Heads-up: 40 Allegheny students are slowly starting to become contributors right now.

[Mel Chua]

Because I've been remiss at announcing this to the Marketing list in any 
sort of way: I'm at Allegheny College for the next 2 weeks working with 
40 students (who'll be with us 'till the start of May when F13 launches) 
- you'll see more news about this trickle in, and I'll make sure to keep 
the list updated from now on. (Thanks to David for reminding me to hit 
the list.)

15:08 <ke4qqq> cool - I was going to say - I just searched my mail for 
allegheny - and don't see any messages in marketing about these
                students coming on - so I am wondering if it's a 
'secret' that you have to know mel to know
15:10 <mchua> No, it's a "mel is a slacker and hasn't pushed this news 
to mktg."
15:10 <mchua> Let me do that now.
15:11 <ke4qqq> I figured it was just an oversight - prolly telling so 
many people in so many venues that this one was forgotten
15:14 <mchua> It was perfectionism, plain and simple - forgot about 
"release early release often" and went "ohhh, wait until we have all the 
details down."
15:16 <ke4qqq> on the list issue - how are they gonna help shepherding 
the students if they can't see the exchanges
15:18 <mchua> So... this one was a compromise on my part. We're dealing 
with students by project teams, so that we can introduce them to
individuals in the community working on those specific projects.
15:18 <mchua> for instance, Russell and Justin on the video site, etc.
15:18 <mchua> Henrik on press kits.
15:18 <mchua> We're going to start with private email introductions 
(yeah, I winced at that too) to those individuals, to get them and the 
project team on the same page.
15:19 <mchua> And the *first* thing I'm going to be working with Matt, 
Darren, and each student/community-member team to do is their 
introduction to the list, to IRC, the wiki, etc. - wherever the "Fedora 
mentor" feels is the best venue to start them off on.
15:19 <mchua> Because otherwise we get 40 students hitting the list all 
at once with no context.
15:20 <mchua> Rather than, say, an email co-written by Nicu and a couple 
students working on the Design Spin webpage saying "hey, we're from 
Allegheny, we'll be doing X, Nicu's been helping us get started," etc 
etc etc.
15:21 <mchua> It is... amazing... how much scaffolding we need to move 
40 students all at once.
15:22 <ke4qqq> yeah - though I mean think about how much time it takes 
to acclimate a single person - I think it took me over a year to begin 
to grok how communities worked
15:25  * mchua nods
15:26 <mchua> and we've got to get *all* of them productive within 5 
weeks, while they're taking other classes
15:26 <mchua> so... yeah. Learning a lot.