Red Hat announces Nanyang Poly as Red Hat Academy partner  
ConvergenceAsia staff
15/09/2009

Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, has announced that Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore is now a Red Hat Academy (RHA) partner.

RHA is a programme for educational institutions to teach open source to students. In Asia Pacific, RHA is part of Red Hat’s Open Source Collaborative Innovation (OSCI) initiative to build vibrant open source communities for collaborative innovation.

To mark the RHA partnership, Nanyang Polytechnic will host Red Hat’s first Asia Pacific Professional Open Source Software Experience (POSSE) for lecturers teaching open source courses in institutes of higher learning in the region. POSSE is designed to immerse the lecturers in the global open source community and in real world open source development projects.

Gery Messer, President of Red Hat Asia Pacific/Japan, said POSSE will provide an immersive environment for the lecturers to experience the power of collaboration, community and shared knowledge that is fundamental to open source. “The long term goal is for the lecturers to bring their real-world experience into the classroom and to encourage their students to participate in actual community-based, open source development projects.”
The first in a series of boot camps across the region, it will be held in Singapore from 9 to 13 November 2009 and is expected to attract over 40 open source lecturers from ASEAN countries, Greater China, India, Korea and Australia. Within the first year, Red Hat aims to offer training at up to 60 educational institutions, through localised POSSE sessions in each country.

The programme for POSSE includes intense participation in selected open source projects led by open source experts. Participants will acquire the skills to write and contribute source code, conduct rigorous debugging and testing as well as learn how to package software for the open source community.

Nanyang Polytechnic aims to train more than 300 students in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, attach staff to Red Hat's Asia Pacific Research & Development Centres to enhance staff capabilities on Open Source Development and participate in exchange programmes with fellow RHA partners.

“Our IT curriculum already covers a range of open source software including Red Hat Enterprise Linux; being part of the community will provide more opportunities for our students to exchange knowledge and engage in open source development projects. NYP’s strength in Web 2.0, Web Services, IT Security, Networking and Mobile Computing, will also add value to this collaboration,” said John Tan, Deputy Principal/Technology, Nanyang Polytechnic.

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