I have a few suggestions, mostly from my past experience of trying to do something similar (as a KDE distro - SuperX) back in 2013 in the state of Assam, India. Let us first focus on making people aware of what is KDE. Many people in India, especially engineering students are aware of Linux as "A" Purple-Orange colored distro, because of the said distro's wide-use in education and Government sectors, and they do not have the concept of a "DE" or various other distributions, so we need to make them aware first. Please note, here we are talking about the "next" contributors, engaging new people, and not who are already aware of various Linux desktops and its ecosystem. I mentioned Linux here because, although KDE software is available beyond Linux/BSD, but general people who is aware of KDE relates it to Linux mostly.

There are many examples given here of initiatives by various other open source projects (Ambassadors, Clubs etc.), but we must understand one thing, that either they are for-profit businesses (Canonical, Endless) or they are well-funded non-profits. I think we should avoid trying to replicate that model at least initially, because it needs a lot of funds. I have tried and I have failed (funding challenge). We should make this the second phase instead, once we get some traction.

What I'd suggest initially, is to ask our existing community members to be more proactive, and host webinars, yes webinars, they are cheaper and nowadays everyone is used to it. They should communicate with the institutes, and enrol students for such webinars.

Also, depending upon the place and time, we may opt to host one event ("seminar") in a central location (say an university campus), however we should connect as many as other institutes possible in the area, using video conferencing during such event to maximise our outreach. The local guys can mediate between the universities and colleges in their area. In my opinion this will be the most cost-effective, and also people will become aware.

Suggestions for Advisory Committee's List:

1. Lydia
2. Valorie
3. Neofytosk
4. Paul
5. Adriaan
6. Eike
7. Jonathan
8. Tomaz
9. Nate

Meeting Minutes
17 September 2020

• To approach Wrishiraj for Guwahati and for the pilot project. Set the next meeting based on his availability.
• Candidates to the Advisory Board (Deadline for additional names is 00:00 UTC Sunday night/Monday morning):
  1. Paul Brown
  2. Nate Graham
  3. Jonathan Riddell
  4. Carl Schwan
  5. Bhushan Shah
  6. Nicolas Fella
  7. Ivana Isadora
  8. Valorie Zimmerman
  9. Niccolo Venerandi
  10. Volker Krause
  11. Kenny Coyle
  12. Julian Steinmann
  13. Myriam Schweingruber
  14. Kai Uwe
  15. Frederik G
  16. Kevin Ottens
  17. David Edmundson
  18. David Faure
  19. Aishwarya
  20. Tomaz Canabrava
• Possibly use the current KDE e.V. Board as a backup, come in with knowledge and a "strong hand" if/when needed (ask Lydia, Adriaan, and Eike about this).
• Someone from the financial working group to go through the financial plan. We will approach Neofytos and he would advise us.
• People who agree to be part of the advisory committee should be requested to go through the plan. Ask them to go through the document to ensure it meets the KDE vision, values, principles, mission, goals etc.
• Add a Wiki page for the KDE Network. Website title can be kde.org/network.
• Show the progress of the KDE Network at the Post-Akademy Meetup.
• Next country after India can be Brazil.

Next meeting: Thursday, 1 October 2020 at 5.00 pm UTC.
Tasks/Agenda for the next meeting:
• Contact Wrishiraj
• Approach the candidates for the advisory committee.
• Contact Neofytos for the financial plan.

Can we add @tcanabrava to the list of potential candidates for the Advisory Board?

In T13386#240336, @paulb wrote:

Can we add @tcanabrava to the list of potential candidates for the Advisory Board?

Yes I will update the minutes

Last day to confirm the advisory committee is Sunday, 27 September 2020. I have added my initials for the first five names whom I am approaching for the committee. Please start writing your initials as well.

Sorry my volunteer time is all full up these days I'm not able to join

Meeting Minutes
20 August 2020

• Wrishiraj suggested:
  • One-month training for students to reach out to more universities.
  • We should create tutorials for teaching.
  • We should contact students as well as teachers.
  • Covid-19 is the biggest challenge in India right now.
  • 4-5 people are interested in joining KDE.
  • Guwahati University can be the first, one in the city to be targeted.
  • We should target non-technical universities too.
  • We can have completions to attract more people.
  • We should focus on a practical approach rather than a philosophical approach.
• Aishwarya suggested:
  • Kerala has potential. There are a lot of people in the Malayalam translation group who will be interested in joining KDE.
  • We can also use Free Software Camp (https://camp.fsf.org.in/) to reach out to more people.
• Reaching out to the universities will be the second phase. The first phase is to start the program in India.
• Based on the discussion with Aishwarya and Wrishiraj it was decided to start KDE Network India from a city where we have more contributors.
• Either Bangalore or Kerala will be the first city to start the program.
• We have to focus on contacting people in Bangalore or Kerala who are KDE Contributors.
• Wrishiraj and Aishwarya will be part of the KDE Network India.

Next meeting: Thursday, 15 October 2020 at 5.00 pm UTC.
Tasks/Agenda for the next meeting:

• Aishwarya will connect us to Subin who is based in Kerala.
• Bhavisha will contact people in KDE India group.

Hi everyone, as discussed during the meeting, I am posting my points and plans here, which I'd be happy to execute if I get the opportunity.

If you do not know me, I am Wrishiraj, I develop a KDE distribution and also run a startup that provides open source services, based in Guwahati, Assam.

One thing to consider with India is about the ideological aspects of people in different states, in few states of India, we will find it quite easy to push pro-FOSS agendas because of other aspects of life, including political ideology, while in most other states, we'd find it quite difficult to replicate the same model, so we should think about a model that works in most states rather than a few. Simply running the numbers may not give you the clear picture as India is not a culturally monolithic entity. I think we should get out of our comfort zone. In my opinion we are already in the "second phase".

Now my plan:

• Get in touch with all major Universities in the region, if it were in my place, Guwahati (or "Gauhati" the old name). We have 9 universities including some the best in India, and many more colleges in the city itself. We could organize virtual conferences that can be attended by everyone until the COVID situation is fixed, and I intended to first target Gauhati University, Cotton University, they have a large install-base of our distro, which also means large KDE software install base, including non-technical departments, have been key to our growth as they have provided us a platform to discuss Linux, KDE, open source in the past. IIT Guwahati, which is among the top 10 universities in India, is also a great prospect, and they have also supported our cause in the past including jointly-hosting the KDE India conference (conf.kde.in) 2017.

• My company as a community-commercial entity, has also been planning to certify people for our distribution, as KDE is the face of our distro, we could leverage that as well. Since we are doing it anyway, I believe we could leverage our efforts in a community manner that would help both the trainees (by getting first-hand exposure) as well as the KDE Community (new potential contributors from a new region).

• For many years now, we have been involved in teaching Qt-related technologies in universities, since back then we as a distro were not much involved in with the upstream, actual contribution to KDE was limited, however, I intended to change that. Instead of asking contributors to contribute downstream, to us, we are now directing them to upstream projects instead. However, the first-entry barrier is there, which I think can be resolved with the Network's presence in my opinion.

• Extending the previous points, upon getting some traction, I was also planning to host a few competitions where students can write mini-programs using KDE technologies, which will benefit the community with new code as well as exposing the students to KDE, lowering the entry-barrier. The burden of rewarding the "winners" of such competitions, which my company and our associates shall take care of.

• We have a large user base of our distro in the state (OEM installed, sponsored by Government of Assam), with maximum in Guwahati, we have access to those users (opt-in). We could leverage those users for our programs, and they can be our potential contributors. In fact, some of them are already motivated to contribute. For an estimate, in 2018 approximately 21000 laptops were shipped, and approximately 17000+ were shipped in 2019.

• Localization. We have started a program to localize KDE and other constituent elements of our distro into Assam's official language i.e Assamese, which brings an emotional aspect for people as their own project. We have got a good response. We plan to leverage that and bring more contributors to KDE (I guess doing localization will itself be counted as a "contribution").

• Favoring policies. Policies do matter a lot as they directly influence the education delivery as well as overall IT ecosystem of a place. Assam has an IT policy that favors free and open source software and its development. What differentiates Assam's policy from the other states favoring free software is its "open market" and "practical benefits" approach to open source rather than ideological, which is similar to what other most states are doing (even if they do not mention open source specifically). The challenges we face in Assam is similar to that we'll face in say - Delhi or most of Indian states. If we are successful in doing something in Assam, we are more likely to replicate the success elsewhere.

• Lastly, coming to deciding a place, I will still suggest Guwahati, as the city is the largest metropolis and the "gateway" of the North Eastern region of India (the "right hand" if you see the map of India). Since its the hub of activities in the North East, students from all 8 north-eastern states are available in large numbers in the city's colleges and universities, with great diversity of races and cultures. This is one point which could be looked upon as well, while I do agree upon the fact that the other candidate city/state mentioned also has other benefits in their own rights.

I'd like to clarify that I am speaking based on my personal opinions only and be it Guwahati, Bangalore or Kerala (which city of Kerala to be precise?) I will always try to help as much as I can, and KDE as a community needs diversity as well, which all cities/states of India has to offer. I talked about my city and my plans only, this does not reflect that it's better than someone else's plan in any way. If you find my plans practical, feel free to use them.

Also, I have been asked during last meeting if I have people to help me. To which, yes, I do have, many of whom are policy makers and professors, many of whom are already aware of the plans, and are ready to help. Some of them have even consented to be named publicly if required. Since this comment is already long, I will skip that for now. Thank you.

Following are some findings from our (Aiswarya, Subin, Sreeram and Kannan) discussions:

1. The current KDE Malayalam group has a lot of GNOME users. They help in localization because of the movement 'my language for my computer'.
2. Every year there are students from Kerala who apply for GSOC on KDE projects and Season of KDE (mostly from Amrita Engineering College, Kollam) .
3. Even though a lot of software under KDE are widely used in Kerala (GCompris, Kdenlive, Kstars etc.) people don't really know the community and the Plasma desktop. Software like KDEConnect has great benefits in the current environment, yet many people are not aware of it.

The examiniations in various institutions are going on so we couldn't discuss in detail about the plan (two of the members are students). However, here is the small step by step strategy that came up:

1. Make students from Kerala Technological University (https://www.ktu.edu.in/home.htm) aware about KDE through various programs-
   • hackathons;
   • sessions of c++, qml etc.;
   • ties with free software communities in Kerala during their events.

2. Get more contributors and users among students-
   • choose subjects in the curriculum of the university and show how it is practically done using KDE products;
   • virtual sessions on using different KDE products (Krita, Kdenlive etc.);
   • sessions on different ways of contributions.

3. Get more professors-
   • try to find some professors who could be interested in KDE (can aproach Amrita Engineering College as a starting point).

4. Try to include references to KDE community in the text books where they teach KDE software
   • detailed letter to Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KITE_Kerala) about KDE and how and where to include the reference;
   • they might be interested in KDE products being used already like GCompris so start a detailed discussion on further collaboration

To conclude, seeing the plan from @wrishirajkaushik we feel that they are the first good target for this program. Because they have a better KDE userbase. Eventhough Kerala is a place where Free Software can grow, currently GNOME has the biggest user/contributor base because of various historical reasons. So we would like to take more time and make a more detailed plan.

We (KDE-network Kerala) decided our targets for 2021:

1. Completed and reviewed translation of Plasma UI, homepage of https://kde.org/, Dolphin and Konsole by 21.08 release.
2. GCompris tutorials for teachers and parents in Malayalam.
3. Translation of GCompris cookbook.
4. Krita tutorials in Malayalam.
5. Plasma tutorials in Malayalam.
6. Onboarding - 10 more motivated and active people to the team.

Hi @aiswaryak, may I suggest an additional target? I believe it could be interesting to also translate the homepage of https://kde.org/ in Malayalam since it would help quite a bit with the promotion of KDE in Kerala. What do you think?

Hi @ognarb, Thanks for the input. Adding that.

One more thing that we discussed on 19th Nov 2020 meeting:
In the month of April-May 2021 there will be Teachers' Training Program in Kerala, if the Kerala team is ready with the tutorials and documentation then the team would think of doing some workshop or training in this program.

In T13386#245210, @bdhruve wrote:

One more thing that we discussed on 19th Nov 2020 meeting:
In the month of April-May 2021 there will be Teachers' Training Program in Kerala, if the Kerala team is ready with the tutorials and documentation then the team would think of doing some workshop or training in this program.

Thanks, Bhavisha, I have updated it