May will be action-packed here at Opensource.com. Let’s jump right in like a cannonball into the pool!

^{Photo by Mike P. Miller on Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0}

Open hardware

Open hardware is our overarching May focus, and we’ll deliver up stories and how-tos during the month, including a review of the Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless that debuted on February 28, and 8 ways to get started with open source hardware from a guy who’s built multiple starship bridges, a replica of K-9 from the popular British TV show, and a pile of his own hardware.

Get started reading early with some of our recent open hardware articles:

Event series

Jono Bacon’s Community Leadership Summit (May 6-7) and O’Reilly’s OSCON (May 8-11) will be in Austin, Texas this year. Hear why CLS will be “the event of the year for community managers” from Opensource.com’s Jason Hibbets. And check out our ongoing series from a few OSCON speakers—brand new articles hit the wire every day next week.

OpenStack Summit Boston (May 8-11) will focus on a “mix of open technologies building the modern infrastructure stack,” including OpenStack, Kubernetes, Ansible, and more. In our series, hear from Mark Collier, Chief Operating Officer of the OpenStack Foundation, and other great minds working on open infrastructure.

PyCon US 2017 (May 17-25) will be in Portland, Oregon and focus on topics important to Python users and developers. Learn how the BeeWare suite of libraries and bridges will help Python developers deploy code across platforms, and keep an eye out for more articles on Opensource.com from this year’s PyCon speakers as we publish them in May.

Editorial chats

Last month we started something new: editorial chats with some of the Opensource.com staff to answer your writing questions, from How do I get started writing about my project? to How do I format my article for submission? 

In May, we’ll hold two sessions on:

May 10 from 12:00 – 13:00 (ET), 16:00 – 17:00 (UTC)

May 23 from 14:00 – 15:00pm (ET), 18:00 – 19:00 (UTC)

Find us on IRC at #opensource.com on irc.freenode.net

New to IRC? Not a problem. Here’s a tutorial for how to get started.

The Open Organization

In April (and after nearly three months of hard work), the Open Organization Ambassadors released the next major version of The Open Organization Definition, which is now online. They’re always interested in hearing what you think, so why not drop them a line on GitHub this month?

In May, new writer Michael Doyle offers a crash course in effective open communication, and Philip Foster explains why reversing policies designed to create openness can be tricky—and potentially destructive. We’ll also continue to publish weekly chapters from the upcoming Guide to IT Culture Change. Laura Hilliger will relay some great advice for dealing with impostor syndrome, and Allison Matlack will teach us the difference between “doing things right” and “doing the right things.”