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Build the visibility of an academic OSPO by attaching typical conference activities (e.g. talks, workshops, meetups) to a larger event that addresses similar interests and themes.
An academic OSPO lacks the community size or resources to host its own standalone conference or summit.
A small academic OSPO has been established within a university.
While there is a growing interest in open source among students, faculty and staff, the community is still in its early stages and remains relatively small.
The OSPO’s budget and staff time is constrained.
There is not enough local interest to justify a standalone event.
Larger conferences or summits with relevant audiences take place on campus or within the same city or region.
Identify a well-aligned larger event (e.g. a regional tech conference, academic symposium, or open source summit) and propose a co-located session, track, or ‘mini-summit’. This could take the form of a panel, workshop, hackathon or project showcase.
Co-ordinate with the host organizers to secure a time slot and venue space. Leverage their infrastructure, promotion channels and attendee base.
The OSPO gains exposure, establishes credibility, and fosters partnerships - all without the heavy burden of organizing a full-scale event.
Participation in the larger event also facilitates recruitment and alignment with broader community trends.
We wanted to run a summit for open source but we’re a very small community. The population of Luxembourg is 600,000 people. However, there are plenty of open source users.
We piggybacked onto a much wider larger conference and held a dedicated track for OSPOs.
This helped us a lot because the wider conference is well organized.
It’s very important to do some research on the audience who attend the wider conference you’re joining up with. This is important for your keynote speaker and also for the other speakers and activities you’re planning.
We have piggybacked with groups internal and external to our university to share expenses and resources and to amplify our open source voice.
We hosted a semi-annual 3-day Research Software Engineering workshop that is run by URSSI. We paid for lunches and provided space and volunteer technical assistants from our library staff for the event. As a result, 20 GW students, staff and faculty were able to attend in addition to the 35 other attendees from all over the US.
We’ve held a yearly summit for the past two years. In our first year, we piggybacked onto another conference hosted by a very closely related group, the Scientific Software Center. It was particularly useful as it brought the OSPO and our work to a much wider audience - people who weren’t solely focused on open source.
We regularly co-organize or provide a supporting role in larger events in order to bring content about open source and our OSPO’s activities to a wider audience. We facilitate a range of activities from speaking, organising talks, hosting tracks on open source to organizing presentations/workshops from external organizations.
At a smaller scale, we hold OSPO talks with local meet up groups where OSPO staff speak about our activities.
- SnT Tech Transfer Office, l’Université du Luxembourg
- GW Open Source Program Office, George Washington University
- Georgia Tech Open Source Program Office, Georgia Institute of Technology
- UW-Madison Open Source Program Office, Data Science Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Vermont Research Open Source Program Office (VERSO), University of Vermont
- SnT Tech Transfer Office piggybacked onto the LibreOffice and Open Source Conference 2024
- The GT OSPO collaborated with the Scientific Software Engineering Center to host the Sustainable Software in Academia and the Open Source and Scientific Software Workshop in 2025.
- The UW-Madison OSPO piggybacked on UW-Madison Innovate Week to run the event, ‘How Open Source Is Fostering Innovation in AI’).
- The VERSO OSPO hosted a number of Strudel workshops and presentations as part of the University of Vermont’s Research Week 2025.
- The VERSO OSPO also co-hosted the Data and Open Science Summit 2025 with a number of other Departments in University of Vermont.