Last month, the Open Source Program Office was invited to host a table at the GW Makerspace event in Kogan Plaza. We connected with students, faculty, and staff to share information about open source and the OSPO. We featured two interactive activities at our table:
- Open Source vs. Proprietary Matching Game: Visitors matched logos of different companies, platforms, and apps—ranging from Python to TikTok—and guessed which ones use open-source models and which are closed-source. This activity highlighted how often open source models are a part of daily life, even when people may not realize it. This activity inspired some great conversations about the importance of open source and how it impacts society.
- Open Source Art Contribution: Our second activity provided students with an opportunity to showcase their creativity by creating artwork and participating in their first open source contribution on GitHub. Following the model we first launched during our first Open Source Conference, participants submitted their work to our open source art repo. Our OSPO student ambassadors then added those works to our collaborative open source project, allowing participants to see their masterpieces uploaded live as part of our collaborative open source art collection.
Alongside the activities, we were able to give away fun OSPO stickers, candy, and OSPO water bottles as participation prizes.
This event was a fantastic opportunity to meet so many members of the GW community, answer questions about open source, and share information about our upcoming programming, including the October 14th movie night screening of The Internet’s Own Boy.
We are thrilled to have had the opportunity to interact with so many wonderful members of the GW community—a huge shoutout to the GeorgeHacks team for hosting such an engaging event!