Why Offer Fedora Training?
there is so much to know and learn about Fedora 4--and so much for people to remember and rediscover about Fedora 3--that a 3-5 day camp may be the most effective and efficient way to capture and convey it to stakeholders at both a technical and managerial level.
we could talk not only about Fedora 4 features and deployment, but content modeling, configuration options, migration possibilities, emerging requirements, etc.
a Camp could give us the intensive time we need with early and motivated adopters to draw the connections between Fedora 4 and their local needs, and an effective set of reference implementations.
by spending a week heads down with adopters, we could gather important information from stakeholders to make sure Fedora 4 is actually being aligned to meet use cases, and that our documentation, deployment and other collateral is up to date and usable
- institutions may want to volunteer their devs for contributions, but the individuals might not have the necessary technical skills (Java, ModeShape) or methodological prowess (GitHub, automated testing, documentation) to contribute to the effort effectively. Training is a potential method to upskill a talented-but-perhaps-not-experienced-enough developer to become a full fledged Fedora committer. It could also help the code quality for those already contributing.
- we need to expand the pool of developers serving as contributors and committers to Fedora, and do this over the longterm. Training is a way to pull more people into that fold, whether or not they are formally allocated to the project. It's also a strategy to build a ladder of increasing contributions and expertise among the developer community. A new dev can go from trainee -> TA -> trainer in incremental steps. We've had good success with the TA and train-the-trainer model on Hydra.
- offering training to local institutions can help get them up and running on Fedora. This would lower the barrier to entry, which has been a classical problem for Fedora relative to DSpace et al.
- we could do the training as fee for service; this would help do cost recovery, and perhaps create a small margin, to help support other Fedora-related activities.
What Topics Should/Could We Cover?
Technical
- architecture (detailed)
- installation & deployment
- configuration options
- scaling, performance, etc.
- development process
- ...
Functional / Managerial
- content modeling
- reference implementations; key features & functions
- architecture (high level)
- fedora for preservation – key features
- ...
When/How Might We Do Training
- start with a 3-5 day camp? use it drive the creation of the curriculum; get a committed & active group of early adopters to attend to help vet the curriculum and (im)prove it
- "faculty" and attendees might get some training in Fedora training at this event (Train the Trainer?)
- deliver regional events afterwards, throughout 2015 / 16
