On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 9:18 PM, Jack Aboutboul <jaa@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hey All, > > I appreciate all the enthusiasm, I know you guys are eager to join, but I > was more curious in what you guys felt about the actual idea and what you > would expect out of such a program? I want it to be different than the > current ambassadors setup. > > I know you guys have some bright ideas--let me hear them. A few thoughts now on reaching out to students ... perhaps later I'll add some thoughts about reaching out to faculty and researchers. One thing that would be immensely helpful to all campus communities is promotional materials that could be distributed around campus. I don't mean swag, but rather informational items like posters. Linux meetings reach only a tiny part of campus. We need to catch the eye of people all over campus. Posters located in the Design College just might catch the eye of some budding graphics designer who would love a project where their art might actually be used for example, but they are unlikely candidates for attending a local LUG/FUG meeting. How many marketing majors are aware that there are real life marketing opportunities for them within the Fedora project while they are still students? Reaching these students should be one focus of any campus outreach. If promotional material could be targeted to specific areas of need that would be helpful too in getting the idea across to the technical writing student that Fedora has something for *them* to do to contribute. We can make students aware of Fedora with general Fedora events, banners, posters. If we want new students to become actively involved they need to see how they can contribute to the project by doing things they are interested in doing. Not just look and say, "oh Fedora, that's cool" as they walk by. Similarly it would be nice to reach students more widely than we can now when recruiting participants for Summer of Code projects or for Fedora intern positions. While faculty is generally receptive to passing along information about such opportunities to students there is a limit to what can be expected of busy faculty members. Taping up a poster outside the office or in the classroom is not too much of a burden. In all campus advertising I think it is really critical to make it easy for the student to contact someone who can help guide them along in their first steps. Ideally, I think there should be a local contact on each promotional item. That way someone they can talk to directly can help them join the Fedora project and mediate a contact between the student and an appropriate mentor whether that mentor is local or someone within the broader Fedora community. John -- Fedora-marketing-list mailing list Fedora-marketing-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
