The Data Use and Education team at the National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) advances NASA’s open science goals by working toward accessible, collaborative data practices and growing the Earthdata user community. One component of this work is collaborating with Openscapes, a group that strives for more efficient, reproducible, transparent, inclusive, and community-centered science through mentorship, coaching, and shared learning. On December 15, 2025, the NSIDC DAAC co-led a community hackday in partnership with Openscapes and the Cloud Native Geospatial (CNG) community; the event was proposed in song and supported as part of Earth Science Information Partners’ (ESIP) FUNding Friday. The goal of the event was to introduce and expand the user community of earthaccess, a Python library that streamlines discovery and access to NASA Earthdata by reducing complex workflows to a few lines of code. Beyond technical onboarding, the hackday emphasized community-building, supporting (and welcoming!) both new users and contributors, while also exploring opportunities for earthaccess to evolve to support a broader ecosystem of Earth science data providers. The hybrid event engaged 41 participants (14 in person, 27 virtual) and was supported by 22 facilitators and co-leads representing multiple organizations, including six NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers, Development Seed, the UC Berkeley Center for Data Science & Environment, the University of New Hampshire, ESIP, and Openscapes. Here, we present strategies for balancing technical development with community growth, fostering participation across all experience levels, and leveraging cross-institutional collaboration to build open science communities, with the goal of empowering others to employ similar strategies.