FOSS Club GEC Palakkad - Updates Thread

Students Program FOSS Clubs
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This forum thread is intended to provide information on the updates and events of FOSS Clubs GEC Palakkad, one of the 12 clubs established in the first batch of FOSS Clubs program by FOSS United Foundation.

The purpose of this thread is to post updates on the activities, event plans/reports, and projects undertaken by the club.

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3-Month Plan (October - November)

October

  • FOSS Clubs Onboarding & Core Team Formation (Completed)
  • Introduction to FOSS (Completed)
    • A collaboration with Zendalona (A company providing Free and Open-Source Accessibility Solutions )

November

  • Diving Straight into Contribution
    • A session on finding good projects to work on.
  • Linux Installation Party
  • Intro to Open Source Programs such as GSoC, Outreachy, LFX Mentorship etc - Session

December

  • Ritu Collaboration & School Visits
    • Visit nearby schools to teach students and teachers to properly use resources there such as Raspberry Pi, Arduino and to introduce FOSS to them.
  • Start OpenHack 3.0
    • An state-level program that spans a month and intends to handhold beginners into contribution to Open-Source.

Some Background Activities

  • Projects
    • Creating a Custom version on Telegram with additional features for students.
      • Requirement collection going on
    • Create a website for FOSS Clubs
    • 5 Teams working along with Zendalona to create Accessible Free and Open Source Software and adding Accessibility to already existing software.
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Updates from Catchup Call #1

Attendees: [ @Viswanatha_Kartha_V , @wisharya , Ansh]

Updates from the club’s end

  • September - An introductory event was conducted and participants were to create their own portfolio projects.
  • October -As mentioned in the roadmap above, an event was conducted in collaboration with https://zendalona.com/. The speaker shared their open source journey, being blind since 4th grade and started making software and tools to help out his father. This eventually became their career.
  • The company maintains CoconutOS, an accessible OS built on top of ubuntu to provide accessibility to blind people.
  • They also talked about how to get started with open source
  • The event went great with a turnout of 60 people
  • Later on, 5 teams of 3-4 people were formed to work on FOSS projects stressing on accessibility.
  • A few ideas have come up, for example an OSM based map project for blind folks.
  • These projects are now in research stage. The teams have been visiting blind schools to interact with people and learn about their requirements and problems.
  • November was packed with exams and there was not much activity.

Future Plans

  • Excited for the Intro to Open Source event](FOSS Clubs - 2024 Roadmap - #16 by ansh), was planning something similar himself.
  • Restarting OpenHack - an initiative to help students to contribute to open source. ( @wisharya was also a participant in 2019)
  • Will be happy to host a Local FOSS hack

General Discussions

  • More activity on the forum will be helpful, documenting all major events and projects etc.
  • Start looping in other members of the core team (second years) into major activities, so we have potential candidates to lead the club once the current leads’ tenure ends.
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