The DutchSec Opensource Summer School

Within the Netherlands there are around 10.000 unemployed IT specialists, they are unemployed because they have been fired, are in between jobs or not viable for a job. But there is a lot of potential within this large group, many have a lot of experiences in all different business domains, different technologies and abilities.

Some of them have been burned-out by their employer, many employers are trying to fit a too large circle in a square. Employers are thinking too often in functions and don’t see the abilities of employees. This causes a misfit, with both parties unhappy and all consequences. Others cannot follow the pace or won’t fit into the culture.

Within this group there are designers, documenters, front- and backend developers, testers, bloggers, managers, marketeers and much more expertises. This is a big missed potential, and what if we can teach them how to work on opensource, while learning the newest techniques and making them part of a community and to feel useful again? That will grow self confidence, encourage and empower and eventually grow towards a job. Also don’t underestimate the power of a Github portfolio, if you can show a future employer that you have been a jobless for a while, but worked on opensource projects during that period, that’s a big plus.

Opensource is wonderful, you’re applying your knowledge to projects of your interest to eventually find your changes to have become part of the project. There is a lot of expertise, knowledge and all kind of projects. If you want to work on a financial system, blockchain or game development, they are all there. And even the smaller contributions are great, like working on the documentation or just testing and creating issues.

By contributing to opensource you can work in your own pace, at times that fit while making a difference. Opensource is a mentality. Creating opensource community members is a more long-lasting solution than just teaching a (costly) course or a single tool. The opensource community will teach people while they are working on the projects they favour. Github and other platforms commonly used make it very easy to review changes and comment on work.

My company DutchSec is a big user of opensource software, and the software we’re creating is opensource as well. Both our detection and deception software Honeytrap (https://github.com/honeytrap/honeytrap) and our data visualisation and exploration tool Marija (https://marija.io) are opensource. Besides those projects, we’re contributing to other projects and most of the smaller tools are open also.

DutchSec starts a summer school where we will learn people to engage within the opensource community and projects. First we’ll work together with the Dutch unemployment agency (UWV), where candidates can apply if they are interested. We’ll start with two groups of 8 candidates, as a proof of concept, for a week. We’re offering the summer school for free, you only have to take your notebook.

During the week we’ll find them an opensource project which aligns with their interests and experience, learn the basics of using git and github, how to create issues and make pull requests etc. Have them working with documentation, continuous integration tooling and work on soft skills, like confidence and communication.

And what’s in it for us? We’re teaching people to work on opensource projects, which we are using and creating ourselves.

If this project doesn’t work the way we want, at least we have introduced 16 new people how to contribute to opensource, which also counts as a succes.

Do you have an opensource project that is willing to be part of this, just let me know.