State of Open Con 2025

What is the impact on contributors when maintainers fight, aren't welcoming, or don't lead inclusively? We are a community of doers who enable open source projects including Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, and many others, but conflict between maintainers and contributors can negatively impact our projects and lead to resentment, drive contributors away, and in the worst of cases can escalate to code of conduct issues. When we maintainers don't have each other to lean on, what can we do? Sunlight is the best disinfectant and reflecting on these interactions can help us all do better and help our projects be more successful. In this talk, Kat and Jeremy will share some examples where communications went wrong, talk about the impact on contributors, and share a framework we can all use to do better.