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Matthew Summers wrote: |
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> What follows are some suggestions. |
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> |
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> Consider the use of university internship programs for projects like |
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> documentation (technical writing students) & The GMN (journalism |
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> students). These programs are a requirement to graduate for many |
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> university students. With that, many companies and other |
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> organizations offer resume-building experience in their field in the |
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> form of these unpaid interships. I'm sure many of you have had the |
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> pleasure of an unpaid internship. The Gentoo Foundation can leverage |
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> its status as a well known GNU/Linux distribution and a legitimate |
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> global organization to attract the leading universities around the |
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> world. What I mean to say is that people pay attention to Gentoo and |
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> there exists a certain level of expectation of quality from the larger |
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> tech world. To really floor the critics, solicit a few English |
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> departments at some highly respected university to collaborate with a |
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> team of developers and users to create and maintain documentation and |
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> write a regular news letter. I know a few good writers and if you give |
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> them the right information to start with then answer any questions |
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> they have along the way you get really nice work. What writer |
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> wouldn't like to have their name on really well written, and heavily |
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> viewed pages? Talk about an attention grabber. |
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> |
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> Further, consider using internship programs to assist with the |
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> management and governance of the Gentoo Foundation itself. There are |
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> many university programs that focus on non-profit and foundation |
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> management. Create programs that give opportunities to these students |
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> to participate in the day to day business of the Gentoo Foundation. |
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> They can act in supporting roles for the trustees and counsel members |
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> and other various committees. Hey, its worth university credit to the |
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> student and its free to Gentoo. |
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> |
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> |
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> Consider the implementation of a Gentoo Patron program, such that |
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> companies and other organizations have an opportunity to support the |
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> Foundation, be it financially or with volunteers. In return, offer |
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> some Patron Profile Page to give the donors some visibility. Further, |
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> as a small business owner I have to say, its sometimes very tough to |
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> locally procure for employment a good developer, administrator, or |
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> otherwise one that knows their way around Gentoo or GNU/Linux for that |
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> matter. I imagine that other companies have similar issues. Thus some |
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> way for companies and organization to be exposed to the larger Gentoo |
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> community would be a significant return on any investment. |
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> |
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> Consider a partnership with a larger organization, like Google, to |
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> extend the users experience in novel ways. One example would be the |
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> use of some social networking tools to aid the Gentoo community in |
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> collaborations on code, documentation, etc. |
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|
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I think these are all excellent ideas. I know that some projects have |
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participated in Google SOC, so they have gotten some free dev work from |
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students. I don't know much at all about the Gentoo structure and who |
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would be best to present these ideas to. It seems like this mailing |
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list would be a good start. I know it's going to take a dev or two or |
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three to step up and carry the torch to implement these ideas. |
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|
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----- |
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John Alberts |
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|
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-- |
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