All Things Open RTP Meetup

We'll host our first post-ATO 2026 meetup on Tuesday evening, November 10!

The topic is one we're extremely interested in and one we get asked about all the time - "Becoming a More Effective Open Source Contributor Using AI Tooling". Anyone attending should learn a lot!

Start Time:

• Doors open at 6:00 pm for networking, food and beverages, and (free) swag
• Live programming begins at 6:30 pm sharp

Location:
Wake Technical Community College - RTP Campus
10908 Chapel Hill Rd.
Morrisville, NC 27560
*We'll be in the auditorium, which is located in building RT1, room 162. Enter through the side entrance - we'll be there to guide you along.

Cost: FREE, as always

Speaker: Brad Topol, IBM

Talk Title: Becoming a More Effective Open Source Contributor Using AI Tooling

Talk Abstract:
Traditionally, learning a new open source project and becoming an influential open source contributor was a daunting and painful task that took several months or years to accomplish. It also relied on spending lots of time interacting with project maintainers and exploring GitHub commit histories to understand an open source code base. AI based agentic Integrated Development Environments are having a dramatic impact on what were historically the best practices for becoming an influential open source contributor. In this talk, we cover several case studies where we have explored the use of the AI tools on a variety of popular open source projects and evaluate the efficacy of the AI tools. We then provide best practices and illustrate how to use these tools effectively. We also describe what pitfalls to avoid to ensure that while leveraging these tools, new open source developers are seen as responsible citizens that are making meaningful contributions as opposed to being seen as non-productive project participants that are generating “AI Slop” and overwhelming the open source project with unnecessary overheads.