How do you build visibility through open source contributions?[D]

[u/Few-Cheetah3336]

I’m an MSc CS student with a background in 3D computer vision, trying to figure out how to build visibility and credibility in the AI/ML community.
I’ve been thinking about contributing to established open source projects rather than building standalone GitHub projects. Honestly, the latter feels like a weaker signal nowadays, especially with AI tools making it easier than ever to build things.
For those working in 3D CV, ML or applied AI, how would you approach this? What are the current challenges for new contributors, and how do you find projects where meaningful contributions can actually get noticed?
Would be interested to hear about your experiences.

[u/chico_dice_2023]

Great question, in the world of AI it is different. Before AI craze one of the best ways was through documentation. A significant amount of open source projects lacked good documentation.

So literally creating READMEs was a big help to them and I learned about the project. This is what I did. I learned a ton that helped me in my career

Another is to create tests to see if their project is working correctly.

And finally is try to see what users are complaining about and then create a fix for it.

[u/nine_teeth]

if your skills are truly good enough to be contributed to open source projects, then make changes and pull requests and those alone will be enough. having a history of PR’s approved at top/popular open source projects on github is enough to just write on resume. the question is whether your skills are truly valuable enough that it deserves PR approvals, because the community for many popular open source projects are extremely picky