You’ve come up with your brilliant idea for a new software project and submitted the source code to GitHub, but now what? What are the pieces of an open source project besides the code? What configuration, support, and (gasp) documentation goes into making a project that is easy, clear, and enjoyable to contribute to? The inverse is true as well: as an open source user & contributor, what items should you look for in a project you’re interested in using or supporting? This talk will go into:

* Git and GitHub configuration
* Guides for users and contributors
* Helpful tools for supporting repository health and consistency

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Due to a problem with the projector, Ben had to do the first 10min or so of this presentation without slides and absolutely handled it like a champ 👏

The talk itself was full of all sorts of useful information for inexperienced and veteran library maintainers alike!

Cory Stine at 17:58 on 25 Oct 2025

A great talk, especially given the technical difficulties at the beginning. Learned a few things I'll be bringing back to my team. Thanks Ben!

Bonus points for courage under fire while the technology failed. I'm already doing most of this, but the overview of how to do issue template forms (rather than just template text) was very helpful. I should go set those up now...

Joseph Leedy at 12:16 on 27 Oct 2025

Excellent talk, but mostly aimed at beginners. Thanks!