Announcing a new training opportunity for open-source leaders.
Open-source projects are a unique combination of volunteer collaboration and product development. As an open-source project becomes popular or heavily used, its creators face complex questions like “how can we support contributors so that they stay involved with the project as demands increase?” Or, “how can we fund maintainers to ensure project continuity?” Or, “what infrastructure do we need to put in place to gather input from users?”
Over the past three years, we’ve worked with several open-source projects as clients, and engaged with the NSF’s Pathways to Open Source Ecosystems program to develop training for project leaders as they worked to scale and grow their projects.
Now, thanks to funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, we’re expanding on what we’ve learned to launch a new initiative, the Birdaro training program, making it available (for free in its pilot phase!) to those in decision-making positions in open-source projects as they navigate growth, scaling, and sustainability of their projects.
In this blog post, we share more information about the program, who is eligible to apply, and how to submit your application, as well as other ways you can get involved in Birdaro as a guest speaker, resource curator, and more. Please send any questions or inquiries to info@birdaro.org.
About Birdaro
Birdaro focuses primarily on the human infrastructure challenges facing open-source projects, which may include: implementing governance structures, supporting community engagement and contributions, defining team roles, and considering various systems health topics that can impact the success of a project.
Right now, we’re excited to invite applications for our inaugural 12-week training program, and over the next few months we’ll also be developing a curated resource collection and creating case studies to make it easier for open-source leaders to access, and connect over, shared knowledge and expertise.
Birdaro is staffed by several CSCCE team members with expertise in curriculum development and facilitation, community engagement, project management, business development, and supporting diverse participation. Over the course of the training program, we’ll also be inviting contributions from individuals with domain-specific expertise, and we encourage you to let us know if you’d be interested in learning more about participating in Birdaro as a guest speaker.
About the Birdaro training program
We are designing the Birdaro training program to take place over a 12-week period in mid-2025 with exact dates still TBD depending on applicant availability. During the period of our initial cohort, participants will have the opportunity to take multi-session trainings, participate in shorter, webinar-style discussions, and connect in more informal co-working sessions.
In our extensive research phase, when we spoke to multiple individuals and organizations in this space (more on that to come!) several themes came up again and again as important for projects facing transitions. These included:
- Governance – considering who makes decisions and how decisions are made both within the project team and within the wider community
- Organizational management – where should a project live? What might key roles be? How to move away from a BDFL model to more distributed and defined roles.
- Community engagement – how to engage users and contributors on a project successfully, how to develop leadership pathways, how to work with volunteers
- Systems-health considerations – how to ensure communities are welcoming to all who want to contribute, how to support multiple ways of contributing to a project, including non-technical contributions; how to consider issues of safety and security as projects scale and power is more distributed. Considering project health and volunteer and leadership burnout.
The Birdaro training will include modules related to all these focus areas.
Program eligibility
i) Project context
The intention of the Birdaro training program is to support open-source leaders, predominantly in research or research-adjacent contexts. Your project might be part of a grant-funded project at a university, a nascent non-profit project under a fiscal sponsor, or even a stand-alone non-profit. The goal of your open-source project is to advance activities within the scientific research community in some way – by providing a tool, and perhaps accompanying training, or other open-source resources.
ii) Project life stage
We’re aiming Birdaro at projects that are facing a transition point – maybe you’re considering setting up your projects under a fiscal sponsor, maybe your community has rapidly expanded and you need to adjust to meet the enthusiasm, or maybe your project is looking to launch paid services. You have lots of questions and want to connect with other projects also thinking about their future.
iii) Team participation
We know that “leadership” can take many forms, and doesn’t only refer to project owners, directors, or managers. So, if you’re working to support an open-source project and have any input into the decisions that are made about that project’s governance and management, this training is for you!
We also know from experience that trainings like these are more effective if multiple members of a project team participate, acquiring shared mental models and vocabulary together. We therefore strongly encourage up to three members of a single project team to participate in the program. All team members do not need to attend every element of the training (and you only need to submit one application for your team).
Importantly, Birdaro will completely cover the cost of your participation in the training program for this inaugural cohort! That’s right – this is a free opportunity to access in-depth, domain-specific training alongside your open-source colleagues.
Timeline
Applications are now open for the Birdaro training program, and we’ll be assessing them on a rolling basis over the next few weeks. We hope to enroll approximately 20 project teams in the program as soon as possible, with a view to beginning the training in late July or August. We do not have confirmed dates yet, and want to underscore that this pilot version of the program is intended to be responsive to participant needs, enabling us to incorporate what we learn into a v2 of the program (this is a standard CSCCE approach to all of our trainings – read more about how we did some of this for our community manager certification program). You can use the application form to let us know if you have any constraints on your time from July – October 2025.
If you are interested in taking part, we encourage you to apply as soon as possible – and to spread the word among your networks.
Other ways to get involved with Birdaro
As the training program runs, we’ll also be establishing additional activities to support the open-source community. If you’d like to get involved, opportunities will include:
- Serving as a guest speaker in one of our training sessions
- Curating resources related to leadership development and project success in open-source
- Having your open-source project featured in our planned series of interviews/case studies
- Collaborating with Birdaro to host community events or explore additional projects
If any of these opportunities sounds interesting to you, please let us know by emailing info@birdaro.org.