How can I contribute to FOSS United?

[wisharya]

1. Events - FOSS United conducts annual and monthly events. Individuals can volunteer at the events in the following categories.

   • Volunteering in yearly events (FOSS Hack, IndiaFOSS Conference).

     • Website design and development, design of posters and flyers
     • Media campaigns - media campaign involves sharing posters on media platforms, announcing events and spreading the talk proposal.
     • Logistics - handling venue, and managing requirements - like audio, and food. This person should be local to the place of the event, offline/online arrangements
     • Finance: seeking sponsors, handling budgets
     • Reach out to speakers, mentors, participants, volunteers, and jury members. This involves evaluating speaker proposals.
     • Curating events, individual event organisation and coordinators for events
     • Coordinating works across all areas mentioned above

   • Volunteering in monthly FOSS meetups in different cities.
     Currently, we have monthly meetups in Bangalore, and Delhi and will be soon in Kochi. You can volunteer in the following roles:

     • Media campaigns
     • Logistics - Looking for a venue, projector and audio devices, snacks etc
     • Reaching out to speakers and participants
     • Designing poster and video editing

2. FOSS for Non-profit organisation: Refer this thread - oasishq.org

3. Evangelism: FOSS Evangelism is as important as building them. It doesn’t make sense If people aren’t adopting Free and Open Source software and hardware. Spread our initiatives & programmes in your network and at the events, you attend or organize:

   • FOSS Pledge
   • FOSS Grant
   • Hackathon Grants
   • Job Portal.
   • Mon School

4. Public Policy - FOSS United have collaborated with Takshashila to work on a public policy draft for the adoption of Free and Open source technologies by government and institutions funded by the government. You can volunteer for this effort by:

   • Joining the Technology+Policy course offered by Takshashilla. There is a scholarship for FOSS devs for this course which we open every 3 months.
   • Follow our forum posts and telegram group and participate Tech Policy discussions.
   • Understand (build knowledge around) the impact of software on society, communities and people and nudge the government to act.
   • Volunteer at software patents working group - Ref: Meeting with Director General of Patents

5. Mon School [Website, Telegram Group]

   • If you are an expert in any of programming/tech you can contribute to Mon School By creating courses, Some of the ideas on topics for course creation can be found here. Also, check out here on how to create a course.
   • Outreach to course creators - If you know someone who can create a course or an expert in a domain, reach out and work with them in curating a course.
   • Spread the word in the community for the people to use mon.school for learning.

6. Community Management: Maintain forum and telegram group by helping the members with their queries.

7. Talk & Mentorship

   • Mentor students/engineers/others to get started with open source/FOSS projects
   • Deliver talks at students’ organized events
   • Fill this form, if you’re interested in volunteering for this.

8. Industry Partnership - if you’re an organisation, partner with FOSS Untied to support us. Partnership deck: FOSS United Industry Partnership + Event Sponsorships

9. Project: Contribute to FOSS projects developed by FOSS United.

Next steps for the interested volunteers

Create a new post on this forum sharing the following (under the category New Volunteer):

1. Why do you want to volunteer?
2. Previous experience, if any.
3. Profile: Personal website/Blog-posts/GitHub/Behance/LinkedIn
4. Area of interest: Pick any - Events, Evangelism, FOSS for Non-profit organisation, Mon School, Industry Partnership, Public Policy, Community Management, Talk & Mentorship, Project
5. Weekly hours you can dedicate
6. Will you be volunteering online or in-person. If in-person, where do you live?

Created by @Arun and @wisharya on 17-01-2023.

Edit: This post has been moved to top in this thread for quicker visibility.

[rahulporuri]

A few thoughts -

• FOSS United provides grants to a few open source projects - Is FOSS United also interested in sponsoring/mentoring college interns to work on these projects? The duration would be 2+ months instead of the short term FOSS Hacks. People with experience contributing to OSS can volunteer to be mentors.
• Who maintains FOSS United infrastructure e.g. the website, the forum etc. Is FOSS United interested in volunteers taking over ownership of these (probably crucial) pieces?
• @knadh already mentioned the possibility of volunteering in the grants committee in a separate thread but it’s worth mentioning here.
• Item #5 might be better worded as “Working with FOSS United on technology public policy issues” e.g. with @Venkatesh_Hariharan on the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill

[Venkatesh_Hariharan]

Good suggestions Sai. I can use all the help I can get on the software patents front. If there are members of this forum who want to help, please reach out to me. If they have prior experience in filing software patents, even better.

[Venkatesh_Hariharan]

On the courses, one skillset that seems to be in short supply is that of community managers. Can we create a course for that?

[rahulporuri]

Can I ask what exactly you mean by Community Managers as in what community? Do you mean forums like this one or do you mean GitHub repositories? I have experience with the latter but not with the former.

[Venkatesh_Hariharan]

The latter. I know a few organizations that are looking for full time Community Managers to nurture and grow their FOSS initiatives. Those interested in this role are requested to reach out to me directly.

[wisharya]

Posting this as a self note: Add people in a list (with their consent) who are interested in participating FOSS events or promote FOSS in tech events. Anyone who wants to invite people to talk/mentorship can reach out to them directly from this list.

Update:

Form for this: Volunteer to talk/mentor students

[wisharya]

1. Events - FOSS conducts annual and monthly events. Individuals can volunteer at the events in the following categories.

   • Volunteering in yearly events (FOSS Hack, IndiaFOSS Conference).

     • Website design and development, design of posters and flyers
     • Media campaigns - media campaign involves sharing posters on media platforms, announcing events and spreading the talk proposal.
     • Logistics - handling venue, and managing requirements - like audio, and food. This person should be local to the place of the event, offline/online arrangements
     • Finance: seeking sponsors, handling budgets
     • Reach out to speakers, mentors, participants, volunteers, and jury members. This involves evaluating speaker proposals.
     • Curating events, individual event organisation and coordinators for events
     • Coordinating works across all areas mentioned above

   • Volunteering in monthly FOSS meetups in different cities.
     Currently, we have monthly meetups in Bangalore, and Delhi and will be soon in Kochi. You can volunteer in the following roles:

     • Media campaigns
     • Logistics - Looking for a venue, projector and audio devices, snacks etc
     • Reaching out to speakers and participants
     • Designing poster and video editing

2. FOSS for Non-profit organisation: Refer this thread - The need for tech volunteering in the social development sector.

3. Evangelism: FOSS Evangelism is as important as building them. It doesn’t make sense If people aren’t adopting Free and Open Source software and hardware. Spread our initiatives & programmes in your network and at the events, you attend or organize:

   • FOSS Pledge
   • FOSS Grant
   • Hackathon Grants
   • Job Portal.
   • Mon School

4. Public Policy - FOSS United have collaborated with Takshashila to work on a public policy draft for the adoption of Free and Open source technologies by government and institutions funded by the government. You can volunteer for this effort by:

   • Joining the Technology+Policy course offered by Takshashilla. There is a scholarship for FOSS devs for this course which we open every 3 months.
   • Follow our forum posts and telegram group and participate Tech Policy discussions.
   • Understand (build knowledge around) the impact of software on society, communities and people and nudge the government to act.
   • Volunteer at software patents working group - Ref: Meeting with Director General of Patents

5. Mon School [Website, Telegram Group]

   • If you are an expert in any of programming/tech you can contribute to Mon School By creating courses, Some of the ideas on topics for course creation can be found here. Also, check out here on how to create a course.
   • Outreach to course creators - If you know someone who can create a course or an expert in a domain, reach out and work with them in curating a course.
   • Spread the word in the community for the people to use mon.school for learning.

6. Community Management: Maintain forum and telegram group by helping the members with their queries.

7. Talk & Mentorship

   • Mentor students/engineers/others to get started with open source/FOSS projects
   • Deliver talks at students’ organized events
   • Fill this form, if you’re interested in volunteering for this.

8. Industry Partnership - if you’re an organisation, partner with FOSS Untied to support us. Partnership deck: FOSS United Industry Partnership + Event Sponsorships

9. Project: Contribute to FOSS projects developed by FOSS United.

Next steps for the interested volunteers

Create a new post on this forum sharing the following (under the category New Volunteer):

1. Why do you want to volunteer?
2. Previous experience, if any.
3. Profile: Personal website/Blog-posts/GitHub/Behance/LinkedIn
4. Area of interest: Pick any - Events, Evangelism, FOSS for Non-profit organisation, Mon School, Industry Partnership, Public Policy, Community Management, Talk & Mentorship, Project
5. Weekly hours you can dedicate
6. Will you be volunteering online or in-person. If in-person, where do you live?

Created by @Arun and @wisharya on 17-01-2023.

[ansh]

[Draft] Tasks and Responsibilities Overview - FOSS United Foundation

Tasks and Responsibilities Overview I and @wisharya tried to write a brief overview about various tasks that the FOSS United team is responsible for. This tasklist can be used by potential volunteers and upcoming team members to get a brief about their respective roles in the foundation. The current Tasks and Responsibilities Ownerships are listed here. CityFOSS Conference Point of contact between Conference Volunteers and Design, Tech team Review conference proposals and planning threads Sc…

Tasks and Responsibilities Ownership - FOSS United Foundation

Sharing the owners of all programs/verticals at FOSS United. We are looking for people to join us a “Shadow”. To become a shadow for any of these verticals, please reply to this thread. Learn about tasks and responsibilities of each vertical at [Draft] Tasks and Responsibilities Overview - FOSS United Foundation. A ‘shadow’ will be present for any activity or task performed by the ‘owners’ in a volunteer capacity. After serving as a ‘shadow,’ the individual could potentially be promoted to the…

[mngsh]

@wisharya

FOSS conducts annual and monthly events. Individuals can volunteer at the events in the following categories.

I feel this should be “FOSS United conducts …”