Open@RIT

Open@RIT is dedicated to fostering the collaborative engine of Open across the University for Faculty, Staff and Students. Its goals are to discover, and grow, the footprint of RIT’s impact on all things Open including, but not limited to, Open Source Software, Open Data, Open Hardware, Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons licensed efforts, what we like to refer to in aggregate as Open Work. 

Its charter was approved by the Provost in June of 2020 and it was established under the Office of the Vice-President of Research in August of 2020. We're coming to a number of college-wide meetings this Fall semester.  Want a preview of the talk before we get to yours?  Had to miss the meeting? View the slides.

The roots of Open@RIT are based in our twelve years of FOSS education for undergraduate students which includes...

• RIT’s courses and Minor in Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture, 
• The experiential education programs of  FOSS@MAGIC (formerly FOSS@RIT) 
• Our Co-Op program LibreCorps.

The goal of Open@RIT is to be able to provide similar support for the Open Work already pursued by RIT Faculty and Staff, and to mentor those interested in getting started in it. 

In November of 2019, Jacobs wrote a white paper for the Vice President of Research and the Provost describing the role of an Open Source Programs Office in industry and what a similar effort might do for RIT.  

The paper resulted in an invitation by the Administration to hold a series of exploratory meetings with faculty and staff to gauge interest.  

Fifty faculty and staff from 37 units across campus RSVP’d to the first meeting (pre-COVID) and twenty participated (post-COVID) in the creation of a “wish list” document suggesting what Open@RIT might do. Much of Open@RIT’s charter, approved by the Provost in June of 2020, was influenced by that “wish list.” 

Open@RIT firmly believes in the FOSS maxim of “release early, release often.”  Our website will reflect that as well, so come back regularly, especially during our first year.

Director 

Stephen Jacobs

Professor

School of Interactive Games and Media

Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences

sj@magic.rit.edu

Stephen Jacobs is a professor with the School of Interactive Games and Media and an interdisciplinary scholar who works in several different areas that often overlap including Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture. Digital Humanities, Game Design and History and Interactive Narrative. He also holds the position of Visiting Scholar at The Strong National Museum of Play.  His Open Work has been funded by The Ford Foundation, UNICEF Innovation, Red Hat Inc, Northern Telecom and AT&T. Professor Jacobs received the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Mentoring for 2019-2020. 

Advisory Board

Upcoming:

Virtual Election Night Hackathon. Tuesday, November 3, 2020.

This will be our 10th anniversary event.  Details coming soon.

Recent:

National Civic Day of Hacking Virtual Hackathon. Saturday, September 12th, Noon-6
We’ll be partnering with the City of Rochester and the City Library to do some local asset mapping for Rochester.  No previous experience required. The event is primarily asynchronous and a full six hour commitment is not required. To learn more about the effort, click the link below!
Information about, and sign up form for the Rochester virtual cohort

Lightning Talk for the State of the Source Summit September 9th @ 3:10 p.m.
We’ll be presenting a lightning talk on Open@RIT as part of this event. Catch just our presentation, or enjoy the full two-day event for free. (Though the OSI would appreciate it if you take the opportunity to contribute on the registration page if you are able.)

Knowledge Base: Open@RIT will provide a curated set of resource links for Faculty, Staff and Students.  This very alpha prototype illustrates our thinking as to the type of information we’ll be looking to share.  There will be a link here in the future for the community ro recommend additions to this resource.

Current Open@RIT Projects

The initial research effort to be completed under Open@RIT was Conceptual Mismatches, a qualitative study of PyPI  that was funded as part of the Ford Foundation’s Critical Digital Infrastructure Research program, also supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The work was presented as part of a research panel held by the Ford and Sloan foundations on August 20th, 2020.

Open@RIT also supports “World Around You” is an on-going applied research effort led by Professor Chris Kurz of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. DIrector Jacobs is Co-Pi.  The initial development and on-going work around this Open Source, Web-based platform for Deaf Literacy has been supported by the Sign on For Literacy and Begin with Books grand challenges of the All Children Reading partnership.

University-Wide Directory of Open Work and Research on Open

One of our goals is to build a listing/directory/database of Open Work and Research on Open being done by RIT Faculty and Staff. Once we get one up and running, you’ll find a link here to register your projects with the goal of helping you find resources and network with other folks on campus to network and collaborate with.

This was one of the most requested items from the focus group meetings that were held earlier this year.  We’ll be working on developing some of this over the fall semester and hope to begin offering some initial programming in Spring Semester.