Jack,
Your scope and rationale make 100% good sense to me.
I see the Campus Reps and RHH initiatives as places were MIT and
Fedora can more fully engage.
Well done!
-Bill
----
William Cattey
Linux Platform Coordinator
MIT Information Services & Technology
N42-040M, 617-253-0140, wdc@xxxxxxx
http://web.mit.edu/wdc/www/
On Aug 19, 2008, at 6:49 PM, Jack Aboutboul wrote:
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
--
Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
Fedora-marketing-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
--
Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
Fedora-marketing-list@xxxxxxxxxx
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
