[Ambassadors] The Education Strategy

[Dipanjan Chakraborty]

That's indeed great for us students. We would want to know when its going to
roll out.

Dipanjan Chakraborty

On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 4:19 AM, Jack Aboutboul <jaa at redhat.com> 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
>
>
>
>
> --
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>
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