Endless supports GNOME Foundation’s Community Engagement Challenge
$65,000 will be awarded for innovative projects that encourage open-source coding education
The GNOME Foundation and Endless are proud to announce that entries are currently being accepted for the inaugural Community Engagement Challenge.
UPDATES: The Challenge is accepting Phase 1 applications through July 1st! Be sure to apply today.
We encourage you to share Challenge information with friends and colleagues on social with the #gnomechallenge.
We will be hosting a Q & A session on Twitter at 7am UTC on May 26th for anyone that has any questions about their entry.
Projects should engage beginning coders with the free and open-source software (“FOSS”) community. The Challenge is a three-phase competition designed to generate stimulating ideas that will help connect the next generation of coders to the FOSS community and keep them active and engaged for years to come. Up to $65,000 in cash prizes are available to the individuals or teams with the best entries.
“Through the Challenge we hope to reach a diverse audience, to encourage beginning coders to get involved with the FOSS community to help ensure that free software is available long into the future,” said Neil McGovern, GNOME Foundation Executive Director. “What better way to do that than to reach out to the community itself to come up with creative ways to inspire the next generation?”
A key motivation for launching the challenge is that universal access to software engineering education and training has been identified as deficient in many areas. For several years, the free and open‐source software community has struggled to attract and maintain the number of high‐quality developers required to drive the sector forward. Statistics show this trend is increasing, according to the StackOverflow Developer Survey Results (2018 & 2019):
64.5% of engineers do not contribute to open‐source projects more than once a year, compared to 55.5% last year.
Only 25.6% of developers use Linux as their primary operating system.
91.7% of engineers identify as male, and 70.8% as white or of European Descent.
Addressing these issues is vital to ensuring the long‐term success of free and open‐source software on the desktop and that the GNOME Foundation is in a unique place to be able to guide and mentor people in their career path.
“Our mission at Endless has evolved initially from working with underserved populations in emerging markets and giving them access to important computing tools,” said Matt Dalio, Founder, Endless. “It has now become important to us to help the youth of today shape their technology, rather than be shaped by it. This initiative with The GNOME Foundation is the perfect partnership to further our mission.”
Entrants are challenged to devise creative ways to promote open-source software to coders typically in high school and college. How a project achieves that goal is open-ended, and unique, novel approaches are encouraged.
The first phase of the Challenge asks entrants to submit a written proposal for their concept no later than July 1, 2020. Twenty entries will be chosen to move to the next round and receive $1000 each. The second phase of the Challenge will require proof of concept, with four entries receiving $5000 and moving onto the final round. The final round will call for a deliverable end product, with the winner receiving $15,000 and the second place finisher receiving $10,000.
Apart from what is outlined in the Challenge Rules, there are no restrictions on the form submissions must take: they may be software projects, educational materials, videos, games, presentations, events, or anything else that promotes engagement of beginning coders with the FOSS community.
Creativity is highly encouraged of all entrants! The winner of the final round is currently scheduled to be announced in the spring of 2021.
The Challenge is supported by Endless, an organization of companies, initiatives, and philanthropic endeavors with the singular mission to help children take control of their digital worlds, not be controlled by them.
Looking to apply? Get answers to all your submission questions here.
The GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organization that furthers the goals of the GNOME Project, helping it to create a free software computing platform for the general public that is designed to be elegant, efficient, and easy to use. Learn more at www.gnome.org.