It all started when Daniel Roe posted on Bluesky one random Friday in January:
[....]I'm asking because I'm building an alternative to npmjs.com, including the admin ui piece
I have a working mvp, although of course it's very 🚧
if this is something you'd like to contribute to, and you've experienced any of these pain points, let me know — always more fun to build together! 🙏
He was inviting people to join a project called npmx.dev, to build a modern browser for the npm registry and 10x'ing the npm package exploration experience.
I don't know if Daniel could have guessed what would happen. After 10 days, the repo had over 100 contributors. After 13 days, over 1000 merged PRs from 199 different contributors.
Today marks the alpha release of npmx.dev, and I would like to share my thoughts on why this project is so important. You might be thinking: 'Why does this matter to the ZurichJS community?' or 'Why should a local swiss meet-up and conference care about people contributing to open source?'
The short answer: Because open source is community, and community is open source.
To quote Matias Capeletto, one of the npmx project stewards: "Communities grow fueled by the value they create for themselves. npmx is useful to us, and that is enough to bind us together [...]"
Many of the tools we use every day exist because someone had a 'Schnapsidee' (a German term used to describe an idea that sounds crazy, useless or foolish, but which can lead to greatness. Thank you, @karpi, for reminding me about it) and had to work really hard to bring that idea to life. As developers, we benefit from open source every single day and yet, most of us never contribute back. Not because we don't want to, but because we don't know where to start, or we don't think we're "good enough," "experienced enough," or we simply never thought about it.
That's where community comes in.
Meet-ups lower the barrier
At ZurichJS, we see developers at every level. Some are just starting out, some have been building things for years. What they all have in common is that they make the effort to leave the house on a weekday evening, sit in a room with strangers, and learn something new (getting a slice of pizza and a beer may help a bit). For many of us, that's already a big step. And it's exactly the same mindset it takes to open your first pull request. When you're surrounded by people who are also learning, contributing to open source suddenly feels a lot less scary. We're all just people trying to build things and get better at it.
Meet-ups create a space where it's okay to be a beginner and that's exactly the space people need to make their first open source contribution.
Conferences can go a step further
A meet-up is a few hours on a weekday evening. A conference is a full day (or more) of focused energy, learning, connection and networking. It's an opportunity to go deeper, to widen your network, to hang out and have a chat with the developers you look up to. That's why we want to use ZurichJS Conf not just to talk about open source, but to actively help people contribute. Imagine a workshop where you don't just learn about git workflows in theory, but actually fork a real project and open a real PR with people around you who can help if you get stuck.
That's what a community conference can do that an online tutorial can't. It can put a human next to you, which is more important than ever these days.
It's not just about code
When we encourage people to get into open source, we're not just saying "go write code for free." We're saying: be part of something bigger than your day job, learn how other real projects work. Get feedback from (skilled and awesome) developers you'd never meet otherwise, build skills that no tutorial can teach you, like reading someone else's codebase, trying to get someone else's project running locally, communicating through pull requests, and handling feedback from people with other perspectives.
These are skills that make you a better developer. And they're also the skills that make teams and communities work.
Why we want to support this
Because we've seen what happens when people feel like they belong somewhere. At every meet-up, we see people who came alone and left with new connections. We see people who were too shy to ask a question but stayed after the talk to chat with the speaker. We see people who just needed someone to say "yes, you can do this" and they'll do a talk at the next one. We see people who want to get involved as volunteers.
Open source is the same. Most people just need a little push and a safe space.
As organizers, we can't write the code for you. But we can create the environment where contributing feels possible. We can invite maintainers to speak and make themselves approachable. We can run workshops that take the fear out of contributing. We can pair up experienced contributors with newcomers. We can normalize the idea that contributing to open source is not something only "senior developers" do.
The ripple effect
Here's what I think happens when a local community actively encourages open source contribution:
People grow, they learn skills they wouldn't learn at work, they build confidence. They can add real contributions to their portfolio. And in the end projects get better. More contributors means more perspectives, more bug reports, more translations, more documentation. The ecosystem improves for everyone.
And that strengthens the community. We think that people who contribute together build deeper connections than people who just attend talks together. And shared work creates shared ownership.
It comes back around. The person who opened their first PR at a ZurichJS workshop might one day maintain a project that another ZurichJS member uses, or they might give a talk about their experience or they might help the next person, who wants to get involved.
That's the kind of cycle we want to be part of.
What we're planning
We don't have all the answers yet, and we're still figuring out the best format. But here's what we're thinking about:
- Open Source nights/hackathons at our meet-ups, where we work on contributions together instead of just hearing talks
- Open Source hackathons on trains, in the mountains or at a barbecue
- First PR workshops at our conference with mentors
- Highlighting Open Source work in our community by celebrating contributions
If you have ideas, we'd love to hear them. Seriously! This is a community effort, and the best ideas usually come from the people in the room, not the people organizing it.
It all starts with showing up
If you've been thinking about contributing to open source but haven't done it yet, come to a meet-up, come to the conference, talk to people. You'll realize that the open source world isn't some exclusive club (although it might seem so). It's just people building things in the open. And if you've already contributed? Help someone else do it too. That's what community is for.
If you also want to be a part of the npmx.dev community, you can! Check out the issues on Github (there is a special "good first issue" tag, if you want to have an easy start) or just join the conversation on the Discord Server.