Note: FOSS Clubs looks like it was created to provide information for the potential leads of the first cohort but now that there’s a cohort, it should probably be updated to include information about the cohort itself
Yes, the new platform will have a clubs page showcasing all our active clubs.
One key thing missing here is the geography of the FOSS club itself - is the club in a city with an active FOSS United meetup chapter?
The clubs were not made keeping the geography in mind but rather the merit of the leads’ applications.
Vishal has shared the current cities in which FOSS clubs are based here
If we’re talking about “Expert Talk”, being in a city with an active FOSS United chapter will help tremendously when finding such “Experts”
Definitely, having a FOSS Club in cities where city chapters are already active has great benefits. Similarly, Cities with FOSS Clubs facilitate the respective City Chapter to host meetups there as well.
If the club is in a city with an active chapter, they should seriously consider someone from the city chapter as their mentor. Having an in-person mentor is better than a virtual mentor, in my humble opinion
Agreed.
Personal opinion - I strongly believe that we should be placing an emphasis on the problems that people solve and why those problems need to be solved instead of the tools that are used to solve the problems. Postgres, React, etc are simply tools that can be used to solve a large number of problems. It is important to understand and appreciate them. Paraphrasing Emmert Wolf, “A software engineer is only as good as his understanding of his tools” but only when you fully understand a problem is when you know what tools to consider using in the first place.
The broader idea of FOSS clubs is definitely evangelism to FOSS in general, irrespective of students’ backgrounds. However, this willl take some time. All club leads so far have a background and belong to CS departments,which is where they established the clubs. Even then, we faced quiet a few problems
For example, one of the leads was asked to keep the club restricted to only AI-ML because they belong to that particular department. Even my department has asked me to keep the club participation restricted to our department only ( There are 3-4 departments in just CS)
Convincing them to let students from just another CS department to be a part of this program seems like a tough road right now, I can only imagine how difficult it is going to be for students from say a science or arts field to be involved here. We definitely have these issues in mind and are trying to think how to convince and educate the authorities on our philosophy.
I will try to document my experience with dealing on this issue with my college as well.