Napari, an open-source viewer for scientific data, has an inviting and well-established community that encourages contribution to its own project and the broader bioimage analysis community. This talk will explore how napari supports non-traditional contributors—especially those without formal software development experience—through its welcoming community, human-centered documentation, and rich plugin ecosystem.
As someone with a pure biology background, I will share my journey into computational bioimage analysis and the scientific Python world, and contributing to napari's community. By sharing my experience writing a plugin and contributing to the core project, I will show how community-driven projects, like napari, lower barriers to entry, empower scientists, and cultivate a diverse, engaged research and developer community.