Key Goals

Mike, can you wear the hat on this task? You've been working with Café Netzwerk and IIRC also universities in the past. You have to coordinate with Ilmari, Xisco and others, but if you an wear the hat, come up with some ideas and report back here regularly, that'd be great! This ticket also relates to the campus programme (#3125)

Various ideas:

• Set up a dedicated community channel (eg Telegram group) for younger contributors. Needs to have a good name that's not patronising. Maybe something with "next generation"? Ideaas: https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/another-word-for/young_people.html

• Do more in-depth video/audio interviews with younger contributors and TDF members. The challenge here is that we don't always know someone's age, but we can reach out and ask

• Build these into success stories, showing how participating in a FOSS project has many advantages - leading towards studies/jobs

• Prepare an article/video about how LibreOffice is useful in schools/unis, looking at certain features, options and extensions particularly geared to education. Then encourage readers/viewers to join our community

• Take advantage of the popularity of Python amongst younger coders. Make a video showing how to write Python macros in LibreOffice - more newcomer-friendly than the wiki page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Macros/Python_Design_Guide

• Organise an on-line virtual meetup for younger contributors, to answer questions about the project and community. We probably can't say "limited to people X years old", but try to make sure younger people who are already active in LO are available to chat with newcomers

• Some more ideas/experiences in this video: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/engaging-young-people-how-to-include-positive-youth-participation-in-our-free-software-community/

I'll post them to the marketing list now, to get further feedback, before we choose exactly which ones to work on...

Going further with the Open Badges idea: define goals, and encourage students/younger people to target them.

I've emailed a bunch of people who work with younger people to ask for feedback on Open Badges for this purpose. Then I'll create a Telegram group to pool ideas, and make it a welcoming place for new/younger contributors. Then reach out and try to bring them into the group, and get them started.

We also have the dev mentor tender up now too, which helps in this.

We launched on 29 January on our blog and social media:

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2021/01/29/announcing-libreoffice-new-generation/

This was picked up on various tech sites in several languages, and our Telegram group grew to over 200 members within the first day. (Currently it has 366 members.) The start on Telegram was a bit bumpy, with lots of people joining and asking questions unrelated to the goal of getting younger people involved, but thanks to Sophie, Marina and others, we managed to maintain the focus.

Since then, a number of ideas and proposals have come up, including:

• Create certificate for skills: creating presentations, spreadsheets, illustrations

• Provide materials for local training in schools, universities etc.

• Set up a contest (eg Python macro programming) with rewards

• Set up a survey for students and teachers to spread around on campus

• Create flyers and posters for students to distribute

• Use Open Badges to reward contributors and confirm their work

• Investigate Paytm, PhonePe, RuPay, WhatsApp and Google Pay as donation options

In the coming weeks I'll work on these, and contact people in the group who've offered to help out in their schools and universities.