Allow people with interest to contribute to postmarketOS by helping with events

This is a proposal that comes after the discussions during FOSDEM, the creation of https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/events/ and due to more work likely being queued in the future due to a growing team.

The problem

As we grow, organizing, coordinating, and keeping track of events becomes a greater effort. So far, the responsibilities have been more or less spread out (even though @lucaweiss has done a considerable amount of the work). Getting things coordinated is going to become harder and harder. Specially since we want to grow our outreach, any kind of help is welcomed.

As an example, even without us specifically working on more outreach, this year we have already been approached and invited to 3 conferences of different kinds. Keeping all this in place requires some work

Why call for help?

The idea is we can assign and delegate responsibilities, and start creating procedures and set expectations for responsibilities. This might also be a great way to get non-dev people involved. These tasks requires no software-related technical skills, and currently take time from engineers. There might also be people that enjoy doing this more than us, and hopefully would be a great way to get people to become TCs through different paths.

Ways to help

• Keep track of issues in the events repo, make sure to follow-up with people after events, and that events are added to the website.
• Order and distribute merch material (e.g: stickers), so that we have some consistency and don't make it a responsibility of the people going to events to prepare the merch
• Helping searching for accommodation or locations when a great part of the team assembles (e.g: FOSDEM accommodation, reservations in Judgy Vegan)
• Keep track of the inventory of things paid with OCE funds (does not have to be in the events repo, but could be)
• Communicate with people that invite us to events, and help coordinate (probably we should have a events@postmarketos.org email address or similar?)
• Eventually, build an events team with more people and some procedures similar to what we have with other teams like the Social Media one.

If you are interested in helping with any of these, please send as an email at team@postmarketos.org!

added discussion help wanted queued-for-meeting labels

removed queued-for-meeting label

removed discussion label

changed title from [RFC] Create an event team and invite non-devs to help outreach and coordination to Allow people with interest to contribute to postmarketOS by helping with events

changed the description

This was discussed in today's meeting: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Core_Contributors_Meetings#2025-03-17_(CC). I edited the issue to better reflect what we want, and we'll add it to the next monthly blog post

mentioned in issue postmarketos.org#195

Order and distribute merch material (e.g: stickers), so that we have some consistency and don't make it a responsibility of the people going to events to prepare the merch

I would volunteer myself to happily help out with making merch designs. I've subscribed myself to the events repo and will keep an eye out.