[Linux-aus] Young people and FOSS in Australia

[James Turnbull]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Mary

I don't think an apology is necessary. I think it echoes thoughts many
of us have had in the past.

This is especially close to my heart currently because I'm in a FOSS
company (in a very FOSS town - Portland, Oregon) trying to bring younger
people into the organisation and struggling.

We've started a (paid) internship program - basically current college
students with a CS/Maths/IT/Security even just an interest in
SysAdmin/Development - and try to get them in as "summer" interns or
"one day a week". We've got two awesome students so far and I am keen to
get more

We're also involved in GSOC and other related activities to attract
students.

So with all of this in mind I'm prepared to put my money where my mouth
is and say I'd happily:

1. Sponsor travel/accommodation for a student to attend and speak at LCA
2012 (and Google used to/still do something similar?)
2. Mentor a student to develop a talk and shepherd them through the
submissions process either for a main track talk or as a fall back a
miniconf talk
3. Help them promote and market their talk and/or project.

If a few open source companies did the same - without attempting to
guilt anyone - then I think we could start to see a lot more young
people attend.  I think LA could be a good body to reach out to some of
those companies and see if they'd make a similar commitment.

Regards

James Turnbull

- -- 
Author of:
* Pro Linux System Administration (http://tinyurl.com/linuxadmin)
* Pulling Strings with Puppet (http://tinyurl.com/pupbook)
* Pro Nagios 2.0 (http://tinyurl.com/pronagios)
* Hardening Linux (http://tinyurl.com/hardeninglinux)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJNWdfSAAoJECFa/lDkFHAydPQIAKZKO1//J7P/8qGU4FNdK+Fw
6FRTnwnTTE94JvUXMDJo+svL1yI/GEMDkfwSg1Yab0uEW/Ps5P9y8zJSty6V3zVE
tJ4xujILkIT8D/808Y33aydBo28oJoRgDb62AvLUz+sWp5N6vM2uqr6SdjpPlJDO
05x2n5hIwU3K/5ZiRkExSnxU843QCR1JoielgBEH+xadm89TvXFNlWvgpxOZ4ebx
4ly80Etwo9su0UIjcJnp13cBV3mT2qhUb8dt1gmEj9eCtB1O+uyMsA6ZcQ5vqt6e
ypOGRfGsBkNzohMku6Z2nIVWbw4I7qK7t9OP3SGC0qXB19aJH29CZsLqIWBXTuM=
=p+Ez
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----