First boot camp for open source teachers

Red Hat hosts first dedicated boot camp for open source teachers

Professional Open Source Software Experience (POSSE) supports ANZ push to expand Red Hat Academy

Auckland, New Zealand – 8 October 2009 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the first Asia Pacific Professional Open Source Software Experience (POSSE), a boot camp for open source course teachers in institutes of higher learning.

POSSE will be held in Singapore from 9 to 13 November 2009 and is expected to attract over 40 open source teachers and lecturers from around the region, including New Zealand, Australia, Greater China, India and Korea.

As part of Red Hat’s Asia Pacific Open Source Collaborative Innovation (OSCI) initiative to build vibrant open source communities for collaborative innovation, the opportunity is designed to immerse teachers in the global open source community and expose them to real world open source development projects. Within the first year, Red Hat aims to offer training at up to 60 educational institutions, through localised POSSE sessions in each country.

The program includes involvement in a range of expert-led open source projects, with participants acquiring the skills to write and contribute source code, conduct rigorous debugging and testing, as well as learning how to package software for the open source community.

“With the sharp growth in demand for open source, we are actively expanding our Red Hat Academy program - a hands-on curriculum that takes open source into secondary and tertiary classrooms around Australia and New Zealand,“ said Max McLaren, Senior Director and General Manager, Australia and New Zealand.

“POSSE is integral to our aim of generating more open source skills for the market, and by providing an environment for teachers to experience the power of collaboration, community and shared knowledge – all fundamental to open source – we are better equipping them to encourage students to participate in real community-based, open source development projects.”

POSSE was introduced in the United States in July 2009 and is known as Professors Open Source Summer Experience.

To learn more about POSSE, please visit www.teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE.

To learn more about Red Hat Academy, please visit http://www.redhat.com/solutions/education/academy/

For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com

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