POSSE Lives!!!

I’ve been struck by how much I’ve been participating in open source communities in the past few months.  My research in the area of student involvement in HFOSS draws my focus to open source, but this year has brought new and fun activities.

I’m super excited to be starting another POSSE!!   We are hoping to expand the community of instructors involving  students in open source software via the TeachingOpenSource community. The online portion starts this week and the face-to-face meeting is May 28-30. Folks start the online activities this week and we’re looking forward to learning how student involvement in HFOSS can work in some new academic institutions.

I’ve also been exploring new FOSS venues in the past few weeks. On March 9th I went to an “Open Source Comes To Campus” event hosted by Open Hatch’s Shauna Gordon-McKeon.  Karl Wurst and I worked with students from UMass Amherst and Mt. Holyoke to learn about FOSS and to hack on the MouseTrap project. Karl and I are hoping to bring OSCTC to either Worcester State or WNE at some point.

And two weeks ago I went to LibrePlanet 2014. Friday evening included a visit to the Free Software Foundation offices where I got a peek at the 3D printer that was being raffled off and met some of the folks from the FSF. On Saturday I met Karen Sandler and got to thank her in person for providing an impromptu tutorial on licensing to my students at the Montreal Gnome Summit. I also found it very interesting to hear from people from a wide variety of disciplines (e.g., art, theater) and how they’re using, developing, and promoting free software.

And now I’m looking forward to the Hackfest at CCSCNE 2014.  Karl, Stoney Jackson, and I are hosting a hack on the GNOME MouseTrap project on Friday April 25th. The CCSCNE conference hosts a programming contest that draws around 75-100 students. Many of these student stay for some or all of the conference and we are hoping that they’ll be interested in hacking when the programming contest is over. Pizza will be had by all!

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