[ripe-list] RIPEng

On 3 February 2024 20:44:15 CET, Randy Bush <randy at psg.com> wrote:
>at ripe and nanog we talk about bringing up the next generation.  at
>fosdem they're doing it.
>
>a good friend reports that fosdem has a junior track this year.  they
>brought their tweens to it, and it was great!  very hands on.  vesna or
>other fosdem attendees, did you look in on the junior track?

I couldn't make it this year, but here's the link for everyone who wants to have a look.

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/track/junior/

>so what would be a junior program for ripe or nanog?
>
That is a very good question. At fosdem or other broadly oriented tech conferences the junior tracks specifically offer topics kids and teenagers are interested in and get them hands on with programming, building stuff etc. 
Given us as a community based on keeping the open and free Internet running as well as our professional interests I find it not straight forward how to interest a young generation / age group in that.

I've seen with many of my former students that once they got a glimpse on how the Internet is being run they were quite intrigued and motivated to learn. But much of that wasn't really hands on - sure hardware labs were always a good motivation. 

Thinking about governance, policy, registry operation I'm not sure how that could look like. We could focus on general educational content on networking, especially with all the virtualization options we have these days there could be fun in that if done right.

Given that we already have a hard time getting a steadily high influx of "new generation" contributing community members, thinking about younger age groups is even more difficult. 

Maybe some people in our community with young kids could give us an idea on what could be inspiring for them within our topics?

Curious about ideas there.

Best,
Franziska