When we talked with @spotrh at lunch a few weeks ago, we had a lot of great discussion about the FOSS@MAGIC program and ways we might be able to build it up further by expanding its reach to other groups on campus, even ones that might not traditionally have a FOSS angle. Some of the ideas in this issue are from this talk.
Creating a list
I think the best way to start is to have some creative brainstorming with other FOSSBoxers, @schneidy, and possibly interested alumni about groups that we may be able to reach out to and engage with in new ways with free and open source software. Even if some of the ideas are more far-reaching and ambitious, I think having a list of ideas to go to for these kinds of things might be a useful resource.
Existing possibilities
I have two potential ways we could expand our outreach, one based on our talk with spot, another from a student involved with FOSS activities at RIT. With some more brainstorming, I think we can expand the ones we have below as well as build it further.
Musical festival
This was the idea spot had. The gist is that there are a lot of music communities on campus, such as the Student Music Association (sp?) and there is an electronic music lovers club. These kinds of communities interact with a lot of different media, whether it is student content or other content found online.
Some kind of music festival could be planned where students remix others' work under Creative Commons licensing, and the work would be available for others to also take and modify to their own tastes. Planning such a thing would take a lot of effort, but I think it's a good idea of something that isn't necessarily "software" but still fits into the FOSS@MAGIC umbrella.
@itprofjacobs might be able to add thoughts to this one specifically about the logistics (again, this is a far-reaching one but is a good example for getting gears turning).
EGSRIT LAN website
Something already under development is the Electronic Gaming Society of RIT's (EGS) new and upcoming LAN (Local Area Network) party website. The LAN site is the hub for activities that happen at a LAN, whether it's sharing announcements, posting contest results, communicating with other attendees, and more. The project can be found at EGSRIT/LanSite and is currently under development.
With more time as the site progresses, I think we could consider having a greater role within EGS. I'm particularly interested in this one too, as MAGIC does a lot of game development. If students are releasing FOSS games, partnering up with EGS in some form to make these games available and more publicized to students might be a powerful and engaging tool. I think that they are just beginning their adventure into open source with the recent LAN site, and there is a lot of potential for open source to be something that benefits their entire club.
This is one that will require some sitting and waiting for the right time to engage, but again, it's worth mentioning now to put it on the table.
Planning this out
These are some conversation primers and starters, and either once we're all back on campus or remotely over the summer, we could try to get started on coming up with a list of other ideas to increase our outreach on campus.
Anyone else have some thoughts they want to add in? Or maybe logistics of how we want to go about planning this?
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent