The other day, I was just reviewing my responsibilities as Sun Campus Ambassador from Chile in the handbook, and received a box were, among other things, comes a jar with the message engraved “OpenSolaris.org Innovation Happens Everywhere”.  This jar represents the new idea leaded by SUN to promote and develop communities within Universities across the world, as a commitment to empowering academic developers through sharing, collaboration and open innovation, all of these fundamentals pieces of what is called “the Participation Age”.  Some of the resources included are the Campus Ambassador Program (me as Chilean ambassador), which supports over 180 students evangelists in more than 30 countries, who are leading these open source projects into the Universities.

So far, in Chile we’re leading and promoting the universities to become part of the SAI (Sun Academic Initiative) that brings benefits such as get students prepared for industry leading certification from SUN, obtaining marketable job skills; free software and web-learning for all students and academic researchers are included as well.  In the big picture this program comes to interoperate with the responsibilities of the Campus Ambassadors across the world, bringing all the support from SUN to it.

In these first two months a lot of Universities has shown interest into participate and become part of this big game and deliver higher quality education to this “eager young minds” of today.  There’s still a big road ahead, but the participation age seems to be stronger than ever, and in Chile could be as well.

SAI Main Site: http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/programs/sai/