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About Campus Ambassadors
The Fedora Campus Ambassadors program is a subset of the Fedora Ambassadors project. While the Ambassadors project focuses on appealing to many different kinds of people at a regional or national level, Campus Ambassadors focusing on promoting Fedora on their own campuses. These campuses are high schools, universities, and colleges around the world.
A student can choose to become a Campus Ambassadors as part of the entire Ambassadors project. In addition to enjoying the benefits of being in that group, participants will also have the chance to socialize and plan tasks with fellow students.
What we do
Campus Ambassadors work on a similar variety of tasks as Ambassadors, but more finely tuned to working locally on campuses. Examples of tasks a Campus Ambassador might take on are as follows.
- Working with others on campus to organize a hackathon and represent some of Fedora's projects
- Putting together an installfest to help install Fedora on other students' devices
- Talking with a professor or other faculty about using open source software for some assignments or providing info about using something
- Proposing putting together a Linux computer lab using Fedora to administration
- Actively representing Fedora and open source technology on your campus through your own actions and interactions with others
There are several other kinds of things students can do. This list is just an example!
Purpose
Involving more students in open source and the Fedora community is important not only to the Fedora Project, but to the greater open source community as well. Campus Ambassadors have the unique opportunity to work with other students, their schools, and faculty members to promote using Fedora for personal computing, computer labs, and even infrastructure. Additionally, Campus Ambassadors also help accomplish some major goals for Fedora.
- Build up individual Fedora communities on campuses, and provide resources for students to organize events and contribute code and ideas to Fedora
- Help students network with other open source and Fedora contributors and lay the groundwork for potential summer internships
- Create a fun and exciting network of passionate, dedicated peopel to spearhead Fedora's presence on campuses
- Work with students and faculty to promote free and open source software on campus
- Share information and knowledge about running an open source platform and how to promote it
Benefits
- Opportunities to learn and increase your knowledge about Fedora, Linux, and open source
- Create a name for yourself and network with a world class team of people who put together and run the most cutting-edge distro and community out there
- Have your blog aggregated on Planet Fedora
- Opportunity to learn and develop communication skills
- Experience doing community-driven marketing
- Stipends for running events (pizza, soda, etc.)
- Swag to give out at events supporting Fedora (stickers, pins, t-shirts, etc.)
Joining
To become a Campus Ambassador, there are a few tasks you must complete in order to begin the process of becoming a Fedora Campus Ambassador.
Join the mailing list
As a Campus Ambassador, you will need to join the Campus Ambassadors mailing list. This is the best place for more static communication, and is a stronger guarantee to get you a response. Important communications regarding Campus Ambassadors will also be shared here.
Once you subscribe to the email list, send an introduction to everyone on the list. Tell us a bit about yourself and why you want to get involved! A few good questions you can try answering are:
- Where do you go to school?
- What year of school are you in?
- Does your school already use Linux or open source software?
- What makes you excited about being a Campus Ambassador?
- Have any ideas about what you’d like to try to do?
Join the IRC channel
IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is where real-time, live discussion happens between Fedora contributors. Fedora uses the Freenode IRC network for hosting its channel. You can join the #fedora-campusamb channel on Freenode to communicate with other Campus Ambassadors across the world.
Never used IRC before? Read this beginner’s guide on IRC. You can also use Freenode web chat.
Choose a mentor
Like with the regular Ambassador program, you will need to choose a mentor to help guide you towards becoming a Fedora Campus Ambassador. You can find a list of regional mentors to choose from.
Select a mentor that is available and reach out to them about seeking mentorship. If you do not hear back from your mentor in a week, you can try contacting another.
Requirements
- Update others on local events happening on your campus
- Let us know an event is taking place by sharing information with the mailing list. We can help you plan out details if you want to help organize a Fedora presence at an event.
- Writing an event report post-event
- Every event will require an event report in the form of a blog post on the Community Blog. To receive stipends, you will be expected to write a short summary of what happened at the event, how it went, and any ideas for improvement or things that went super well.
- Work with faculty and staff to find new ways and opportunities for Fedora on your campus
- Be a self-starter and identify other ways in which we can help YOU!
- Attend periodic IRC meetings to help coordinate efforts
- Collaborate and coordinate with other Fedora contributors on/near your campus