Yash Thakare
Software Engineer - AI, Mphasis
About Talk
From 8+ Hackathon Wins to Open Source: Turning Weekend Projects into Lasting Impact
We’ll explore:
How to identify a hackathon project worth continuing
Moving from a prototype to a contributor-friendly GitHub project
Getting your first contributors
Writing better documentation and issues
Creating a welcoming contribution experience
Building and maintaining an open-source community
Lessons from growing an open-source community to 10K+ members
How hackathons and open source can create opportunities beyond the code
The goal is simple: winning a hackathon is great, but building something that continues after the hackathon is an even bigger win.
TRACK: FOSS For Everyone
7th Oct 2026 | Hall A | Time:12:15-12:45 PM
About Speaker
Yash Thakare is a Full Stack Developer, AI Engineer, Competitive Programmer and Open Source Community Builder.
A 5★ CodeChef programmer and 8+ time hackathon winner, he has won multiple national and international coding competitions.
He is a Google AI Mentor for Agentic AI, Smart India Hackathon Judge (2024 & 2025) and mentor to multiple hackathon-winning teams.
He is also the former Co-Founder & CTO of SWOC, a 10,000+ member open-source community.
With 30K+ LinkedIn followers, Yash has spoken at DevSummit, ChennaiFOSS, Open Source Connect Global, Pre-AI Summit, GDG events and national hackathons.