FOSS United Chennai May FSF 40 - Call for Workshops

Meetup
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May FSF 40 event

In commemoration of 40th anniversary of Free Software Foundation (FSF), we are planning on conducting a exclusive workshop starting at 2:30 PM till 6 PM.

The workshop will be lead by a group of individuals, aimed to foster collaborative learning about FOSS tools and technologies.

The deadline for proposals is May 14, 2025.

Proposal structure

  • Title: The title of your workshop, keep it small and memorable
  • Team members, including the workshop lead: Tag the members involved with the workshop or provide a link to your socials so that we can reach out to you. Team size can range from 2 to 4.
  • Volunteers: Additional volunteers (if needed) who will be handling the logistics before and during the event. It can range from 2 to 4.
  • Background: Previous experience with the associated technologies, tools or process involved in the workshop with needed references.
  • Description: Description of your workshop, the background pertaining to the technology, process or tool that you’re covering.
  • Bill of Materials: The materials that the participants are expected to bring (laptops, peripherals, any related hardware), needed software to be installed on it for participation (*nix, Python, etc.).
  • Pre-requisites: Expected skills from participants, along with the needed instructions for setting up their system described in Bill of Materials beforehand, provide links if needed.
  • References: References to the workshop you’re conducting for documentation access and learning among participants.
  • Support (optional): Support needed from FOSS United Chennai, from technical assistance to attendees, guiding through workshop. Please bear in mind that you’re the one to conduct the workshop and will be leading it primarily, we will only be able to provide assistance.

Guidelines

  1. Keep the workshop relevant to FOSS principles and ideologies, it can involve any FOSS tool or technology or process (self-hosting, configuration management, installation, etc.)
  2. Only one proposal will be selected upon double blind review, so make sure you include as much details as possible to get approval.
  3. We will announced the selected workshop in this thread by May 18, 2025.
  4. Workshop lead along with the volunteers and members are expected to be on the day of the event (May 24, 2025). In case of unavailability of members, please make a call within yourself and find replacement. In case of unavailability of majority of the team due to unforeseen circumstances, please reply to this thread stating your unavailability by May 22, 2025.
  5. Attendees will be sent a mail with the bill of materials and guidelines 3 days before the event.
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We have extended the deadline for submission for the proposals by May 16, 2025. This is your chance to submit one if you are having a fresh workshop idea in your mind.

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Title: Self-hosting made simple

Team members: @grittypuffy, @Sakhil_Ahamed, @Suslime, @Arya_Kiran, Philip Moses

Background:
As free software enthusiasts, we have experience in self-hosting and understanding regarding the nuances, pitfalls, best practices and strategies for maintenance and operation of self-hosted services, which would help us in providing a gentle and friendly introduction to self-hosting to further get involved in it.

Description:

This workshop aims to provide a beginner-friendly introduction and hands-on experience on self-hosting to gain control over personal information and computation by reducing reliance on cloud services or proprietary offerings.

The workshop is structured as:

  • Self-hosting and its importance - 20 minutes
  • Getting started with dependencies and components - 20 minutes
  • Demonstration with privacy-respecting frontend: Piped - 25 minutes
  • Demonstration with consumer-facing products: Ente - 40 minutes
  • Troubleshooting and administration - 20 minutes
  • Key considerations for self-hosting - 20 minutes

This workshop provides technically familiar participants to consider self-hosting services using their personal computing equipments while staying vigilant of potential pitfalls by being equipped with troubleshooting techniques for overcoming major barriers to adoption of self-hosting.

Bill of Materials:

  1. A laptop with at least 4 GB of RAM and 4th generation and above x86_64 processor - This is needed to run multiple Docker containers and background services. Macbooks are fine as long as it doesn’t rely on Silicon chips.
  2. Ubuntu/Debian based distribution or Linux distributions with systemd is recommended. If you’re using Windows, kindly use WSL or Linux VM, although you may experience performance issues while running containers.

Pre-requisites:

  1. Familiarity with basics of Linux, CLI and Docker with knowledge on executing scripts.
  2. Ability to make necessary amendments to configuration files using text editors by following documentation and troubleshooting for generic issues.

References:

  1. Overview - Piped
  2. Self Hosting | Ente Help
  3. https://projectsegfau.lt
  4. Self Hosting 101 - A Beginner's Guide
1 Like
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s/‘https://help.ente.io’/‘Self Hosting | Ente Help’/g ?

Because both of us know, that the former is all product documentation :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
5

Thanks a ton, fixed the link, meant the latter link. Cheers!

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Title: Tracking and mapping surveillance using OSM

Team members: @vignesh , Kiran

Background:
SFLC.in has been supporting and promoting free software and personal digital rights. As part we have been tracking Internet shutdowns, Free speech violation in the digital space in India and planning to track surveillance (majorly CCTV surveillance camera) as well.

Description:

This workshop aims to provide introduction to Open street map, open map data and contributing to such data. By doing so to track the state of surveillance in your city.
This is currently a pilot project, collaborating with local OpenStreetMap volunteers and contributors.

This workshop will consists of :
1. Introduction of OSM, and mapping
2. Creating OSM account
3. Basic editing using iD Editor
4. Mapping using mobile apps like OSMAnd~, Everydoor etc
5. Retrieving map data
6. Mapping with local mapping communities
7. How to participate in SFLC.in’s surveillance tracking project

What to expect from the workshop:
you will get to learn about

  1. Community engagement
  2. Building open source tools for the tracker
  3. Contributing to OpenStreetMap data
  4. Organising Mapping parties
  5. Providing awareness and interest in contributing to map.
  6. why maps are important for visualising such data.

Bill of Materials:
A laptop with web browser and internet connection
Smart phone with GPS (preferably Android, but iOS will work as well)

2 Likes