Polina Petrova: Why soft skills matter in open-source collaboration

People working on open-source projects should develop empathy, cooperation and creativity alongside their technical skills, international expert Polina Petrova said in an interview at the 2026 World Internet Conference (WIC) Wuzhen Summit.

Petrova, a WIC Global Youth Leader and a legal and ethics authority expert in new technologies at the Law and Internet Foundation, said that her foundation is working on several technology projects to promote open source.

In projects that bring together people from different countries, everyone has a role to play, she said.

Differences can make it difficult to work together, but they should not keep people from trying. For Petrova, that is one reason that soft skills matter more than ever.