I recently attended my first PG Data 2026 conference where keynote speaker Robert Haas delivered a talk that has stayed with me. His keynote focused on the people behind PostgreSQL, the growing challenges of sustaining open-source communities, and the urgent need to cultivate new contributors through mentorship and community engagement. While his remarks centered on PostgreSQL, they sparked broader reflections for me about the future of open source and communities like Django.
One point from Robert’s keynote particularly resonated with me: the hardest part of building PostgreSQL isn’t necessarily writing the code. It’s working with other people.
Behind every release are developers, reviewers, documentation writers, translators and countless volunteers who contribute their time and expertise. It’s easy to overlook just how much human effort is required to make the software we depend on possible.
Many communities have developed workflows, norms, and expectations over decades. Experienced contributors understand these practices almost instinctively. However, new contributors can struggle with this. We often teach people how to write code, but we don’t always teach them how open-source communities work.
Let’s shift the conversation away from simply attracting newcomers and more towards helping them thrive once they arrive. How do you review a patch, participate in a technical discussion, build consensus and navigate community norms? These skills aren’t normally documented and are hard to learn in isolation.
That is why mentorship matters, workshops matter, discord communities matter, conference hallway conversations matter.
One initiative that comes to mind is Djangonaut Space, a mentorship program designed to help newer contributors navigate the Django ecosystem. Programs like this recognize an important truth: contributing to open source is about much more than writing code. Mentorship can create a bridge between curiosity and meaningful contribution.
Open source grows stronger when we expand our reach beyond traditional contributors and welcome people with new perspectives, new experiences, and new skill sets.
As someone involved in organizing DjangoCon Conferences, this message feels especially important. Conferences are often a great place for folks to discover that open source communities are made up of real people. A hallway conversation, a first-time speaker session, a sprint, or a chance meeting over a Chicago Style hotdog can be the beginning of a contributor’s journey.
So I would like to end with a challenge: Consider helping someone find their way into an open-source community. Offer mentorship, review a first contribution, answer a question, share your experience.
And now for my shameless plug…
I would suggest that you start with DjangoCon 2026. Bring a colleague who has been curious about open source. Bring someone with a different background, a different perspective, or a different set of skills. The future of open source depends on the people we welcome, the knowledge we share, and the contributors we help grow.
Because open source doesn’t come from software. It comes from people.
Acknowledgment: This post was inspired by the keynote presentation delivered by Robert Haas at PG Data 2026. Any reflections, interpretations, or connections to other open-source communities are my own.