This is the story of how I (and with me, my company) went from lonely, introvert, C# developer to open-source Python author and maintainer, speaker, trainer, consultant, and all-around community junkie. With some luck, in the process, you will also hear a few hints on how to become a good open source contributor and have a chance to ponder on the pros and cons (yes there are cons too) of going full monty with open source. We will also look at what changed in my company as we slowly switched from closed, in-house eco-systems to the open source field.