OTel in Practice: How can I contribute to OpenTelemetry if I’m not a developer?

If you're a first time contributor to OpenTelemetry, it can be daunting to get started, especially if code is not your forte. For this session, we are thrilled to present one of the OpenTelemetry Community Award 2025 winners, Diana Todea! Diana, a Localization SIG Maintainer and Director of Developer Relations at VictoriaMetrics, will talk about contributing beyond code.

From Diana:

For many people discovering OpenTelemetry for the first time, contributing can seem synonymous with writing code. But the OpenTelemetry community is much broader than its repositories, and there are many meaningful ways to contribute without being a developer.

Localization SIGs are a great example. They bring together contributors who translate documentation, review terminology, improve accessibility for local communities, and help make OpenTelemetry easier to understand and adopt in their own languages. For many contributors, this can be their first experience participating in a large open source project.

In this talk, I’ll explore what localization communities actually do, why first-time contributors choose to get involved, and what turns an initial contribution into an ongoing commitment. What motivates someone to keep contributing week after week? What do contributors gain from participating? And what can an open source community do to make that first step easier and create a welcoming path from newcomer to regular contributor?

We’ll look at real experiences from localization communities and discuss what other open source projects can learn about onboarding, inclusion, and building communities where contributors can find their own way to participate.