Hi Mel, I'll have more thoughts eventually, but I can address the comment:
<snip> How can we get more stories like the "you + Greg talking with NSF program officers" or... basically, how do I respond if I'm asked the question "this seems multiple-steps removed from revenue streams, why not just spend our time working directly on the mindshare of our customers - IT folks, CTOs, CIOs, etc?" <snip> I see these as two different questions. I think that you get more stories about how RedHat is positively influencing faculty by asking the community directly. Ask specifically and the motivation for the request. Ask POSSE alums to provide a paragraph or two about how they're using the experience and indicate that you need evidence of effectiveness to show RedHat. (And you may have already tried this and I just don't know about it.) As to how to address the "multiple-steps removed from the revenue streams" issue, this is likely another difference between FOSS culture and academic culture. Our students are the "IT folks, CTOs, etc." of the future. As an academic, I'm trying to educate students for the long term with the hopes that they will employ what they've learned for a long time in their career. A positive RedHat experience with faculty trickles down to students and those future IT folks and CTOs are more likely to turn to RedHat based on positive experience while in school. Yes, this is a long chain, but I think it has impact nonetheless. Heidi -----Original Message----- From: Mel Chua [mailto:m...@redhat.com] Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2011 11:01 AM To: Heidi Ellis Cc: 'TOS' Subject: Re: [TOS] Red Hat's education strategy DRAFT: would you want to take this offer? Very helpful comments and questions, Matt & Heidi - it's good to know we're at least mostly on the right track. Keep the questions coming! First round of responses below. > - Not sure what NDA is :-) Sorry! Non-Disclosure Agreement - it's common, when you're doing work for a corporation, to not be able to release your work or even sometimes tell anyone else what you're working on. For instance, I am *still* frustrated that I have to describe my senior capstone project (which I'm pretty proud of, and which has had an international ~45,000+ user impact annually) as "developing embedded control software for a modular mechatronic system using the CANopen protocol" (or something similarly obtuse). > - I'm not sure what you mean by "freely remixable". Do you mean reusable and > customizable materials? Yes - basically, CC-BY-SA. > - The "optional interactive online tutorials" are interactive with real > people? It isn't apparent from the description as on first read I thought it > was an automated tutorial. If so, it would be helpful to know who is > providing the tutorials. Oh! Yes, real people. Namely, uh... me. :) At least next school year. IRC-based classroom with materials and tools set up beforehand, something like this: http://blog.melchua.com/2010/09/07/fedora-classroom-tuesday-sep-14-at-1600-u tc-working-with-people-who-arent-there-basic-distributed-collaboration-tools / - http://blog.melchua.com/2010/09/15/practicing-what-you-teach-first-followup- on-fedora-classroom-on-distributed-collaboration-tools/ has a link to the full logs. What would be a better way of describing it? > I see no problem with the fine print. I do note that you may get questions > from some institutions about navigating the Intellectual Property hurdle so > you might want to be prepared for that. Noted. I was curious about that, really, and I'm not sure how to prepare for these questions. I might save 'em all up and then take them to Pam (one of Red Hat's lawyers, she was on this list earlier fielding our questions about getting "POSSE" trademarked). > On another note, I was reading the "Value to RedHat" section. I think that > in addition to the advantages that you note, I'd also like to add that > RedHat is building a large store of goodwill in the academic community. How can we get more stories like the "you + Greg talking with NSF program officers" or... basically, how do I respond if I'm asked the question "this seems multiple-steps removed from revenue streams, why not just spend our time working directly on the mindshare of our customers - IT folks, CTOs, CIOs, etc?" --Mel _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
