#70 FOSS Student Pack
Closed: Moved 6 years ago Opened 8 years ago by meskarune.

phenomenon

Create a free open source software student developer pack similar to the github student pack

background analysis

Creating a FOSS student pack will encourage students to use FOSS software and Fedora as well as contribute back once they gain more skill. If fedora leads the FOSS student pack project it will help with community outreach.

implementation recommendation

We can recruit sponsors like linux vps hosts and education services as well as contact other FOSS projects like Ubuntu, Open Suse, Drupal, Python etc.

Fedora could offer live cd's, stickers, maybe have special student events. We can brain storm resources to offer to students and help promote fedora and FOSS.


No updates at present, but I think it's something we could push a little more focus on now.

Contacting other groups

One thing I would want to do is to contact either other projects or other communities who may have something like this (does something like this exist??). I'd be nice to see if anyone has done anything like this already, and if so, what we could learn or take notes on what they've done. For instance, we have @meskarune as someone from Arch Linux Women, who may be able to offer some thoughts on anything she has seen (or has wished to see) from that side of the Linux community.

tl;dr: Can we learn from anyone else who has already attempted or tried something like this?

Identifying what is "open source essential"

One thing I think is important to consider with this is identifying what is essential for a "FOSS student starter pack". While it would be nice to have real perks to offer with it, like VPS hosting or swag bags, I think those should be considered icing on the cake, if they can be acquired.

I'd like to focus on some resources for creating some kind of Fedora + FOSS student pack that works at giving student developers a package of the tools and resources they might need or want, but didn't know were available. Some kind of neat, cohesive unit that ties a lot of different things, resources, or software together and presents it to the user. Kind of like, "Want to do Java development? Here's Eclipse!" "Want to do design? Here's Inkscape and a guide on how to use it!" If this makes any sense.

Later on, contacting sponsors of some kind

Later, after establishing what might be considered essential for open source and/or Fedora contributing, we could try reaching out to providers like DigitalOcean, Vultr, RamNode, Unixstickers, etc., for anything we could provide in such a pack to people who might redeem it or take advantage of it. This would also need to a good deal of discussion to avoid potential abuse later, like if someone tries to redeem the same kit twice from different accounts.

Going to stick this on the meeting agenda for now to see if anyone has ideas on brainstorming what is "FOSS / Fedora essential". :)

I think that providing some good "training" content along with these tools is going to be critical for student success. OpenHatch did some outstanding stuff, which can be found here:

http://wiki.openhatch.org/Open_Source_Comes_to_Campus/Curriculum

Also, Google Summer of Code have written a student manual that (beyond GSoC program specifics) helps students understand how to work with FOSS projects:

https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/resources/manual

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue set to the milestone: Fedora 26 (was: Fedora 25)
- Issue tagged with: meeting

7 years ago

In today's meeting (https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2017-03-07/commops.2017-03-07-17.30.log.html) we discuss this a lot, and it looks like there is a sensation that this idea will pass over other initiatives, like Join SIG and WCIDFF.

IMHO, the idea is being take with the wrong eyes. The idea of a student pack is to provide tools (specifically for this: Software Tools) to work, not become somebody into a contributor of the project, like Join SIG and WCIDFF does. The idea (Inside my mind) should be to provide tools that make students to think and say: "FOSS is awesome and I can help to make it better"; and hopefully to say "Fedora is awesome, I want to help to make it better": and there is where join SIG and WCIDFF come into play.

To clarify the confusion from the meeting. It was based on misunderstanding where some people assumed that the sole purpose of this is to onboard new contributors. This is not true, the onboarding factor is merely a hope, that some of the users will like it so much, that they will decide to contribute back. The goal is to enable students with tools to contribute to open source in general, not to Fedora project itself.

Metadata Update from @rhea:
- Issue set to the milestone: None (was: Fedora 26)

7 years ago

Discussed in 2017-04-04 meeting.

We made some good headway on this ticket during the meeting. I'm going to summarize some of the points from the last meeting, this meeting, and also clarify on what we need to do next. And we need your help!

What this pack is

The pack is intended to be a resource for university students to discover tools and services available to help them contribute to open source. It introduces them to tools (also available in Fedora) and services (available in Fedora's infrastructure) to enable them to be successful in contributing to open source. The pack's focus is general and broad.

  • Primary objective: Provide tools / services helpful to university students working on open source
  • Secondary objective: Get students familiar with Fedora resources, community, ecosystem

What this pack is not

This pack is not intended to be a magnet or tool to attract contributors to Fedora. It is not intended to take over other on-boarding practices or resources in the community (e.g. whatcanidoforfedora.org, Join SIG, etc.). This pack isn't specifically encouraging someone to contribute to Fedora and should be helpful for working on any open source project. They may decide to contribute to Fedora or they may decide not to.

What questions do we want answered?

The next part of the meeting was figuring out what steps are next to take. We'd like to start asking example questions to help guide what we include and recommend in this pack. This questions will help us first identify the problems or things we could focus on in the pack, and will then let us pick specific tools or resources to recommend for solving those problems.

These are some questions I came up with, but it's not complete. We need your help with questions too! Please feel free to suggest some of your own as a comment in the ticket, and we will discuss more next week.

  1. Where can I host my code?
  2. How can I get experience with Linux servers?
  3. What are good tools or editors for working with {Python, Java, C, C++, C#, Ruby, Rust, Go, JavaScript, etc.}?
  4. What's helpful for me to test out building RPMs if I want to make a package?
  5. What can I use for task management (e.g. Kanban)?
  6. Where can I ask questions and get help about Fedora?

In the Hacking session we discuss about running a survey/poll to get input from students, taking advantage of FLISoL is happening next week and is usually organized in universities. The question we propose are these:

  • Are you using Linux?
  • What come to mind when you hear “Student Pack”? [ “Not sure” option ]
  • If programming, what languages / stacks are are you familiar with? [ Check all that apply ]
    • Python
    • C/C++
    • C#
    • JavaScript
    • Other: __
  • Which of the following do you use in your classes and projects? [ Check all that apply ]
    • Design/Graphics Suites: _______
    • Office Suites: ____
    • Audio Edition: ____
    • IDEs: _____
    • Programming frameworks: ______
    • Robotics/electronic Suites: ______
    • Hardware: _____
  • What tools do you think can be made to work in Linux?

Please comment about the questions.

I sent an email to Latam Ambassadors ML to ask for their help to run this in all FLISoL instances.

Happy FLISOL @x3mboy, I recently contacted some Mexican LUGs with event today, In my own case, the event in Mexico City is the next week.

I hope you can get some surveys today and more next weekend

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue untagged with: meeting
- Issue assigned to x3mboy (was: jflory7)
- Issue set to the milestone: Fedora 27 (to Nov. 2017)

7 years ago

Metadata Update from @bt0dotninja:
- Issue tagged with: meeting

7 years ago

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue priority set to: no deadline (was: minor (3-4 weeks))

7 years ago

Discussed during 2017-09-13 meeting.

Somewhat related to #115, I think there's some updates from @skamath / @x3mboy that need to make it into this ticket. This could potentially be a good ticket for a CommOps Outreachy slot if we can find a mentor to support the project, but we will try to revisit this again soon.

Discussed during 2017-09-13 meeting.
Somewhat related to #115, I think there's some updates from @skamath / @x3mboy that need to make it into this ticket. This could potentially be a good ticket for a CommOps Outreachy slot if we can find a mentor to support the project, but we will try to revisit this again soon.

The Outreachy slot deadline was 15.09 and mentors could not be found for this proposal till then.

Metadata Update from @bee2502:
- Issue tagged with: needs feedback

6 years ago

We had a discussion about this in CommOps meeting on 2017-09-20.

Link to meeting text: https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-commops/2017-09-20/commops.2017-09-20-17.09.log.html

Summarizing the discussion, here are the things we need to discuss on-

  1. @x3mboy found after the FLISoL survey that mainly concerned students are systems/developer students and 2 languages take all the surveys, python and Java. Our pack needs to understand what kind of packages people can need for example, what are students being taught in their university courses or labs.

  2. We also need to discuss if we want a physical pack (this means more costs). If it's a physical package: What is it going to include? Just some student material like notebooks, pencils, flash drives marketed with the fedora logo or stuff like that? More ideas here are welcome.

  3. @bt0dotninja suggested using Fedora spins in FOSS student pack. The pack can contain some relevant Spin, manual and stickers.

@x3mboy Please feel free to add any more questions or info you have on this.

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue untagged with: meeting
- Issue set to the milestone: Future releases (was: Fedora 27 (to Nov. 2017))

6 years ago

Discussed in CommOps 2018 FAD.

Summary

Validated ticket merit; set first milestone to define Student Pack by end of March; mapped potential option for delivery

Confirming ticket

We reviewed the ticket and compared it against Marketing-related tasks and work. We differentiated it from Marketing because Marketing is distinctly focusing outward, but the Student Pack is also focusing inward on the community. We recognized the value of this task as a Mindshare-oriented task. We agreed it made sense to pursue this ticket but to set milestones to let us move closer to it.

Interesting to me, @x3mboy and @bt0dotninja noted a significant portion of the events run in LATAM involve universities and students. This also made a case for pursuing this (and also confirming the need to collaborate with other sub-projects).

Writing a list

@x3mboy plans to create a "first draft" list of the tools to include in the pack. Each item will be described in three paragraphs:

  1. How to describe it to students
  2. What does person who receives pack need to do to use it
  3. What does Fedora need to do to support this

After we have a draft, we will verify the list against the applications Infrastructure offers to make sure it's realistic to promote it to a wider audience than only Fedora contributors.

Follow-up with Hubs

Fedora Hubs has a tentative "developer preview" deployment plan for March. How we deploy the Student Pack may be relevant to this. We will revisit in March. If Hubs is not yet viable, we will look at a static web page.

I have started a local draft on this, it involves software and services that are open-source and cross-platform. It is a list that should help the student up and run a development system both locally and on the cloud. Or is this ticket still under review

@wesleyotugo If you have a draft so far, I'd love to see it! I'm not sure if @x3mboy has started his draft yet.

No, i didn't. We can take the @wesleyotugo one as first draft

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue tagged with: meeting

6 years ago

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue untagged with: help wanted, meeting, needs feedback
- Issue set to the milestone: Fedora 28 (to May 2018) (was: Future releases)

6 years ago

Discussed in 2018-03-26 meeting.


We discussed this one in depth today.

Our goal from the CommOps FAD to have a list of Fedora Infrastructure tools and services by end of March will slip.

Since the CommOps FAD, the Mindshare Committee exists and works on bridging collaboration between different sub-projects. The student pack requires input from different sub-projects, especially design, marketing, and the websites team. More feedback to drive the strategic direction and focus of the student pack is needed, since this is a two year old conversation here.

@x3mboy is filing a new ticket to prime discussion for this in the Mindshare Committee. We will file new ticket(s) to move forward on the student pack when CommOps can help with implementation. This ticket will be closed as moved. :clapper:

@x3mboy, please drop a link to the Mindshare ticket here once you file it too. :raised_hands:

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue close_status updated to: Moved
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

6 years ago

Ticket was created on Mindshare under mindshare#16

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