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Jay Contonio jaycontonio@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.jcontonio.com
From: "Michael Phipps" <mphipps1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Reply-To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [openbeos] Re: How can we recruit more programmers ? Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:04:55 -0400
>I don't know if it's the Linux way or not, but I think it would hurt more >than it could help. I am not sure about the situation at universities in >the US or other countries, but it seems to me that hardly any CS faculty >here in Germany actually teaches students to code (and why should they? >In fact, CS and programming really don't have too much in common).
That surprises me, considering the quality of our German coders... :-)
>So, I'm quite sure our postmaster would put you on our internal blacklist >and the mail would be considered spam. There are so many mails arriving >on the central address of our "Fachschaft" (students' branch of the CS >dept.) that want to point us in a certain direction or give mild hints... >Most of it has to be ignored, and is. It's more important to (as an >example) answer questions from foreign students.
Yes - spamming every CS student is the wrong way.
That is part of the reason that I have refrained from doing this sort of thing in this way. Same reason that I have not tried to "recruit" Linux/BSD folks - there is just no good way to ask people without sounding like you are somehow "stealing" people or spamming.
What has worked pretty well is some "behind the scenes" type activity. If you know a CS professor who teaches high level courses and who you think might be interested, dash me off an email. I can get in contact with them. That also sounds a bit more professional than having "just anyone" contact them.
>Don't you think that those CS students who like to code as a hobby will >find the project themselves? If you want to reach potential programmers, >try to "just be there" in some of the higher-level programming >newsgroups, publish the occasional essay on /. or something like that >(don't we even have a PR person? Not sure atm...)
I would be the PR person. I am finding that I can't be everywhere at once, so I am turning more of the coding duties over to the Team Leads and their volunteers to focus more on the "business" end of things - getting the non-profit paperwork pushed through, doing more PR type work, etc.
