The following is an update for the past three months. For quicker updates, follow our Mastodon!
These past couple months had us adjusting to our first summer season, a bit of a challenge given that both of our founding chapters (Maryland and Boston) had their calendars synced to that of universities.
During this season, we found it important to focus on bolstering our virtual efforts and figuring out the best way to seed local, virtual communities.
Additionally, July was the month of the annual HOPE conference, and we ended up both tabling there and hosting an in-person session!
Local Chapter Updates #
Our chapters are continuing to show good health, and spinning back up just in time for the fall.
The Boston and Maryland chapters are continuing to meet regularly, with those in the Boston area starting to branch out into planning full-scale FOSS hackathons. Not as much to report this time, as since both are university chapters, summer season tends to be slow.
Apart from those two locations, we’ve seen promising results in two areas: New York and the Bay Area. Both chapters have gotten highly committed organizers and a strong core community.
Given that the HOPE conference took place in NYC, our New York organizer made a conscious effort to use the conference as a recruiting venue. They planned a key party post-conference as a “hook” to get members, and it proved to be successful. Now the group is meeting more regularly.
Virtual Events #
One of the things we’ve been having to grapple with as an organization is that chapters tend to remain isolated without a good reason to connect. A strong national community is needed to assist newer and struggling chapters with growth, but the strongest ones have the least reason to engage. Keeping people involved means seeding a community not just on the local level, but also more broadly.
What we found as we began pushing to seed the national culture, is that it’s hard to get people to engage unless you give them a good reason to. To this end, we’ve shifted away from thinking of “B40 National” as a singular thing with its own meetings and tasks, and moreso towards a variety of focused events that will actually make people want to attend. By doing this, we’re creating a national community anyways, but without forcing it or giving it a sense of obligation.
The regular events we’ve started running include:
- Testing Lab: People come together in a dedicated group to test basic usability/stability of various FOSS programs, eventually providing research and reports into how ready they are to be recommended to new users.
- Reading Circle: Participants are provided with an article/podcast/excerpt relating to FOSS or technology, and then are provided with an opportunity to discuss it among others.
- Guest Speaker: Social events surrounding a guest who has done some interesting work in the FOSS space brought in to talk. More informal than traditional guest speaker events, involve the speaker giving a short presentation followed by a more casual open discussion/networking session with everyone involved.
Miscellaneous #
Some other updates:
- We now have our own domain name! Both the wiki and website have been set up to redirect to our domain.
- We now have brochures and flyers to promote B40 with! These will be uploaded to the wiki soon.