Following a conversation with Rahul on Sept 12, 2024, I decided it was time for my journey at FOSS United Foundation to come to a close. I took another month to wrap things up - reports, assigned issues, other tasks, etc., and officially stepped down from the org on 11th Oct, 2024.

I didn’t expect the journey to come this far when I joined as an intern on 29 Sept, 2022. Since then, I’ve discovered and rediscovered myself in the whole process, fascinated by the potential of the larger FOSS Community. Typing down this note, I’m suddenly pulled back into the last 2 years of learning, adventure, meeting new folks, working on projects, scaling initiatives and starting new ones, the late night office hours, and much more.

A fruitful learning experience

During the whole time as I transpired from intern to full-time, from a growth role to a tech role, I saw the growth in the org and the community simultaneously, as we scaled from 2 to many cities, launched new programmes, expanded the team, with more volunteers joining, more events happening, new partnerships and much. The essence and spirit of FOSS has always been an integral part of the community.

I really respect Kailash and Rushabh for the mission they kickstarted, and I’m grateful to have also found my space here. I am glad to have gotten mentorship from both of them plus motivating moments, great conversations and support, and new directions to pursue. Another integral part was moving out of home and shifting to Bengaluru, where I set up and explored new beginnings.

I’ve heavily enjoyed working on the community front, but then faced FOMO of not writing code, something I missed amidst all the community management. Kailash encouraged me to find something to start hands-on tech, and Rushabh came up with the idea of having our own community platform. Thus came the idea of FOSS United Platform, and I was really excited to pursue this.

But it wasn’t until after IndiaFOSS 3.0 that I was able to contribute code to the platform. It was fun working with Harsh and Mangesh, as we formed our in-house tech team, discussing and implementing features, breaking things, fixing bugs, writing reviews, sharing viewpoints, and much more. I am extremely grateful for the extensive help and mentorship we’ve received from the community, ranging from reviews, suggestions, and feedback to even help with patching things we couldn’t figure out - this was some solid gain as I was able to slowly relearn my way back into tech.

When I met Kailash, Rushabh and Vishal, for the first time during Tinkerspace inauguration

Other projects

FOSS Hack 3.0 and IndiaFOSS 3.0 were two of the biggest projects I’ve worked on. Both of them deserve blogs of their own, which I’ll hopefully be adding soon (after more than a year of procrastinating :)). My first self-hosting (LibreChat as an internal AI search/chat tool) was a great learning experience, and other minor tech projects within the org.

With Mon School, I was able to work with course creators to add more content to the platform, organized some mini-campaigns like DevSprint, and fixed things when they broke, guided by Jannat. I started the monthly newsletter series (later taken up by Ruchika 😊) and volunteered during the early days of OASIS. The FOSS Hack Partner Projects Programme was the most recent experiment that fared quite well.

The Team

The team is naturally the ground force and the layer between the foundation and the community. I had some great memories working with all of them, too many to name, as they came, did their best parts, and some who went on from the org but still contribute to the community.

We experimented, enjoyed our successes, met for coffee and dinner gatherings etc. Rahul joined us as the CEO, 6 months ago, after a transition in leadership, and FOSS United took on a new horizon. We had many ups together and downs to go with as we all coped and faced the heat with clashing mindsets, differences in opinion, low bandwidths, grinding deadlines, and much more. But amidst all, I believe all of us learned more about each other, experienced growing up, learned from mistakes, and developed a sense of understanding to drive through it all.

Apart from the team, I am grateful to have worked and connected with people with whom I was able to make a nice rapport - Vishnu, Vinay, and many other folks at Zerodha and Frappe, Venky sir with whom I’ve had some great conversations, the volunteers who came up for FOSS Hack, IndiaFOSS, and other events…

Our unusually usual team pics :)

The community and beyond!

I volunteered closely with the Kochi FOSS community, and that’s where I formed the closest connection and found friends who might probably last for a lifetime (touchwood!) - to cherish joys, share sorrows, and even vent out frustrations 🤣. Most times I travelled from Bangalore to Kochi to attend meetups, and all of us connected over lunch after. I had great fun with the T4GC folks - Akhila, Nandini, Hazel, and the rest of the team, as we shared the same office space. I’d also had the pleasure of connecting with some amazing women in the tech/FOSS ecosystem like Deepti, Vindhya, Bowrna, Aakansha and many more, who’ve truly inspired me with their work and experiences.

From different community events!

What’s next ?

Reflecting upon it all, I realize that this has been one of the wonderful chapters of my life, and it’s with happiness, gratitude, and grace that I step down, with my best wishes for the team to drive the Foundation to more frontiers. Though I will always be a part of the community, attending events, volunteering, and also contributing more to the platform.

As to what’s next - it’s a self exploration phase. I want to pursue more of the engineering/tech side - I need to put in more work on that front, working on projects, more hands-on coding. Product Management caught my interest too - at the right time, I got an 80% scholarship with Upraised’s PML programme - so I would be exploring this a bit. I started working at a hacker studio in my spare time with a few friends, where we’re trying to build a few products (to stay close to engineering). I am also looking forward to exploring roles, starting small to get the feel of working with a tech team.

So, that’s a wrap! Here’s to more adventures to come…

May the FOSS be with us 💚💚