---
name: Open Source Summit / scholarship applicación
composer: c4lliope
labels:
  - conference
  - mission
  - apply
summary: |
  Today is the final deadline for the Linux Foundation's [conference scholarship][scholar],
  for the 2025 [Open Source Summit][oss] in Denver, CO. Here is how I applied.

  [scholar]: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-summit-north-america/attend/scholarships-travel-funding/
  [oss]: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-summit-north-america/
---

## 10. Briefly describe the ways in which you are involved in the technology and/or open source communities.

I am collaborating with engineers across the East Coast to build a curriculum for communications modernization, from program to policy.

Our discussions aim to bring local-first programs (https://inkandswitch.com) into legislative offices, to expand the use of secure and censorship-resistant deployment principles, and to share resources through mesh networking and peer auth.

Our association is composed of the eager learners who are commonly found in maker-spaces, hackerspaces, and public libraries. In a normal week, I can be seen in Rockville Science Center (MD), Baltimore Node, Baltimore Hackerspace, and NYC Resistor - usually drilling someone on a practical lesson plan based on NixOS and Nushell. This course has become solid enough to launch a screencast domain explaining common use cases - planned to launch on June 1.

I have a rich background leading programs, as secretary of HacDC (2023), Code for America fellow (2016), and VP of MSU's ACM student chapter (2011 - 2014). I began many of the current Congressional modernization programs as a coder in the House Clerk's office, where I began a collaboration with the House Digital Service - to build room for open-source deployments and in-house program design alongside legacy House processes.

## 11. Why would you like to attend this event?

Our group is under-resourced, and is beginning to align on common language and aims after years of loose dialogue. To amplify our reach, we are launching a series of screencasts to focus on the new generation of coding basics: memory-safe and machine-portable programs, designed to expand peoples' horizons, rather than bind them to a desktop.

The human concerns are something core to my philosophy - I take the laborious approach of a cyber nomad to ensure that our programs are accessible in some of the most challenging edge-cases, such as under sail and solar energy. Hackerspaces and libraries are used as kindling to spark curiosity, while connections to serious research groups and sponsors help ensure the mission remains on solid ground.

Some of our most reassuring discussions have happened in online message boards, where we can learn from groups including Ink & Switch, Radicle, and Muni.Town how to build for resilience and our common humane concerns. Our local human-to-human discussions are always engaging, and all of us are eager to bring our day-to-day practice to the builders we admire in the open source scene.

Our main hope is to decrease reliance on commercial programs offered by corporations who are more eager to sell out their consumers than help them. Our approach is to build dispersed online labs in our homes and shared spaces, to build, share, and re-deploy openly-licensed source code, and to share our skills and experience through public demonstrations: through blogs, screen captures, pair programming, and guided hackathon challenges.

As more people lend their experiences, we begin to chip down the many barriers to online communication, that keep the mass public from the education they need to make use of open source. The resources and lessons are all here; our engineers simply need a chance to engage in - and share - the practice.
