Summer with Debian

Speaker: Sruthi Chandran

Language: English

Track: Community, diversity, local outreach and social context

Type: Long talk (45 minutes)

Room: Talks 1

Time: Aug 27 (Fri): 16:00

Duration: 0:45

This is an idea I mentioned in my DPL platform 2021.

Summer with Debian is a concept that I borrowed from Free Software Camp (https://camp.fsf.org.in/) for which I was one of the core organizers. Basically the concept is to have 3-4 months long online mentorship program. The advantage of a Debian specific mentorship program is that we can tailor the program according to our specific needs.

There will be two parts for the program. In the first part, the primary focus will be on the philosophy of Debian (and free software) and why one should contribute to Debian etc. We can have common sessions on these topics for the mentees. In the second part, the mentees will work with mentors on the projects of their choice.

In this activity, I plan to have a team (may be debian-outreach team?) as the co-ordinators/facilitators who work in collaboration with debian-diversity, debian-localgroups, Debian Academy etc. The co-ordination team will be doing the back-end activities of organizing, scheduling etc. while other teams will be helping out with resource persons/mentors/projects etc. I specifically intend to have debian-localgroups involved so that we can have localized activities and not just in English.

NOTE: The question of whether to pay stipend or not could be discussed later (I do not plan to include this as a discussion point in this talk).