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Schrodinger Hat
I didn't found Schrodinger Hat. I joined it as an unknown, worked hard, and earned my place — to the point of becoming a co-founder and one of the principal members of the organization. This is the story of what happens when a developer decides to leave the comfort zone and build something with others.
//Starting from the last row
Schrodinger Hat was founded in 2021 by a small group of developers who put out a call to action: come build an international open source community with us. I saw it in 2022 and thought: why not? It was an uncomfortable choice — I was shy, not particularly public-facing, and had no experience running anything beyond a codebase.
I joined as the last person in. No role, no title, no authority. Just the willingness to contribute and see what happened.
//The work nobody tells you about
Running a non-profit community looks like organizing events and writing code. In reality, it's also finance management, sponsor acquisition, speaker outreach, newsletter campaigns, social media strategy, logistics, and contracts. None of these appear in any engineering job description.
Open Source Day is our flagship conference — a full-day, free event in Florence. Keeping it free means finding the money elsewhere. I've sat across from companies and made the case for a sponsorship worth thousands of euros. That's not a skill you learn by writing Go code.
Over time, through consistent contribution, I became a socio fondatore — a co-founder in the formal sense — and an admin member of the organization. I didn't start there. I earned it.
//Skills I didn't expect to develop
I was shy. Schrodinger Hat pushed me onto stages. Once you've pitched a conference to a corporate sponsor, speaking at a meetup feels easy. Now it's one of the things I actively seek out.
Finding sponsors taught me how to communicate value to people who don't speak engineering. That same skill translates directly to selling a technical decision to a C-level or a PM — understanding their concerns, framing the solution in their language.
Managing a budget of €7–10k per event, negotiating with vendors, tracking costs — it made me more commercially aware as an engineer. I now understand why business constraints exist, not just that they exist.
A community is made of people with very different skills. Designers, marketers, speakers, sponsors, volunteers. Learning to work with all of them — and coordinate without authority — is the best preparation for leading an engineering team.
//Open Source Day
Five editions. Free admission. Florence. Hundreds of developers, students, and professionals who come because they want to be part of something — not because their company paid for it.
The feedback we hear most often is that Open Source Day feels like a community, not a conference. That's intentional. Every logistical choice — from the schedule to the hallway layout — is made with one question: does this help people connect?
It's the project I'm most proud of. And the one that costs me the most sleep.
osday.dev →//What I learned
Community can change your career in ways no job posting can. The company where I'm now Tech Lead — I found through a connection I made at a community event. Not through LinkedIn. Not through a recruiter. Through showing up consistently and building relationships with people who care about the same things.
The comfort zone is a slow trap. It feels safe because nothing is changing — but nothing is growing either. Joining Schrodinger Hat was uncomfortable. So was speaking on stage for the first time, and cold-calling sponsors, and managing a budget I'd never managed before. Every one of those discomforts made me better at the things that matter.
The community is open to everyone.
Anyone can contribute, volunteer, and grow — regardless of where they start.
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