Congrats to the FOSSUnited + IndiaFOSS team for a fantastic conference. This kind of an event, which feels like a “community space” is here to stay.
I had asked a few folks of what they think of FOSS United as an organisation and what can it do to create more value. Since I have been mulling over this for a long time, here are some thoughts.
The primary audience is students (70%), professionals (25%), FOSS contributors / activists / enthusiasts (5%) - just my general sense. The broad “world view” for FOSSUnited is that we need to help our audience be more self reliant and also aware and skilled at using free and open source software tools. Here is what I think is the core value we can offer to our community.
- Education - Help students / professionals learn about FOSS - help them become better skilled at technology, give them exposure / success stories and make them FOSS aware so that when they join the workforce, they are aware of FOSS. Similarly, help professionals take FOSS to their organisations by showcasing the vibrancy of the community.
- Jobs - Help students get jobs - use the community as an exchange for verified quality jobs.
Education
Most of what we do is education. The conference is about seeing people who have built successful careers using FOSS, so are city events about learning about new FOSS tools. We had also started an online platform - https://mon.school - which we could not continue as we did not have a leader with conviction. (FYI, close to 7,000 people have enrolled for Joy of Programming - which continues to be a superb resource).
At the same time as mon.school, we also started https://frappe.school - using the same platform (the platform was built for mon.school first, Frappe School was just an experiment). In the last 3-4 years, Frappe School has scaled beautifully well. More than 35,000 students have enrolled to 20+ courses, we run monthly batches (starting at ₹5k per student) and also certifications. The Frappe community is also similar to the FOSS United community (maybe with 15% overlap) and I am pretty sure that what has worked for the Frappe community can also work for the FOSS United community. (Frappe School also has a jobs section)
IMO this has to be the heart of the organisation. The college chapters need some “core value” to be attached to it, some core learning / courses that can scale with it. Otherwise it will become yet-another-meetup.
Education will also have the benefit of expanding the core community - this community can then be a right place to do other “political” things like public policy etc. FOSS United can be a great place where professionals, students and contributors can rub shoulders and help each other.
A community works only if all the participants “get more value” out of the community than they give. We should be strongly asking what value is FOSS United giving to its community beyond events.