Freshers- Introduction to Computer Science and Career

Students Program FOSS Clubs
1

1. What is your name?
Rohit Kumar

2. What’s your Club’s name?
FOSS Club, GEC Sheikhpura

3. Event name
Freshers: Introduction to Computer Science and Career- Freshers: Introduction to Computer Science and Career

4. Event type
Knowledge session (meetup), with a short hands-on walk through of a real project and account setup.

5. Explain the event briefly
On 8 September 2026, from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM, our club ran an introductory session for first-year students called “Getting Started in Tech”. It covered:

  • the basics of computer science and what the field includes
  • the different kinds of careers in tech
  • how open source helps students build real skills and stand out
  • the GitHub Student Developer Pack and what it offers
  • Guided about the benefits of GitHub, LinkedIn, X, Discord, LeetCode and others

To make the session concrete, we explored https://laptop-finder.pages.dev/, an open-source project as our guiding project. We used it to show how a real project is built, hosted and shared on GitHub, and how a beginner can read its code, open an issue or contribute.

6. Speaker details
Shiivam, Core Team Member

7. Was the speaker provided to you by FOSS United?
No. The speaker came from our own club and applied through the event’s CFP.

8. Mode of the event
In-person

9. Livestream/recording link
Not applicable, since the event was in-person only.

10. Event photos (Ente)

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11. How many people attended?
104 attendees, as recorded on the FOSS United event page. But the student was 136 This was one of our biggest event so far.

12. What went well

  • Turnout was very strong for a freshers session, with over 130 attendees.
  • First-year students were curious about careers and open source, and many asked how to get started.
  • Using a real project (laptopfinder) made open source feel approachable, because students could see a working site and its source code.

13. What could be improved

  • With 100+ students in one room, helping everyone create accounts was hard. Next time we’ll split into smaller groups, with one volunteer per group.
  • Some students didn’t have laptops, so they followed on phones. We could ask them to pair up or bring a laptop where possible. Suggested to get laptops in the Oct sells (BBD)

14. What open source tools did you use?
Git and GitHub for exploring the guiding project, the laptop-finder repository ( GitHub - fossism/laptop-finder: your laptop shouldn't be a regret anymore · GitHub ), a web browser to explore the hosted site.

16. Was one of those tools a crowd favourite?
My guess is the GitHub Student Developer Pack, since students were excited to learn about the free tools it offers, along with exploring laptopfinder as a real project.

17. Contributions from community members

18. Potential mentors or speakers
Some freshers can take sessions on their own project. most of the folks are also interested in the cybersecurity and ethical hacking.

19. Money spent
Yes. the money spent for the attendees snacks, refreshment and food for the volunteers. Some in the travel.

20. Anything else

  • Now we’re more focus on the projects building at the clubs. Planning to make sort of website to list there entire clubs in my college.
  • We plan a follow-up where students make their first contributions to a beginner-friendly project like laptop-finder.
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