What a fine Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 01:31:39AM -0500 it was when Chuck Cole said: > > Wrong ideas about "educational standards": some of the issues are whether > TCLUG folk are the type/quality that a business might hire for serious > technical stuff, or whether they are categorically a hobbyist group with > at > most non-degree technician skills... on the average and the goal. If I were hiring someone for serious technical stuff, they REALLY need to have more than TCLUG on their resume. I don't care where installfests are held. This is a Linux USERS group, not a Linux Job Acquirers Group or Linux Resume Makers Group. > To > welcome non-degreed folks from anywhere is fine, but to indicate that the > ceiling is no higher than vo-tech, and off the academic track for > professional skills (state regs indicate what "professional" means, and > in > engineering cases it is specific about having a degree). I really don't see how the location of our installfests indicates a ceiling. No one has ever implied that I must be undereducated just because I've set foot on community college or vo-tech soil for some event or other. Furthermore, going to an installfest at a church has not affected anyone's opinion of my religion. In fact, I would be more worried about the implications of continuously holding them at churches than the implications of continuously holding them at a vo-tech. > Truck driving and department store PC repair is great, but it doesn't > satisfy the state licensing regs for what "professional" engineering > requires, nor does it add to a resume when seeking a professional caliber > job. I just double-checked the TCLUG homepage and I didn't see anything about 1) state licensing 2) engineering 3) professional jobs 4) truck driving 5) department store PC repair Apparently we have completely different ideas about what the group exists for. If you want a professional engineering job, join IEEE. If you want to use Linux and be around other people using Linux, join TCLUG. I don't think anyone has ever implied that TCLUG should be the highlight of your resume, or the selling point in your interview. > Interesting question! All the Linux users I knew before joining here are > degreed engineers in high tech industry. All the Linux users I knew before joining here were undergraduates in computer science, but I never thought Linux users were limited to or even most prevelent in that domain. I was an undergraduate in computer science too, so it makes sense that I wouldn't meet a huge number of degreed engineers, or Linux-using truck drivers. > I certainly welcome folks of all backgrounds, and would encourage even > JrHS > kids to participate, but I wouldn't like the image that TCLUG activity > may > be a "disqualifier" for solid technical values at levels above and way > beyond the vo-techs. So if we hold it at a elementary school, does that mean we all dropped out of Junior High? I think most people understand that an event like an installfest needs resources that a) not everyone has b) not everyone will lend for free > Not hardly enough! The group needs to consider this stuff if it ever has > a > mission and enough form for serious non-profit donations of support to > occur. Please not the non-profit debate again. Lorry