I think we should give college leads more meaningful work, not just have them organize talks and workshops. We could involve a few talented students, from different colleges, in our FOSS events and contributions by assigning them roles like designers, developers, and documenters under the mentorship. Even if they are beginners, we have mentors who can guide and help them. This would make their time as a lead a more engaging proof of work and help FOSS clubs better identify and utilize student talent.
I believe we should mainly focus on second and third-year students. This way, we can benefit from their knowledge and experience for a longer period than we would with a fourth-year student, although we can certainly include fourth-year students if needed.
I want to clarify that this approach isn’t limited to official leads; it’s about getting any interested and talented students involved.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think this is a good approach?
Assign ? That word seems weirdly inappropriate here. I think no one is going to entertain each others assign-ments. Everything is volunteer based. And how is involving “few talented students” different in your perspective ?
Also, I don’t understand why focus only on 2nd and 3rd year students. So, that 1st years find their interested during the initial year ? Don’t see how that is going to work. I don’t know how the club culture in colleges is, I wonder if its as similar as how its pictured in cinema’s (that’s the closest I’ve seen).
Thanks for bringing up these points @mangesh. I appreciate the feedback and want to clarify what I meant.
Regarding the word “assign,” I didn’t mean it in a formal, top-down way. You’re right—this is a volunteer-based community. A better word would be “offer” or “collaborate.” The idea is to create a structure where interested students can take on specific roles (like designer or developer) within our projects. It’s about providing opportunities, not giving out tasks.
For example, instead of a college lead just organizing a general talk, we could collaborate with a few students to work on a specific open-source project. One student could focus on the front-end, another on documentation, and another on graphic design for the project’s promotional materials. This way, they’re not just attending an event; they’re actively contributing and building a portfolio.
“leads” is an organizational role - so organizing talks, workshops etc is expected.
One of the things we would want to see more of is students from student clubs continuing on with activities as part of FOSS United communities, after they cease to remain students.
As a loose analogy - what you are describing isn’t very different from the experience at many companies (especially those which don’t have a big name). Take a student for internship in the final year, and they don’t join you for a job. In the context of FOSS United, this would mean that folks who are active in student communities, become inactive once they start working… Do you have any take on why if/how much/why this happens @Ganesh_Adimalupu ?
Focussing on second/third year students would require more capacity - more volunteers, etc. Before we even get to that - what would be the motivation for volunteers to take up such activities ? I’ll readily admit I am not very familiar with FOSS Clubs and how they work etc - happy to get any info you can provide.