation in OSPO behavior
• TODO Guides: A collection of best practices from the leading companies engaged in open source development aims to help organizations successfully implement and run an open source program office.
• OSPO Survey:  The TODO Group is committed to running an annual survey of the status of Open Source Program Offices and sharing the results and data with the wider community. People can find the open data and previous results at Linux Foundation Research
• OSPONews: Never miss a thing of the newest OSPO trends! This is the monthly newsletter to stay up to date on Open Source Program Office (OSPO) trends.

TODO Group is a great place to begin and advance in the OSPO journey. The open source community is always welcome to be part of TODO. Welcome to the OSPOverse!