Drupal Career Starter Program and Community Mentors

Good morning everybody,

I know that there's a lot of people interested in the 2nd edition of the Drupal Career Starter Program (DCSP) that we run in Brevard County, so I figured I've provide a quick update as to our fantastic progress. I also want to let everyone know about our DrupalEasy Community Mentor program - keep reading for more information about that...

We've had over 190 applications for 20 spots in the program - yesterday we held an all-day "applicant briefiing" for the 60-ish people who made the first cut. The first half of the day involved a couple of presentations about what the program entails, what the students can expect, a bit about the history of Drupal, as well as eligibility requirements. In the afternoon, we took the applicants on a 3-hour tour of Drupal - applicants were asked to bring their laptops and to follow along with some simple exercises. This allowed them to get a taste of Drupal and gave us the opportunity to interact and evaluate the applicants.

Over the next week, we'll be selecting the 20 students (based on their application, our interaction with them yesterday, and their eligibility) so we can start class the week of August 21.

We've expanded both the marketing program as well as the application process from last year - this resulted in us having 3 times the number of applications and is allowing us to more thoroughly vet the applicants.

I want to thank Caroline Achee, Dorothy Cleary, Linda Cook, Ben Hosmer, Sandy Milligan for helping out yesterday during the afternoon session. Their feedback will be invaluable in determining the 20 students (Caroline, Dorothy, Linda, and Sandy are all DCSP1 graduates). Ben Hosmer and I (ok - more Ben than me) tested out our new "classroom-in-a-box" (name suggestions welcome) prototype as well - this is a small local server with multiple WiFi access points that allows us to not have to worry about less-than-ideal WiFi at teaching venues.

Also - thanks to all the applicants who attended the briefing yesterday - I look forward to seeing you all in the future, either in class or as part of our growing Florida Drupal community! I know a few of you are already members of http://groups.drupal.org/florida, I can't wait to see more!

Finally, as part of the expansion of DCSP this year, we're looking for community mentors to volunteer 1-2 hours per week for 10 weeks to help guide a student on contributing back to the community. If you're interested, please check out all the information (and application) here.

Thanks,
-mike