On August 20th, 2016, I helped organize the first workshop in my college, Christ University , titled “ FOSS and Fedora “. The event was a great success!
Reviving LabyrinthI have planned to do this for more than two months, but we didn’t have any computer science club in my college. If it was for one event, we could have done it separate, but I wanted to organize multiple workshops (open source, mobile app development, website development, competitions, robotics etc). Thus, we needed a proper platform to easily organize the events without bothering too many people.
I put the idea to open a club and inaugurate it. Later, we came to know that there was already an existing club named Labyrinth. This club was inactive for more than 18 months. No one was aware of it excluding four to five teachers. The teacher whom we approached to help us in initiating a new club also was not aware of it. After talking to the management, they told us the same thing. Starting a whole new club would take too much time, so we reopened Labyrinth and we had our first workshop in it.
Poster design for the workshop
Thanks to mentors and speakersBefore talking about the workshop, I must thank a few people whom without their help, this wouldn’t have been possible.
Vinay M. : The professor who has supported us in everything. From the idea to open a new club to organizing this workshop. He has helped us a lot. Thank you, sir! Karthik and Prakash : These are my friends and helped with planning and executing the workshop! Sumantro Mukherjee andKanika Murarka : For speaking on open source and Fedora!And last but not the least, all the participants for coming and being a part of the workshop.
Bangalore workshop topicsThe workshop mostly covered FOSS and Fedora. For those who don’t know what FOSS is, it stands for free and open source software . We used a panel room to conduct this workshop, which was perfect for around 50-100 participants. The workshop was just for one hour and thirty minutes. I invitedSumantro Mukherjee (my mentor in Red Hat) andKanika Murarka (Red Hat Intern) as our guest speakers.
Sumantro Mukherjee speaking about contributing to free and open source software
They covered the following topics during the time:
FOSS and Fedora What is FOSS? Why FOSS? Getting industry-ready Discussions around diversity and contribution spectrum All FOSS projects are open-sourced: so contribute anywhere All contributors do not have to code; can be designers or can help in documenting How to start with FOSS Introduce yourself: let the world know who you are on mailing lists Every project has identity methods: Fedora has the Fedora Account System (FAS) What if you run into an issue? Use IRC ! Fedora and contribution pathways start.fedoraproject.org apps.fedoraproject.org Fedora Docs Packaging (and using Bodhi) Fedora Magazine Recognition Model:Fedora Badges Creating Accounts (FAS, mailing lists, etc.) admin.fedoraproject.org ForFedora QA: all the people redirected to theQA mailing list Otherwise, shoot a mail to respective mailing list Freenode IRC webchat
Guest speakerKanika Murarka talks about the importance of getting women involved with open source
I introduced the club and spoke about its vision. One of our goals is how it can help others be industry-ready. I talked about my journey in FOSS and how I started to contribute to Fedora. Very briefly, I talked about the things I do in Red Hat and how contributions help everyone in the future.
Vipul shares his experience with the FedoraQuality Assurance (QA) team and introduces Labyrinth, the newly reactivated tech club
As we had little time to introduce a big topic, we kept things brief. We realized that people are more interested in getting hands-on experience than sitting and listening to some person speaking about their future.
We got received good responses from the participants and I have already received a dozen of suggestion emails. Thank you for being there, being a part of this club, and providing the feedback. In the next workshop, the audience will learn how they can contribute to big projects on GitHub and how others can contribute on their own withFedora QA.
Workshop picturesHere are some more pictures of the workshop!
Group picture with organizers and speakers
Sharing a token of appreciation with Kanika
Sumantro leads some questions and answers with the audience
Sharing a token of appreciation with Sumantro
One final group picture