Yesterday the Sun office in Somerset, NJ was home (for a day) to the
high school students from the NJ Governor's School of Engineering and
Technology Program. I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on the
topic of Open Source and in particular, Sun's contribution to it, in a
talk titled "Open Source, Open Minds" to these students.
Over 3 sessions, I got to interact with about 30 students. As I went through my presentation I was amazed by how much they already knew. For example, some of them not only know what IDE meant but actually had downloaded netbeans and used it! There were some who even correctly guessed the open source business model (generating revenue through service, support and training).
Their eyes lit up when we had Sun giveaways that were doled out whenever they asked great questions or answered questions really well. I have to thank Teresa Giacomini(from the OpenSolaris group) for these cool openSolaris giveaways. The openSolaris wifi locator was probably the coolest and a hit amongst the students. The T-shirts were not any less popular- one of the students even asked me if he could buy an openSolaris T-shirt online someplace :-)
My partners in crime were Wayne Abbott and John Cecere who handled 3 sessions each; be sure to check out their blogs in case they have some interesting insights from the experience yesterday.
A couple of pictures from yesterday are below. Unfortunately, Wayne was the one taking the pictures, so he's not in here!
Over 3 sessions, I got to interact with about 30 students. As I went through my presentation I was amazed by how much they already knew. For example, some of them not only know what IDE meant but actually had downloaded netbeans and used it! There were some who even correctly guessed the open source business model (generating revenue through service, support and training).
Their eyes lit up when we had Sun giveaways that were doled out whenever they asked great questions or answered questions really well. I have to thank Teresa Giacomini(from the OpenSolaris group) for these cool openSolaris giveaways. The openSolaris wifi locator was probably the coolest and a hit amongst the students. The T-shirts were not any less popular- one of the students even asked me if he could buy an openSolaris T-shirt online someplace :-)
My partners in crime were Wayne Abbott and John Cecere who handled 3 sessions each; be sure to check out their blogs in case they have some interesting insights from the experience yesterday.
A couple of pictures from yesterday are below. Unfortunately, Wayne was the one taking the pictures, so he's not in here!