Wanted: employees

[Wes Bateman]

Sorry to post to this thread a little after the fact, but I don't read the
main list too much these days :)  Hi from Texas ;)

Volunteerism might be better found in the not-for-profit sector.  I know
that many non-profits are woefully understaffed in technical areas.  They
can't really pay to attract and/or retain talent.

When I used to work for the Boys & Girls Clubs, I also tried to volunteer
at the local senior center.  That got problematic because it's a city
agency and not an atonymous organization.  Often also there will already
be a "technical" person, who is usually just the person in the office
who's the most skilled at using M$ Word, or the like.  Sometimes these
folks are a little resistant to others coming in and telling them what's
what :)  Those situations either require delicate handling, or perhaps
find another charity to assist.  If you can't find one or know of one, you
can check your local United Way for some suggestions.

Another thing worth noting is that some of these places don't have UNIX
box(es).  Some might not even have a server of any sort!  Those are the
types of places that can use someone to save them cash by allowing them to
realize what they want from their computer systems, while not spending a
lot of capital.

One final bit of rambling, then I'll shut up :)  Something easy, cheap,
and cool would be for some LUG members to scrape together some low-end
pentium systems and make a mini-network.  Notebooks would be ideal for
this, but not required.  I say this because then you take this network "on
the road" and do presentations/classes for groups.  Or you could make a
low-budget lab for a charity, etc.  I would focus the classes on real
basics, as the clueful will not often be your attendees.  Rather use a
single modem in one box to share access to about 4-10 other boxes.  Then
let folks have hands on, and teach them to browse, set up a free web mail
account, etc.  Good way to help some folks out, perhaps place some Linux
boxen in non-profits, help educate non-profit employees on how to be
productive with Linux (show 'em StarOffice, etc.), maybe even show some
businesses how you can make that old P133 sitting in the maintenance
closet outperform the quad-xeon exchange box they're running ;)

Of course some folks won't buy into it, as they'll insist you get what you
pay for.  To comfort them, just send them an invoice then ;) hehe

C ya all,

Wes

On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, George Toft wrote:

> That gets pretty sticky.  My last employer pursued such labor, and
> then got to meet the labor commissioner and ended up having to pay
> over $1600 in wages.  It seems he violated something called "The Fair
> Labor Standards Act" (State and Federal Law) in that he didn't pay a 
> wage, and he wasn't cooperating with an accredited school in a "for 
> credit" program where he could take interns.
> 
> This is not to say it doesn't happen (his ISP does the same thing),
> but the chances are slim of finding it.
> 
> George
> 
> 
> Hawke wrote:
> > 
> > I've got a bit of a question?
> > are there *nix houses here that will allow a person to do volunteer work
> > as a way of getting the needed provable experience to get the job they
> > want?
> > 
> > I am in need of such, if at all possible... I'd like to have a paying
> > job,
> > but it seems that my current skillset is whoafully inadequate.
> > 
> > let me know..
> > 
> > thanks.