Summary of the first members call on 15th September:
1. Member introductions
- @Krithika_Suri was inspired by the vision of FOSS United, wanted to work with students and help more women enter tech.
- @Aditya_Sujith_Gudime wants to build a long term institutions, work with students, get involved with policy and build local chapters
- @idlethread wants to work in systems programming, help students bridge the gap with industry and build interest in systems programming so that we have a steady flow of talent in the domain.
- @Neha_Gupta wanted to work with women groups, help students and get opportunities to build networks
- @aadhav is a student who is interested in building “FOSS Labs” (proposal in another thread) and wants to expose students to various niches
- @Anand is a long time community builder and is excited to be a part of FOSS United and continue his work in building tools for computer education.
- @wisharya wants to see FOSS United grow so he can have more fun
- @Sejal_Jain is a student volunteer who likes building communities and is helping with DelhiFOSS
- @Aniket_Maurya wants to continue to build more FOSS tools and libraries
- @Kashish_Grover is excited to be a part of a community and wants to be an enabler
- Ravi wants to build a growing community of FOSS professionals
- @prasad wants to help more people learn about Open Source
- @Nafeen joined late and was excited to be part of the community and help in whatever activities that we plan.
2. Events
- One of the low hanging goals would be to plan more events in more cities.
- Other than Kochi and Delhi, @wisharya shared that events were being planned in Chennai and Mumbai.
- @Neha_Gupta suggested that we should have certain “goals” as a community and volunteered to prepare a event calendar till April with @wisharya
- It was suggested that we should work with colleges and do more talks with students.
3. Mon School
- @rushabh shared that he will continue to focus on mon.school as his primary goal for this year.
- Also shared that new course creation workflow has been launched today by @jannat and invited people to create courses.
- @Anand suggested that mon.school should have workflows for contributing and remixing content
- @wisharya shared that FOSS United is in the process of hiring someone to market and build the community for mon.school
4. Funds and Fundraising
- Members inquired about the funding situation and it was shared that operating expense of FOSS United (~20 L / year) and smaller grants are shared between Zerodha and Frappe and larger grant funds are provided by Zerodha.
- Amit asked there should be specific goals for fundraising. Some ideas shared were:
- Project funding / fellowships - it was decided that new project proposals will be shared with members
- Events are self-funding (so far)
- Study material / online courses
- Travel budget for professionals going to colleges for events (?)
5. Closing
- It was suggested that members can think of what role they could play and share in the forum
- Next called was planned for next month
- Members shared excitement to see this process kick off!