Recommendations for Distinguished Contributors Program

Discussions - Public
1

Axim’s Distinguished Contributor Program is launching at this year’s Open edX Conference (July 1–4, 2025, in Telecom Paris) to honor individuals and organizations whose contributions have made a lasting impact on the Open edX ecosystem.

If you’d like to suggest a contribution from the team at OpenCraft, please feel free to do so in this thread. We’ll need any suggestions by June 3rd. I will complete the nomination form once suggestions are made, but here are the questions that will be asked:

"Which technical advancement, contribution, or improvement made a real difference?
Please take a moment to reflect on what kind of achievement stood out to you.
Here are a few guiding questions to help you think — you don’t need to answer all of them; they’re just here to inspire your response:

  • Did you notice a fix, feature, or tool that improved how you or others use Open edX platform?
  • Have you seen a project that significantly raised the bar for code quality or documentation?
  • Was there a contribution that made development or deployment smoother or more efficient?"

Please note, if selected as a Distinguished Contributor there is some commitment (partially optional) to mentorship as part of the program:

KR 2.1: Create a mentorship framework where at least 50% of Distinguished Contributors actively mentor new community members.
KR 2.2: Facilitate monthly/ quarterly knowledge-sharing sessions led by Distinguished Contributors (e.g., webinars, panel discussions).
KR 2.3: Ensure at least 5 Distinguished Contributors actively participate in Open edX Working Groups and strategic initiatives.

Thank you!

4 Likes
2

Thanks @jordan . For budget here this would likely have to come from the core contributor hours budget - for core contributors, time answering this or fulfilling the duties of Distinguished Contributor would I think count towards core contributor time.

3

Although I can think of many OpenCraft team members who could become distinguished Contributors, my top recommendation would be to nominate @braden. However, he is currently very busy with Axim work, so I’m not sure if he can commit to mentorship or additional contribution work. I’ll let him decide ; )

3 Likes
4

What does this entail? If it’s answering questions etc., then I already do that. But if it means reserving hours of time to do pair programming via Zoom, that would be tough for me to fit in.

5

Good question, I’ve left a message to get some more information on the potential commitment to mentoring.

6

@braden Vineet, the creator of the proposal for this program, said they do not have a reliable way to measure the commitment to mentorship, but he said they prefer a focus on quality over quantity. They’d like to invite members of they program to help define and decide what that mentorship will end up looking like, but there doesn’t appear to be any firm monthly commitments. It sounds like it’s up to you what that will look like.

1 Like