Co-op type jobs?

[Andrew Cowie]

On Tue, 2004-14-12 at 12:33 -0400, Mike Newman wrote:
> What I'm looking for are leads to jobs/volunteer positions that
> involve IT in some way. 

Do your colleagues need some sort of formal business relationship in
order for the work term to count? 

The reason I mention this is I was recently approached by the co-op
office one of the Universities here looking to find placements for their
work-term students. They were quite explicit that the students were not
expecting to be paid, but they did need quality projects to work on, and
wanted to associate with companies who were willing to co-operate with
the small bit of administrative paperwork that the students needed to
earn their work term credits.

[unlike UW, the work terms here are considered a [non academic] part of
the degree, performance evaluations and work term reports count in a
qualitative way]

Mostly, though, they're looking to find good "industry" experiences for
their students. Now we're just a small boutique consultancy, but I've
got a list of projects about as long as my arm, and they're all "real
world" problems that have little to do with whether we're a large or
small firm.

So we've agreed to formalize some of those projects into digestible
chunks, and are letting them loose on students. We get their attention
for varying amounts of time, but 12 weeks seems to be typical.

++

Interestingly, the way I decided to make it worth the students' while
(and to engage their interest) is to give them something they can take
away with them - an understanding of and association to Open Source that
can last beyond their involvement with me. It strikes me as a reason not
typically cited these days, but it does go back to the original precepts
behind Free Software - the ability to continue to contribute to, and
benefit from, work one does after one's formal involvement with a
project has completed.

For techies its easy - we have a whole bunch of projects and Open Source
our work whenever possible, so finding things for them to do doesn't
take long. If they've [budding] programming skills or sys admin skills,
and at least some exposure to Linux/Unix, then I can at least try to
find a way to get them involved. One of the first examples is: 

        "The CVS+Mailing List+Bugzilla combination is common in Open
        Source projects. Each piece of that has weaknesses, tho: CVS
        isn't very suited to distributed disconnected development.
        Mailing lists are ok, but not good at getting discussion to a
        conclusion and even with a mailing list archive, can be
        difficult to reference. To use Bugzilla you need to be online,
        which doesn't help people who are on airplanes over the Pacific
        Ocean - or sitting in a cafe by the beach with no connectivity.
        So: research each of these. Figure out what the commonly cited
        problems are. Take half a step backwards, and see what neat
        ideas you can come up with to try and overcome these problems
        but solving it holistically for the project's needs as a whole.
        Wild ass-off-the-cuff-ideas to get you started thinking in
        unusual directions: (1) what would happen if bugs were recorded
        and operated on *in* the revision control system? (2) Is Maven a
        good idea or not?"

        My interest: we have a bunch of projects we want to Open & build
        communities around; I know the challenges involved, but don't
        have time to maintain complex infrastructure. So, what
        combination makes the most sense to invest time & effort in?
        Interest for intern: regrettably, many students think that
        programming and developing on a single machine is all you need
        to worry about. But any real world project involves multiple
        people. Big companies start to scale to multiple development
        sites and have a horrid time with it. On the other hand, Open
        Source projects have to deal with distributed global development
        from the get-go, but boostrapping this can be a pain, takes time
        to get going, and failure to develop a critical mass of
        community around a project usually implies that project's
        failure (or at least irrelevance).

The university, however, also has business/marketing types who need
experience, so what we've thrown together are projects that involve the
promotional and marketing side of things. So one idea I came up with
was:

        "look up the following {two} instances of {projects} that
        companies agreed to Open Source. Figure out what they went
        through to get it approved, and why company agreed. Write it up
        - but first, find {one of several such HOWTOs on the net} and
        see if you can't contribute to that... [after all, the ability
        to Open Source isn't just limited to techies]."
        
        My interest: I often get asked to advise on this, so can use
        help drawing together a base of research material to draw from;
        project result back to university easily demonstrable. Benefit
        to business student: better understanding of technology in
        general and Open Source in particular ... and some clue of how
        they might leverage same ideas in their own work in future."

I've also got more pure business marketing related things on the go, but
even then, the challenges are interesting - how do you promote ideas out
into the public mind in a cost effective way?

++

My role with the interns is setting them off in the right direction
(obviously, the projects involve things that I need/stand to benefit
from/whatever), helping keep them focused, mentoring them a bit,
exposing them to new ideas (the sort one tends not to get in class), and
completing whatever paperwork needs to be done to assure the university
they "showed up" (although the work term office understands that mostly,
the students get to work from home or whatever. We meet in person once
or twice a week. Good excuse for student to take a trip to a cafe by the
beach).

My expense is mostly time. A precious commodity to be sure, but spent
figuring out meaningful projects, managing intern, and minor office
overhead costs are minor and I get to benefit from fresh minds and new
ideas [not to mention cheap labour :)]

Early days yet, but it seems promising. En verra.

++

Personal note:

I replied to this email largely because I am a huge proponent of the
value of mentorship, and hope that something up above might spark an
idea in someone else here which in turn might help Mike's friends.

I haven't mentioned this here before, but I would be remiss if I didn't
acknowledge the contribution by both inspiration and guidance of two
fellows whose names you might recognize. 17 years ago, Henry Spencer
(then ...!utzoo!henry), and Drew Sullivan (then ...!lethe!drew)
introduced a young teenager to the mystique of Unix and the global
community (Usenet as it then was).

You gents got me on my way. One doesn't forget such things.

Cheers,

AfC
Sydney

P.S. I hope you're all enjoying a white Christmas. [And people keep
asking me why I'm an ex-pat. Ha. White sandy Christmas]


-- 
Andrew Frederick Cowie

OPERATIONAL DYNAMICS
Operations Consultants and Infrastructure Engineers, worldwide.
http://www.operationaldynamics.com/

Sydney:   +61 2 9977 6866
New York: +1 646 472 5054
Toronto:  +1 416 848 6072
London:   +44 207 1019201

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