[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Recruitment; Outreach Programmes

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

I think this is part of the broad recruitment topic, but it's worth
considering in its own right.  We should probably begin by reviewing the
current outreach programmes and whether they're effective.  The
currently running one is the Outreach Programme for Women:

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2013/04/announcing-outreach-program-women-internships-linux-kernel-please

Which has been running successfully for a while.  The questions for us
are

     1. Should the programme be broadened (the current OPW one only
        reaches women, not everyone who might need outreach)
     2. Assuming we do decide broader is better, what's the next group
        to reach out to?
     3. Is this type of outreach better than non group specific
        outreach?  One can argue the kernel mentors list was non group
        specific and it didn't seem to get much uptake, so perhaps group
        specific is better?  Essentially is it better for us to invest
        our efforts in specific segments rather than generally?

Just on the premise of 3 we can still improve our overall acceptance
processes, as we have been discussing, in a general way because outreach
is what you do to pull people in, not what processes you have in place
to help them once they are pulled in.

James