FOSSNSS Meeting (03/08/2020) Minutes
The thread is to maintain the minutes report of FOSSNSS meeting on 3rd August
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FOSS NSS
Meeting minutes
August 3rd, 2020
A meeting was conducted via meet.jit.si to discuss the upcoming activities of FOSS NSS on August 3rd, 2020. The meeting started at 7.45 pm and was concluded by 9.25 pm.
Meeting participants:-
Asst. Prof Syam Sankar(Staff coordinator), Allen K, Jaseem C K, Milind, Adhitya Pradeep, Athul Krishna, Adharsh M, Abhinav Krishna C K, Mohammed Arshu, Anandu Krishna, Aadithya Anil, Denil C Verghese, Poornima J, Nithin, Affan, Aqueel, Alan T A, Alphi, Randheer, Shefin Muhammed, Sanath Kumar, Jayaraj, Gayathri, Bhadra Jayakumar, Rasica K Nambiar, Hari Govind K, Kausthubh, Thabsheer, Hazil, Subin, and Vishnu.
Abhinav Krishna moderated the meeting.
The main agenda for the meeting was as follows:
Restructuring the FOSSNSS Membership scheme.
Anniversary celebrations.
How FOSSNSS should function during this COVID period.
Making of an activity report.
FOSSNSS domain renewal.
Addition of new sub-organizations
R3Brut3(Reboot+Bruteforce=Rebrute) – a CTF team.
Hackerspace, a team of tinkerers, hackers, and developers.
FOSSNSS OpenDesign team works on setting design standards by teaching and learning.
Coders’ tenet, a team of students interested in Competitive Programming and related topics.
1. Restructuring FOSSNSS Membership scheme
The discussion started with the opinion that there is a need for renewal of the membership scheme, everyone agreed to it. The next point of discussion was, how we could possibly restructure the membership scheme. Previously there was no fixed membership format. Anyone who has interest was taken in. The difficulty with this approach, those who had shown interest at the beginning didn't show up for the later meetings or sessions. And thus the number of participants always fluctuated also, there were meetings with only 2-3 members in the past. To overcome these difficulties, the idea of a fixed membership scheme was put forward by Abhinav. First, a promotion event would be organised to welcome participants from all the branches in the college. Then these entries would be filtered further based on their interest and motive. The Matrix platform can be used to welcome new members and a bot is under development for the same(for Matrix), Denil said. Thus the selected students would be given a fixed membership to the FOSS community. Through this membership scheme format, we can ensure maximum participation in the upcoming events, activities, and contributions.
Outcome: It was decided to reconstruct the membership scheme in such a way that there would be some number of fixed members in the community. This will be done after the anniversary celebrations and orientation session for freshers(2024 batch).
2. Anniversary celebrations
August 28th marks the one-year anniversary of the FOSS NSS unit. As a part of celebrations, the cell is planning to hold a 2-day event consisting of webinars and competitions. Suggestions were put forward by Syam and event leads(Randheer and Arshu) about the type of events to be conducted and the speakers to be invited for the webinars. A list of speakers who were experts in different fields was put forth. It was also decided to award certificates to the participants of workshops if conducted, in order to encourage more students to participate. Finally, it was proposed by Syam Sir to form an ‘event team’, which would be responsible for carrying out the two-day event smoothly and for attracting students across all branches to participate.
Outcome: An Event team would be formed whose members would handle the two-day anniversary celebration and ensure that it would be a great event.
3. How we should function in the following months ( COVID crisis)?
We planned to organise various programs during the coming months. This includes sessions on various topics focused on improving the technical knowledge of students. Two of our 1st-year members(Akhil and Poornima) suggested conducting a session on Linux/Shell basics. As a result, we have decided to conduct this event online if there is a minimum no. of participants. And we can take feedback from this event to structure our future events. It was also suggested to conduct monthly meetups thoroughly. Some members pointed out that after one program there is often a delay to conduct the next one. This was discussed seriously so that we can improve in our upcoming activities(Agenda item no.6).
Outcome: Feedback of previous sessions were gathered, points were noted down to improve participation. A session of Linux/Shell would be conducted if there is a sufficient number of interested students.
Lack of continuity is addressed with the agenda item no.6.
4. Making of the activity report
This involves the making of a newsletter. A newsletter can give an overall idea of all the activities and achievements of any society. This can also help in reaching our activities to other colleges. Discussions were held to form a team to function as the editorial board for the newsletter. Ananthu S Krishnan of second-year CSE was made in charge of the editorial board by Syam Sir. Alphi along with other members will assist him.
Outcome: A team headed by Ananthu S Krishnan would be in charge of maintaining a newsletter for FOSS NSS. The newsletter will include everything regarding FOSSNSS; starting from the membership campaigns to all activities conducted by the FOSS cell. Reports of workshops, technical talks, and all other events will be added.
5. FOSSNSS Services renewal (Domain)
Discussions were carried out on the renewal of the domain of the official website of FOSSNSS. It was decided to have the renewal of the domain official website fossnss.org in the month of September.
Last year, it was purchased by donations from our members. This year Syam agreed to provide the financial support for domain renewal by himself.
Outcome: Domain of official website of FOSS NSS – fossnss.org – would be renewed in the month of September. The Staff Coordinator Syam Sir will be providing financial support.
6. Addition of new sub organisations
In order to increase the interest of the members and to focus on different branches of computer science, it was decided to form 4 subgroups within the existing FOSS cell: R3Brut3 – a CTF team, a FOSSNSS OpenDesign team, Coders’ tenet – a team comprising of all students interested in competitive programming and related topics and Hackerspace, a group for tinkerers, hackers, and developers. All these subgroups will be headed by separate team leaders, someone who has certain expertise in their respective fields. Discussions were held to finalise the leaders. Members of FOSS can join the groups dealing with the areas they are more interested in. In this way, they can work towards their self-development and improve their technical skills under the guidance of the leaders.
Outcome: It was decided to form four subgroups within the FOSS cell and the leaders of each group were finalised as follows:
R3Brut3 – headed by Hari Govind.
FOSSNSS OpenDesign team – headed by Aadithya Anil.
Coders’ tenet – headed by Randheer.
Hackerspace – headed by Denil.
Apart from the meeting agenda, there were discussions on bridging the communication gap. As put forward by members, we would require another matrix room to conduct discussions between members. The current FOSSNSS matrix room will act as an announcement room.
After giving all the necessary suggestions and instructions to the members, Syam Sir left the meeting at 9:00 pm.
Measures to encourage the use of open-source software is always a matter of discussion in FOSS cell meetings. Since open software tools for other departments than CSE are not much familiar to students, they find it difficult to change from what they have been using. As members of FOSSNSS, it is our responsibility to let students know about open software and providing alternatives that can be of real use. Apart from the regular topics, we also discussed Linux Distros and DE’s in general. We also discussed using GitLab for our future projects, which will be of great use with its features. Many members had decided to shift to GitLab and encouraged others to do the same.
The discussion was further continued by the members. Abhinav Krishna, the coordinator of FOSSNSS then took the opportunity to thank all the fourth year members of the cell for all their contributions. Since the present scenario is not preferable for conducting a farewell party, the coordinator on behalf of all members of the cell wholeheartedly thanked them. And the meeting was concluded at 9:25 pm.