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Co-hosting Student Events §

Pattern Summary §

Collaborate with student clubs to co-host one-off, open source-focused campus events.

Problem / Challenge §

There is a growing interest in open source amongst student cohorts outside of academic courses.

However, OSPO staff time and resources are limited.

Pattern Category §

  • Community building
  • Developing and sharing best practices
  • OSS education & skills

Context §

A university wishes to broaden open source engagement with students, particularly in terms of skills development and growing a culture of contribution.

Forces §

There is a growing or established interest and demand for open source workshops/activities beyond what’s currently on offer in academic courses.

Interested students have a number of competing commitments.

Solution §

Collaborate with student clubs and organizations to co-host one-off, open source-focused campus events.

The focus on one-off events recognizes the students’ competing commitments and allows for greater flexibility around scheduling and topic choice.

Organizing the events in partnership with student organizations gets student buy-in and also distributes the workload between student co-organizers and OSPO staff.

Division of tasks may typically be:

OSPO Staff §

  • Designing the event (based on consultation with student co-hosts).
  • Liaison with potential sponsors (if sponsorship or swag is required).
  • Organizing venue and refreshments.
  • Promoting the event through OSPO channels.

Students §

  • Advertising and drumming up excitement amongst networks and informal communication channels (e.g. unofficial Discord servers).
  • Offering the student perspective on planning, logistics, the topic choice and what would make the event valuable.
  • Supporting the setup of the event, welcoming attendees, facilitating technical activities, and clean-up post event.
  • Amplifying the impact of the event through social media/mailing lists.

Resulting Context §

OSPO staff gain valuable insights into the open source-related resources that students want on campus.

Student leaders feel empowered by the opportunity to drive an event’s focus and to deliver it. (They also can add the event to their resumes.)

Both OSPO staff and student organizations build their networks and grow their mailing lists (through event registrations).

The process of event organization facilitates relationship building between the OSPO and student clubs/organizations.

One-off events can be used as starting points for further collaboration. Examples include:

  • Cultivating interest in full-term academic courses.
  • Encouraging students to apply to mentorship/internship opportunities.
  • Recruiting students as contributors to campus open source projects.

Additional Learning from University of California Santa Cruz §

Students have a lot of priorities competing for their time and attention. When co-organizing an event, it’s helpful to ensure regular check-ins and/or set deadlines for reserving rooms, advertising, etc.

Student co-hosts who don’t have explicit open source experience may benefit from a crash course on using Git/GitHub or other relevant topics.

Industry partners may be able to donate swag or small pots of money. This strengthens relationships with industry partners as there is a quick feedback loop on the impact of their funds.

Additional Learning from George Washington University §

When OSPOs are able to provide space, food, spot prizes, or volunteering time, these contributions can go a long way to helping an event succeed and will strengthen connections with student organizations.

Events like hackathons are great opportunities to teach students about open source, community building, how to code collaboratively using git, and more. Plus, government and industry partners can be invited to scope work and act as mentors and judges all of which can lead to stronger connections between students and open source community leaders.

We worked with the student run group George Hacks and became a sponsor of their annual Innovation Hackathon. We provided a $500 open source spot prize to encourage teams to develop publicly available open source solutions. We also presented a problem statement in collaboration with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) OSPO and we gave two workshops and we participated as mentors during the event. The students did all the work organizing the event and they did a fantastic job and over 150 students attended.

We also hosted a one-day bootcamp for a GW open source data science project called LAiSER for about 20 students. The OSPO provided a large library conference space and gave a 30 minute open source overview presentation. The LAiSER project organized the event, paid for food and coffee and had plenty of volunteers for setup and clean-up.

Known Instances §

References §

Contributors & Acknowledgement §

  • Emily Lovell, University of California Santa Cruz, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5531-5956
  • Stephanie Lieggi, University of California Santa Cruz, https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5647-6540
  • Yelena Martynovskaya, University of California Santa Cruz
  • Ciara Flanagan, https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3153-7673
  • David Lippert, George Washington University, https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6444-9595