Women Rule The Code | An Interview with Top Open Source Contributors

Paloma Oliveira, the most passionate open-source engineer in the world, takes over The Test Automation Experience bringing a gender perspective to the open-source world.

In conversation with Dr. Maren Werstermann and Mariana Meireles, they demystify what open source means and reveal the importance of becoming a contributor.

Maren and Mariana are contributors to key projects for the data science community: Pandas, Scikit-Learn, and Jupyter. During the show, they will share their personal stories navigating through code and open source, the importance of being core contributors to open projects, and how to find time to dedicate to open communities.

On top of that, they are also organizers of PyLadies Berlin, a volunteer-based community working to reduce the huge lack of diversity in the ecosystem. Since 2022 Maren has been leading the HackNights events and bringing more women to the space.

Dr. Maren Westermann works as a machine learning engineer at DB Systel GmbH and holds a PhD in environmental science. She is a self taught Pythonista, an active open source contributor, especially to the library scikit-learn, and is a co-organiser of PyLadies Berlin where she hosts open source hack nights.

Mariana develops software in contexts that are uplifting to the world. She cares about how to effectively employ her efforts to improve altruistic organisations. Currently she’s focusing in the issues of governance in open source and in broad coordination issues.