Needs some ideas

[Zach Oglesby]

All,

I am trying to compile a list of companies to contact about sponsoring
the next Student Coding session, but I am not having much luck on
this. I would like some input on companies that you think it might be
beneficial for them to get behind this. Thank for the help.

Zach

[Karsten Wade]

On Fri, Oct 01, 2010 at 09:47:18AM +0200, Zach Oglesby wrote:
> All,
>
> I am trying to compile a list of companies to contact about sponsoring
> the next Student Coding session, but I am not having much luck on
> this. I would like some input on companies that you think it might be
> beneficial for them to get behind this. Thank for the help.

I was going to try to cross-reference with anyone who had been
contacted already by others at Red Hat about this program, but I don't
think it matters as much.  Those companies were relatively big,
perhaps the multiple vectors in will help.  Anyone found through these
pages are eligible, IMO:

http://www.redhat.com/partners/

That means, any one of them might be willing to complete the circle
and place a bet on the future.  The numbers are to our advantage --
student coding participants tend to stick around and do more stuff,
compared to people who walk in off the street.  (I wonder if that
means $ spent here might have 3x the value of $ spend sponsoring a
conference event.)

That means we can think about lots of companies.  Here are some ideas
by sort-of categories.  Let them spark more ideas.  These companies
have people working in Fedora, but we haven't heard if they've asked
around at their companies.  I wonder if we could use some FAS search
capabilities to make some guesses about who works where?  (Answer:
yes; public records we can use to send targeted requests?)

= ISVs ==

These independent software vendors work directly or indirectly in open
source.  They may have employees with worthy ideas who want a chance
to mentor (by throwing their ideas in to the open pool.)  They may
have staff who want to work on a project in the open source way and
help us with administering the program.

* IBM
*

= IHVs =

These hardware vendors are much like the ISVs above.

* Intel
* AMD
* HTC
* Motorola
* Dell
* HP
* Lexmark
* Xerox
* EMC
* Nvidia
* ATI
* Cisco
* Fujitsu
* Hitachi
* NEC

= Services ==

Solutions integrators (SIs) and professional service companies might
be good ones to look at.

* Accenture
* EDS
* A really huge list :)

- Karsten