The year 2023 is near to an end, marking a significant period for FOSS United and its new initiatives. These include the establishment of new City Chapters, FOSS Clubs, FOSS Awards, Diversity Scholarships, the New Platform, and “United by FOSS” and “Voices of Volunteers” Podcasts.
This thread is dedicated to sharing your insights on the year 2023 along with FOSS United and its activities through out the year.
Starting with me:
In my vision and opinion from a third person perspective I feel that FOSS United as an organization is trying to bring some change into the world of Software (maybe society too), Engineering and Technology in India. I remember Vishal saying, “There is a lot of FOSS coming in India in the next few years”. And, with FOSS United, I honestly see the upcoming years as a time period of revolution, if it works out really well.
I was a Linux user and a FOSS learner before too, but I did not really know what a community around FOSS was. That’s when I got introduced to FOSS United through some random linkedin page.
Here’s the timeline of events I have actually enjoyed and learned a lot:
March 11, 2023: Attended MumbaiFOSS’23
I had a lot of conference, and that’s when I got more excited and took Free Software and Open Source seriously. MumbaiFOSS’23. That was the time when I actually saw people like Rushabh, Vishal, Riya and Kailash from away only not being even able to go and start a conversation.
April 1, 2023: PuneFOSS’23
Just attending a conference every time did not feel right. FOSS United gave a platform enough for people to be able to learn, teach, evangelize and share opinions for everyone. I got a chance too. That’s when I first had a talk with @wisharya 
and I’m glad I did.
August 27, 2023: SolapurFOSS’23
I organized a small yet good conference in my own city where no one knows FOSS and tech so deep like other metropolitan cities. It indeed was hard, but it was really fun giving a try at manipulating students minds into using FOSS and understanding what FOSS actually meant. Fortunately some took it on nerve, and started learning about it.
Slowly with time, I started involving more into FOSS United because I was enjoying a lot. I got to talk with Riya, K, Rushabh, Ansh, Harsh, Kaustubh, Sai Rahul, Aakansha and a whole lot of other people (the list is pretty huge). I learned some or the other thing new from each of them!!
Co-organizing IndiaFOSS with a total of 45 other volunteers was yet another fun moment.
Overall: A great year, with great people and great memories. Looking ahead to 2024!
Insane growth all across the board in the FOSS United Universe. Maybe too overwhelming to comprehend all of it. Big win is finding motivated folks like yourself (and a few others) in the journey and the group become larger. Still feels like early days though - we have a long long way to go. My scale of thinking is at least ~10 years.
I came across FOSS United when its annual event was held in Delhi in October 2022; Delhi FOSS. I was a first-year student back then and was surprised to see the cost was just 99 INR, and with that small amount, I could meet and see a lot of speakers from all over India. I was excited and looked forward to that.
That day was fun, insightful and knowledgeable, and I met with many people there for the first time.
I was also involved in FOSS Hack 3.0 where I gave a talk on my golang project called Box CLI Maker, and the volunteers helped me and reviewed my talk and content to make it even better. Since then I have grown a lot and can speak publicly without any fear.
After that, I wanted to be involved in the next Delhi FOSS event. That is where I met Vishal and started to organize monthly FOSS Meetups in Delhi. I learnt a lot about how to organize events, outreach speakers and venues, network and handle an event (I still mess up a bit). Then I met Shivam and Sejal with whom I organize meetups in Delhi.
As for India FOSS 3.0, it was the conference I always wanted to happen in India due to the talks, the crowd, the booths, the organizers etc.
I can’t enough thank FOSS United which personally helped me to grow. I am looking forward to FOSS United next year as well!
I have had an amazing year in this community and have seen it scale new heights and milestones. I also got the chance to contribute to its growth and be an active part of various initiatives.
ChennaiFOSS - ChennaiFOSS was my introduction to FOSS United, I saw the event listed on this educational events page . This couldn’t have happened at a better time, I was a third year computer science student confused about my future plans, kept hearing about the words Open Source, Communities and what not but got too overwhelmed when it actually came to contributing to a project or attending a meetup.
I was surprised at the ticket cost (Student tickets were 50rs) and ended up buying it just to go and see what was FOSS all about. It was during this period that I also went through the FOSS United website,read more about the foundation and joined the telegram group.
I knew @stalwartcoder from some previous community events at Chennai and reached out to him asking if there were any opportunities to volunteer. I was shortly onboarded as an on ground volunteer a few days before the event.
The conference in itself was amazing, got to listen some very unique talks and panel discussions and talked to the speakers. We decided to do this regularly and start planning monthly meetups.
FOSS United Chennai - I have had the opportunity to witness the growth of this community first hand. All the efforts @Suslime , Immanuel and Sakhil have put into scaling this community are amazing to me. Every meetup of ours is better than the previous one in terms of the proposals we’ve been getting,diversity at the meetup and audience interactions.
The chapter has also played a crucial role in my personal interests towards FOSS, and is majorly what inspired me to use and evangelise FOSS.
IndiaFOSS 3.0 - I had spent a majority of this year watching talks from IndiaFOSS 2.0, so seeing it all come to action for the third edition and being involed in the process was an amazing experience, and the results did not disappoint.
I was part of the community partnerships workgroup, and I’m happy to see that our plans to increase the participation of students in the conference succeeded. The unconference track was the highlight of the conference for me and I’m excited to see us delve deeper into this model next year.
Diversity Scholarships - I’m grateful to Vishal for instantly agreeing to and helping me proceed with this initiative, even though it was just an idea and we didn’t have much idea as to how to plan this out effectively.
We got unexpected support from the community and were able to raise 1.55 lakh INR.
While targeted outreach (reaching out to communities that work with underrepresented groups) worked well, our open applications were not able to reach the target audience. Going forward, we need to publicise this initiative better both in terms of raising funds and getting applications from potential scholars. I am also trying to think of how we can extend this initiative to CityFOSS conferences (and use the leftover funds raised)
I don’t have much feedback, but I’m very excited for the upcoming platform release and our future podcast episodes.
I have had an absolutely amazing year contributing to, and now working at FOSS United and am very excited to see the future of FOSS verse 
I have had a great year with FOSS United. I have attended all monthly (and now bi-monthly) meetups in the Bangalore chapter (except two that conflicted with my other plans).
It was a privilege to speak in one of them (the one with the backend theme) where I talked about privacy in data-centric projects and showcased how we achieved that in my open-source project.
I have also made new friends through the meetups who are as excited about technology and FOSS as I am. I discovered some other hacker groups with them which has been very exciting.
Lastly, I thoroughly enjoyed the 2 days of IndiaFOSS 3.0. Based on the suggestions of, and motivation from, the Hoppscotch team and with the help of the HSR HackerHouse stall, I was able to talk to a bunch of developers and engineers like myself and share my ideas and projects with them.
We even worked together on a new open-source project called skyline, which we built just because the GitHub Skyline project was down.
This year was amazing, and I have even higher expectations for the coming year.