Nice!
It doesn’t look like there’s a participation problem among students 
, this seems amazing
I had missed out a few details during the call.
We got 41 responses for the form and we shortlisted 18 candidates based on the response. We (a small team of fourth years and third years) did a 1 hour jitsi interview for each of them and evaluated them based on how well they could learn new things, like understanding a FOSS project from its README or learning to code from w3schools example.
I was wrong there. Core team structure is 4 first years, 1 second year, 2 third years, 3 fourth years. Also, we decided not to have sub teams as at least half of us will be occupied at any given time. We mostly volunteer for different things for each event.
What I meant was that while the number of students who register and participate is high and they listen to talks, we haven’t been able to connect with them the way we wanted to. The college management sees this as just another club that does events and the students seem to have a similar view. The problem as I see it is that they are used to studying or coding for getting grades, not building software or applying the things they learn since that’s how they grew up. Changing that is not an easy task since it involves some other factors, like social privileges. I might be wrong but the people I know who have worked with FOSS projects all had the privilege of growing up with computers and internet (including me) and I think that it had a role in building the free culture in them. But not everyone has the privilege of having the right conditions that could lead them to embrace the open source philosophy. We students can connect with each other better than teachers but there are limits to what we can do. Hopefully things are going to get better after the visit in February, since volunteers at FOSSU have more experience working with people at the ground level.
I agree with that and we’ll try to fix that. I’ve noticed communication problems inside and outside the core team, and one of the things we did to reduce that was to use taiga to communicate and document things. This is something similar (and better) to issues in github, gitlab, etc except we use it for non-software stuff. We’re just beginning to use it, and it won’t be entirely hassle-free.
There are some colleges with mailing lists or website subdomains to inform students of events and other stuff. We don’t have anything like that and currently we use social media for spreading word (Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp, PixelFed) and print posters a few days before the event. If there are suggestions on how we can improve that would be great.
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I can relate to this a lot, and I’ve seen this not just among club members but also in our audience at city chapters.
Yes, @wisharya let’s also try to get somebody in out network to give a talk at one of the clubs’ events, maybe someone from the Kochi chapter might be interested.
You will be provided with a portal for the club in the upcoming FOSS United Platform that should be able to help create events, manage participants, we can also help with managing a mailing list. The club members can also start working on a website for the club? Would be a good project for first/second years.
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Sharing this in the Kochi community.
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I would honestly say that it feels like you are trying to rush. You can’t force yourself to learn about FOSS or generally get interested into it. It will be very easy for someone who can catch up with the concept and starts enjoying it.
Have been in your shoes. I noticed the same problem and tried making a change but only was able to change 3 people. Even those 3 haven’t changed properly, 2 of them are still lurking behind things like “Good Grades == Good College == Good Placement”. I constantly try manipulating their thoughts by knocking them with real life. You can try talking with them and in the same way give them anecdotes on how the ratio for self learning and academics should be. The problem is not with them, those folks are actually ready to accept it but don’t want to accept the reality as “Good Placements” again block their vision for freedom and FOSS>
Other than this I barely can say anything, as this is something like fighting against the system.
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December - Linux installation fest
We conducted a Linux installation fest on December 21. It was our first event not restricted to the CSE department. We got 7 registrations and 5 attended. Everyone was busy with last minute classes, internal and external lab exams, submission of pending works, Christmas decorations and celebration works, etc. and we were allotted December 21 for the event.
Most of us aren’t familiar with different flavours so we asked some questions in the registration form to help participants choose a distro. Based on the responses we decided to show them elementary OS, Zorin and KDE neon but in the end everyone wanted Zorin.
The Good
- Open to everyone
- Attended persons were happy with the distro and they helped in the event
- Zero costs
The Bad
- Only 9 attended, including the core team
- More than half of the core team were busy
- No one from other departments participated
Future events
We have semester exams in January and we are planning to conduct our next events in February and March. We got a volunteer from FOSSU Kochi group and we’ll plan our next event after the university issues the academic calendar for the next semester.
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hey,
I think this should be shifted be shift to the Good assets, 9 for the first Linux Installation Party is more than enough.
I remember back on 7th July this year, for the first time we started with the idea of Linux Installation Party with the Pune Team. And, it was a 95%+ no show.
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You should consider having a small part of the regular club events dedicated to installation fests, like they now do in chennai chapter.
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2024 plans
January
- Exam time, no events planned
- Shared the FOSS101 posters and link on social media
- Core team meetup after exams to talk about the club and new events, and to get feedback
February
- Classes start after exams
- Jobin has volunteered for a session
- We’re expecting more attendance since no one will be busy with exams and assignments in Feb
- Treasure hunt
March
- College tech fest planned on March 22 & 23 (Friday & Saturday)
- Fest is open to everyone
- FOSS club is conducting events and we’d like support from FOSSU. The core team had discussed the events we’re doing and after taking events by other clubs and communities into account this is the event structure we decided:
- Talks related to FOSS: 20 mins to 2 hour talks (around 5 talks, day 1 and day 2)
- Linux installation party: always-on basis in computer lab, day 1&2
- Competition: game similar to treasure hunt (4 hours)
- Workshop: hands-on workshop on any topic (one day)
- We would like feedback and suggestions on the plan and would like volunteers for the talks and workshops
PS I’ve asked the staff coordinator about hosting FOSS Hack 4.0 in STIST and I’ll post after she asks the principal’s opinion.
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I had asked the staff coordinator about hosting FOSS Hack 4.0 here. College needs to know the “prerequisites” like what we’re expecting from the college to do, how many rooms we’ll need, wifi, duration, etc.
If there are no other plans to host FOSS Hack 4.0 anywhere else in Thiruvananthapuram, we’re willing to host it if our college accepts the prerequisites/requirements.
Major requirement will be for the college to be open to accept participants from outside the college as well.
Apart from that, you should have a better idea about the turnout and expected participation. We can get multiple classrooms or a single big hall accordingly.
Wifi and a projector will be helpful.
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The staff coordinator said she will ask the authorities on Monday. I’ll post when I get a response.
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Inter-college tech fest
The college is planning an intercollege tech fest on 2024-03-21T18:30:00Z→2024-03-22T18:30:00Z. The fest consists of events (talks, workshops, competitions) by different clubs in the college and registration will be open to students of all colleges. The FOSS Club has planned the following structure for their events:
- One hands-on workshop related to FOSS (full day with lunch break in between) - Guidelines
- Talks related to FOSS (day 1 and day 2, 10 mins to 2 hours) - Guidelines
- Linux installation party (2 days)
- Competition (game similar to treasure hunt, 4 hours)
Requirements from FOSS United
- Speakers for the workshop and talks
- Swags (t-shirts for core team and stickers for talk&workshop participants)
- Sponsor snacks and tea for participants, and prize money for competition
- Feedback and suggestions
So far
- Core team has finalized the structure
- Competition plan is almost ready
- Prepared for Linux installation party (reusing OSes from previous Linux fest)
- @ansh is helping with making a CFP and reaching out to speakers
- @wisharya says he’d like to give a talk after checking with the dates
- All events will be free to register
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Please send an email to grants@fossunited.org, mentioning the expenses and approximate monetary requirements from our end.
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Goal-Driven Triumph: Navigating Challenges to Success by Jobin Selvanose
We’re doing a session this Friday on developing an interest in coding and helping students think like a dev. The speaker is a 20 year old web developer from Thiruvananthapuram. It’s open to all students in the college. Draft registration form
Requirements from FOSSU
- Fund for tea and snacks (I’ll email the invoice after the event)
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February 
Goal-Driven Triumph: Navigating Challenges to Success by Jobin Selvanose on 2024-02-02T05:30:00Z→2024-02-02T07:30:00Z
Report
- Session was supposed to be about developer habits and mindsets
- Some miscommunications ended up in the talk being solely about motivating students to set a goal, make money, etc.
- Speaker seemed a bit too confident and went on talking about the usefulness of money, high paying job, etc.
- Talk deviated towards “success” and other stuff
- Might have affected our “image” as a club
- Anyways, the tea and snacks were good and the QA was useful.
Findings
- Students get bored when session is too long, even when tea break is given in between
- Students decide whether to engage/concentrate or snore from how they perceive the first few minutes of the talk
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This happens, following the CFP model (or just reviewing the content beforehand) should solve this to some extent.
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March Tech Fest stuff
The college is conducting a 3-day inter-college tech fest on 2024-03-14T18:30:00Z→2024-03-16T18:30:00Z (moved due to conflicts with CET fest and FOSS Meet). The FOSS Club is organizing the following events:
- Hosting talks related to FOSS (CFP open until Feb 21): [CFP] Speakers for talks in STIST tech fest
- Linux installation party
- Treasure-hunt like competition
Status
- 2 persons willing to give a talk
Sent an email today
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It is sad to hear this report. I should have this reply because I have tagged and used images in this forum.
Sorry If I didn’t have a session about OSS, But while discussing it before the month I said that I would take some general topic.
This was my reply when it said the most students are not aware of code.
Then can we have an general topic? Which is like how to become better developer or some kind of habits/mindset shift? But its not related to oss
So taking technical sessions is not better for the audience, that’s why I prefer to speak about some good habits and mindset that help to achieve goals as a developer.
The topic of money is just a module I talked about.
- Skill Based Economy
- Money
- Types of Skills
- Passion
- Timeline cycle of growth
- Goal, what is a goal and what is not a goal
- Possibility and Probability
- Affirmation and vision board
- Discipline equals freedom
- Extreme Ownership
- Work Ethics
- Habits
- Perception equals reality
- Internal and external perception
- Networking and its important
- Q&A
These are the modules I took, every module I took was exampled and talked retable to engineers and developers. So sorry to say that I was not only talked about misconceptions about money and high-income jobs. That was just a module and I literally spoke only 5 - 7 minutes. The only problem was I took this topic to the wrong audience. I had taken the same session to a group of college students and it was very interactive and that was for monetary benefits, I think the session happened on STIST was the wrong audience and was not serious and 90% was not interactive to open-ended questions.
Sorry if these comments hurt anyone. but this is the reality. I said my session would not be FOSS related and It was a voluntary session without looking for any benefits. The time I spent between my schedule and shared values is my contribution. Glad to know the Q/A helps but it seems only 2 -5 minutes Q/A.
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Yukthi’24 - College tech fest
The FOSS Club conducted talks, a competition and a linux installation party as part of the first college tech fest.
March 15, Friday
- How we cloud connected our maruti dzire, and how you can too by Vishal DS, STIST – cancelled due to delay in Yukthi inauguration and speeches
- Why and How of FOSS by @wisharya, FOSS United
- Digital security and state of internet shutdowns in India by Kiran S Kunjumon, SFLC.in
March 16, Saturday
- Prav Messenger: Convenience, Privacy and Choice by Ananthu C V, Debian Maintainer
- Open Data: An Introduction by Athul R T, FOSS Enthusiast
- Exploring Self hosting by Advaith Narayanan, MITS FOSS Club Lead
- SegFault – CTF+Treasure hunt based competition using CLI tools and clues on paper
March 17, Sunday
- Linux installation party
Report
- All sessions were awesome
- Timings got delayed, and participants weren’t happy with that
- Some participants came just for activity points (KTU students get points for participating in talks and workshops and they are mandatory for getting college degree)
- Many people who registered didn’t attend the sessions
- Sessions were interactive, and many participants talked with the speakers, which is unusual in our college
Things we learned
- Too many events are not manageable
- Most people attend tech fests with an aim to either have fun or learn new stuff but not both
- Many college students care more about activity points than learning new stuff
- Students are more interested and attentive when new ideas are presented in a way they can relate to
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