u/FieldFriendsTeam

FOLKS!

As an update to our previous post, the first round of Field Friends is LIVE!

In an effort to combat campus loneliness, we've put together a website to overcome that initial barrier to meeting people.

Instead of having to rely on chance and a dwindling amount of third spaces, you can sign up to get matched into a group with 2-3 other people who share your interests.

And, we've tried to make it as easy as possible! Just verify your @illinois.edu email, fill out a survey of your interests, and get matched into your group.

It's 100% free, the website is open source, your responses are encrypted, and all of your data is deleted after matches are sent out.

Link: https://fieldfriends.org/

Folks!

After seeing many posts about people looking to make friends on campus, I decided to create something to help, and I'm calling it Field Friends.

It’s a free, open source, no-download service made specifically for UIUC to match people into groups of 3-4 people based on interests & vibes!

It’s super simple:

Verify your @illinois.edu email.
Fill out the matching form.
Get an email introducing you to your new group of 3-4 friends!

Note: You’ll always be matched with people with the same university status, so undergrads will never be matched with grad students, etc. Read more on our about page.

Data privacy is huge these days, so Field Friends is engineered around that!

It’s open source: https://github.com/FieldFriends/field-friends-web
Your data is automatically deleted once matches are sent out.
Your responses are encrypted before they ever hit our database.

Matching officially opens next Monday, the 18th, but you can sign up early now at https://fieldfriends.org/! Additionally, matching will run in rounds every two weeks, so you can always come back to meet more people.

Folks, let’s make this into a tool that helps bring the UIUC community together. Sign up, get out there, and make some friends this summer!

Matching is OPEN!!!

Make friends this summer!