Re: [gentoo-nfp] Response to Grant Goodyear

[Alec Warner]

On 1/21/08, John Alberts <john.m.alberts@×××××.com> wrote:
> Matthew Summers wrote:
> > What follows are some suggestions.
> >
> > Consider the use of university internship programs for projects like
> > documentation (technical writing students) & The GMN (journalism
> > students).  These programs are a requirement to graduate for many
> > university students.  With that, many companies and other
> > organizations offer resume-building experience in their field in the
> > form of these unpaid interships.  I'm sure many of you have had the
> > pleasure of an unpaid internship. The Gentoo Foundation can leverage
> > its status as a well known GNU/Linux distribution and a legitimate
> > global organization to attract the leading universities around the
> > world.  What I mean to say is that people pay attention to Gentoo and
> > there exists a certain level of expectation of quality from the larger
> > tech world. To really floor the critics, solicit a few English
> > departments at some highly respected university to collaborate with a
> > team of developers and users to create and maintain documentation and
> > write a regular news letter. I know a few good writers and if you give
> > them the right information to start with then answer any questions
> > they have along the way you get really nice work.  What writer
> > wouldn't like to have their name on really well written, and heavily
> > viewed pages? Talk about an attention grabber.
> >
> > Further, consider using internship programs to assist with the
> > management and governance of the Gentoo Foundation itself. There are
> > many university programs that focus on non-profit and foundation
> > management. Create programs that give opportunities to these students
> > to participate in the day to day business of  the Gentoo Foundation.
> > They can act in supporting roles for the trustees and counsel members
> > and other various committees. Hey, its worth university credit to the
> > student and its free to Gentoo.
> >
> >
> > Consider the implementation of a Gentoo Patron program, such that
> > companies and other organizations have an opportunity to support the
> > Foundation, be it financially or with volunteers. In return, offer
> > some Patron Profile Page to give the donors some visibility. Further,
> > as a small business owner I have to say, its sometimes very tough to
> > locally procure for employment a good developer, administrator, or
> > otherwise one that knows their way around Gentoo or GNU/Linux for that
> > matter.  I imagine that other companies have similar issues. Thus some
> > way for companies and organization to be exposed to the larger Gentoo
> > community would be a significant return on any investment.
> >
> > Consider a partnership with a larger organization, like Google, to
> > extend the users experience in novel ways. One example would be the
> > use of some social networking tools to aid the Gentoo community in
> > collaborations on code, documentation, etc.
>
> I think these are all excellent ideas.  I know that some projects have
> participated in Google SOC, so they have gotten some free dev work from
> students.  I don't know much at all about the Gentoo structure and who
> would be best to present these ideas to.  It seems like this mailing
> list would be a good start.  I know it's going to take a dev or two or
> three to step up and carry the torch to implement these ideas.

We've done GSoC but haven't had the best of results; the students are
the folks submitting the proposals; if we are chosen to do GSoC this
year maybe we can make better use of the work.

-Alec
-- 
gentoo-nfp@l.g.o mailing list