> On Jul 29, 2026, at 5:00 PM, Andrew Wetmore <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Possibly a dumb question, but where do the office hours take place?
On #comdev on the-asf Slack.
>
> Andrew Wetmore
> Assistant VP, Marketing and Publicity, The ASF <https://apache.org>
> Editor-Writer, Infra team, The ASF
>
> Editor, moosehousepress.com
>
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2026, 11:55 AM Rich Bowen <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> We held (very last-minute) inaugural office hours today.
>>
>> Main topic of discussion was university outreach, and what that looks
>> like. We’re really not sure what University outreach would look like, but
>> it sounds to me like we should participate in existing programs, rather
>> than trying to create our own, since they’re the experts and we’re not.
>> What we could/should do (based on this discussion) is:
>>
>> 1) Document where we are already participating in existing programs, so as
>> to increase awareness, share best practice, and identify opportunities for
>> projects to hook into existing efforts.
>> 2) Have discussions on the mailing list (perhaps using a [University]
>> Subject tag) where people can collaborate/commiserate about their existing
>> efforts, so that people don’t feel alone in their efforts, and where they
>> can share tips and experiences. We could, of course, split this to a
>> separate list if it gets too loud for this one, but my inclination is not
>> to proactively create Yet Another Mailing List to go be invisible and go
>> stale, but rather to increase visibility here first and split if/when it
>> becomes necessary.
>>
>> So … if you’re already doing some kind of University outreach, please do
>> start a thread, using [University] the subject, to tell us about it.
>>
>> I also learned a new phrase — “Desperate Learner” — which I really like.
>> This describes people who are learning something because they see it as
>> their ticket to self improvement, and more specifically to income
>> generation. Open source has always been about “scratching your own itch”
>> and open source participation as a ticket out of poverty is a huge
>> motivator, particularly in University settings where people are looking to
>> create their career and life.
>>
>> I mentioned https://boxofclue.com/comdev-metrics/ which I’ve been running
>> for about a month now, and suggested moving it to one of the ComDev VMs.
>> I’ve mentioned this before, and didn’t hear much feedback other than that
>> it seems like a useful resource. I’m going to try to go ahead and stick it
>> on projects.apache.org <http://projects.apache.org/> at some point,
>> maybe? I don’t expect to have time to get that done this week, but would be
>> delighted to work with anyone else who does have time for that. But I’ll
>> get to it eventually if nobody else does.
>>
>> I’d like to make this a regular thing and have put this on my calendar,
>> weekly, at 10am Eastern US time. If you can drop in a few times a month,
>> that would be fantastic. And I’ll try to post a proposed topics list here a
>> day or two before the meeting.
>>
>> —Rich
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