Considering the sizable amount of responses that the thread has received, I think its only fair if I share my own part of the story.
I have only been involved with Linux and the FOSS community at large since around 2020, but I was never really invested in local or even India-specific communities for that matter.
Like @mngsh said previously, I was also a strong believer in the idea that organizing events isn’t really giving back to the community per-say and I still stand by that idea to an extent.
My real interest in volunteering for events however, started after MumbaiFOSS 2023, which was I think my second event/conference that I ever attended…
The idea of having a space to meet up with other like minded people clicked, and I felt like the possibility of having this opportunity as often as every month in my own city was what drew me to volunteering.
In hindsight, me volunteering to host the meetups was primarily for the ever selfish motive of having a group of people to discuss my work with and talk about things that I cared about, with people who actually understood and appreciated what it is, which was a breath of fresh air for me from the weird stares and lectures about doing stuff your age that I usually got whenever I brought up my work with others around me.
It was also to an extent the slight disappointment of my inner-self that even though the meetups and conferences were “FOSS”, it was almost 90% run on proprietary software (eg. Telegram, Google Docs, Gmail, Figma, Windows etc.).
I felt volunteering was the best way to change that, from the inside - and I think I have been relatively successful in that.
Mumbai chapter was one of the first to have a Matrix bridge, and most of our designs are done through penpot instead of figma too! We also have a fully FOSS streaming setup, and all our documentation for the past two conferences are on FOSS document stores (Cryptpad for 2.0, and Project Segfault Owncloud for the upcoming MumbaiFOSS 2025)
However to this day, one thing I feel I have failed at as an organizer is the ability to convert college students/FOSS wannabees into actually caring about FOSS. Seeing a lot of these kind of people, and those who join meetups and volunteer for the sake of an extra entry on their resume or new content for a linkedin post is plain unfortunate.
Me and @mngsh are both from the same background of telegram and matrix communities, where people spend time for the sake of pure passion and passion only - this is not the case unfortunately in most events that I have been to. A lot of people who come to our events to volunteer and network are simply talkers who have never done something concrete in the FOSS sphere, which is another thing I was never a big fan of.
Important questions like what mangesh had addressed in the quote, usually go un-addressed because of the unwritten rule of not criticizing volunteers. I understand the motive of the rule, but at some point, we need to ask the hard questions, else the volunteers will never learn. Pointing out mistakes isn’t wrong, however blunt it might be. I’m not advocating for shouting at volunteers or whatever, but atleast we should not turn a blind eye if the approach or the reasons for which he is volunteering is fundamentally incorrect
This is very much a rant, and thanks in advance if you took the time to read it :P.
