[smc-discuss] Registrations are now open for Software Freedom Camp Diversity Edition 2021

Pirate Praveen praveen at onenetbeyond.org
Sun Sep 19 11:06:49 PDT 2021


September 18, 2021

The world celebrates Software Freedom Day today with the aim of 
increasing awareness of Free Software and its virtues, and it is in the 
same spirit and excitement that we announce today the Software Freedom 
Camp Diversity Edition. Diversity edition is aiming to reach out to 
people subject to systemic bias and impacted by under-representation in 
the technical industry in India.

The Software Freedom Camp is an online mentorship camp on free software 
organized by Free Software Community of India in association with 
Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle-IIT Bombay and Egalitarians. It 
will start in October and run till end of February.

The Software Freedom Camp will be a valuable opportunity for anyone who 
wishes to become a contributor to free software projects but feels like 
they need structured mentorship and a learning environment to get 
started. It will also be an opportunity for existing free software 
contributors to get new contributors to their project and facilitate 
their entry into the free software community.

Application links for learners and mentors are open now on the camp 
website and will close for learners on October 15 2021.

The camp promises to be a safe space for learners to acquaint 
themselves with the philosophy of free software while also getting 
equipped to become free software contributors. In the first phase of 
the camp, learners will go through a series of assignments, 
interactions, movie screenings, and other activities that introduces 
them to the social benefits of free software and exposes them to the 
free software culture. They will get help in using free software on 
their own devices. At the end of this phase, they will get a chance to 
explore various free software projects and working with mentors they 
will be asked to create working proposals for contributing to these 
projects. The camp will match each learner to a mentor based on their 
proposal. In the second phase, each learner starts their free software 
contribution as per their accepted proposal, closely working with their 
mentor. There will be periodic review meetings to address the needs of 
the learners and help them stay on track.

Any free software contributor who can meet mentor expectations listed 
on the camp site can apply to become a mentor. They can also add their 
ideas to the list of ideas from which the learners can find starting 
points for writing their proposals. The mentors will work closely with 
the camp organizers in evaluation and selection of proposals, and with 
learners to facilitate the success of the selected proposals.

The camp encourages all kinds of contributions and contribution 
pathways - programming, system administration, packaging, UI/UX, 
forensics, localization, artworks, documentation, publicity, event 
organizing, etc. - as long as there is alignment with the free software 
philosophy. The camp is conducted online using free software 
communication tools like BigBlueButton, Matrix, etc. There is no fee 
for participation.

For more details and to apply, visit the camp website at 
https://camp.fsci.in/

Camp Code of Conduct is https://camp.fsci.in/code-of-conduct

Help spread the word and invite people who might be interested to join.




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