Hello Everyone,
I realize that some people have been confused, perplexed and perhaps
annoyed at the lack of information being disseminated about what is
going on vis-a-vis some programs being planned in the educational
realm. After my brief comments at the NA ambassadors meeting a few
weeks I would like to outline what has been going on to provide some
clarity as well a grounds for discussions for everything. Let me start
by saying that I apologize if it seemed like this was being done in
secret, which it absolutely isn't, its just the choice was made to keep
everything quiet until we could make some formal announcement in the
coming months and that lead people to believe we were trying to cut
people out of the process, which is not the case at all.
First of all, let me make a few thing we are *NOT* trying to do clear,
based mostly off concerns people have brought to my attention:
1. Create a private initiative - Again, we were just being mum until we
could make sure we would get the most press punch out of this.
2. Uproot/Replace/Rename/Repurpose the Ambassadors program - This is
absolutely not true one iota!!! The purpose that we are considering
this initiative to be a separate entity has nothing to do with anything
malicious. This is intended to be a pilot program and we thought it
might be less of a burned on Ambassadors if it was run by one person
initially, figure out if it has legs, gain some organic growth and then
integrate it into the fold rather than stick in a whole bunch of new
people with seemingly narrow-focused objectives into an already ongoing
and vibrant Ambassadors program.
3. Replace current Ambassadors who are students - Again, not true. We
really would like everyone to keep doing the great job they are already
doing, day in and day out. We didn't start by approaching these
ambassadors, because strategic partnerships with certain key
universities are important to Red Hat as well as Fedora and we are, and
I especially have been, working on building those bridges for the past
few weeks. We don't want to kick anyone out of place, on the
contrary--we are trying to make more places in which people can be.
That being said, I am going to highlight some key pieces of strategy
which for better or worse comprise our Fedora Education Strategy and
feel free to comment on and/or disagree with any of these--thats why I'm
putting this out, to get everyone involved in the process:
1. Open Source Curriculum - We are working with a talented group of
people to try and put together both a platform and set of course
materials in order to teach people and students world wide how to
program using modern software engineering methodologies and with a focus
on Free and Open Software tools and philosophy.
2. Campus Reps - A US Pilot program to try and get students on college
campuses involved in Fedora and general FOSS advocacy. Initially, they
will all report back to one person within Red Hat who can be help
responsible and accountable for all this. Purpose is two-fold, first,
students advocate for open source and fedora on their respective
campus. Second, they provide eyes and ears on the ground and work with
students and faculty to find interesting opportunities. Students also
provide a face for us to the faculty which is familiar to them which
doesnt seem like its some corporate backed scheme to recruit students
without paying their sometimes insane fees. Reps have a few basic
responsibilities, mainly holding one event a semester, whether it be a
tech talk or info session about something fedora or open source related
and maintaining good rapport with faculty to try and make new
opportunities spring up.
3. Red Hat High 2.0 - Redefine RHH as a program working with the
country's elite science and math high schools in order to get students
familiarized with open source at the high school level. This ties in
with the Open Curriculum. We know there are a number of similar
initiatives but none which focus around getting students familiarized
with open source.
Thats basically that, I'm sure everyone will have more questions and
comments and suggestions, so let's get everyone involved in this. What
do you think?
Jack
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