Recruiting Students (Campus Ambassadors)

[inode0]

On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 9:18 PM, Jack Aboutboul <jaa at redhat.com> wrote:
> Hey All,
>
> I appreciate all the enthusiasm, I know you guys are eager to join, but I
> was more curious in what you guys felt about the actual idea and what you
> would expect out of such a program?  I want it to be different than the
> current ambassadors setup.
>
> I know you guys have some bright ideas--let me hear them.

A few thoughts now on reaching out to students ... perhaps later I'll
add some thoughts about reaching out to faculty and researchers.

One thing that would be immensely helpful to all campus communities is
promotional materials that could be distributed around campus. I don't
mean swag, but rather informational items like posters. Linux meetings
reach only a tiny part of campus. We need to catch the eye of people
all over campus. Posters located in the Design College just might
catch the eye of some budding graphics designer who would love a
project where their art might actually be used for example, but they
are unlikely candidates for attending a local LUG/FUG meeting. How
many marketing majors are aware that there are real life marketing
opportunities for them within the Fedora project while they are still
students? Reaching these students should be one focus of any campus
outreach.

If promotional material could be targeted to specific areas of need
that would be helpful too in getting the idea across to the technical
writing student that Fedora has something for *them* to do to
contribute. We can make students aware of Fedora with general Fedora
events, banners, posters. If we want new students to become actively
involved they need to see how they can contribute to the project by
doing things they are interested in doing. Not just look and say, "oh
Fedora, that's cool" as they walk by.

Similarly it would be nice to reach students more widely than we can
now when recruiting participants for Summer of Code projects or for
Fedora intern positions. While faculty is generally receptive to
passing along information about such opportunities to students there
is a limit to what can be expected of busy faculty members. Taping up
a poster outside the office or in the classroom is not too much of a
burden.

In all campus advertising I think it is really critical to make it
easy for the student to contact someone who can help guide them along
in their first steps. Ideally, I think there should be a local contact
on each promotional item. That way someone they can talk to directly
can help them join the Fedora project and mediate a contact between
the student and an appropriate mentor whether that mentor is local or
someone within the broader Fedora community.

John