Infastructure documents

Ericsson makes students contests (already for a few years in Russia). So some legal and advertising documents to support the contest were made. And it could be a good thing if these docs were put in public domain (can 'some rights reserved' term be applied here?) as templates. Other companies can reuse this bundle of documents customizing it to particular conditions, corporate rules etc. The positive effect is that there is no need in doing basic work (developing all from the scratch). Is it another application of patterns idea initially approached by Alexander in architecture areas and then taken by software architects? 'Contest documents' pattern?

There are few Free Content Licenses (e.g. GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons License). So why not to apply some for the mentioned docs?

Ad-hoc education platform is web 2.0?

I've read Tim O'Reilly’s article “What Is Web 2.0. Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software”
It is a Must-read for a lot of people who are involved in internet related areas I think.
In fact it's far more about business then technology. And it's about communications model.

The interesting thing: concept of a platform for ad-hoc education (the environment, as I see it) satisfies at least 6 out of 8 core competences of Web 2.0 companies described in the article, but these refer to commercial, not to non-profit stuff. What could it mean?

Exception: Cognitive Technologies

Интервью с Владимиром Арлазаровым, президентом Cognitive Technologies (PC Week/RE #30, 2005) – исключение из общего хора о недостаточной подготовке студентов и.т.п. Есть даже такая фраза: «Работа с молодежью — это одна из составляющих нашей деятельности, и у нас нет никаких проблем с притоком кадров».

Цитирую:

PC Week: Жалобы на вузы в деле обучения разработчиков постоянно звучат со стороны ИТ-компаний. Как вы оцениваете уровень подготовки сегодняшних выпускников вузов по ИТ-специальностям?
В. А.: По-моему, она улучшается. Не буду сравнивать нынешних студентов с их сверстниками двадцать лет назад, а вот за последнее десятилетие повышение качества образования для меня вполне очевидно. Падает другое — уважительное отношение к науке со стороны государства, а как следствие — и со стороны общества. Да, порой я слышу от студентов, обучающихся по специальности “математическая экономика”, недоуменный вопрос: “А зачем мне нужно изучать вопросы построения алгоритмов?”. Но при этом я понимаю, что вопрос этот отражает не пробелы в его образовании, а господствующую в нашем обществе точку зрения. У нас ежегодно делают дипломные проекты четверо-пятеро человек, а всего студентов трудится в той или иной степени около двух десятков. Обычно они приходят к нам на третьем курсе, начинают работать с нескольких часов в неделю и постепенно втягиваются все больше. Многие наши сотрудники параллельно преподают в различных вузах, что помимо прочего также помогает нам отбирать подходящих ребят. Работа с молодежью — это одна из составляющих нашей деятельности, и у нас нет никаких проблем с притоком кадров.

Европу ждет дефицит ИТ-специалистов

цитирую CNews:

В Европе к 2008 году будет наблюдаться нехватка 500 тысяч специалистов в области IP-телефонии, мобильной связи и ИТ-безопасности. Таковы результаты опроса европейских ИТ-директоров, проведенного исследователями рынка из IDC по заказу Cisco. В частности, в Великобритании будет порядка 40 тысяч вакантных мест.

А вот про Новые Требования (оттуда же):

Управляющий корпоративный директор британского отделения Cisco UK Ник Ватсон (Nick Watson): "Существует потребность в таком типе людей, которые смогут преобразовать технологию для ее применения в бизнесе. У нас есть люди с фантастическими техническими умениями и лидеры в бизнесе, но нам нужна новая „порода“, которая сможет перевести все, что технически возможно, на реальное применение в бизнесе".

Vice-president of education at Sun Microsystems

I wonder what positions will appear at Sun in the next 5 years! After chief open source officier there could be head of imagination department and chief old businesses destroyer...

Coming back to the education theme: the head article of FT's special report: "Online Education" (they see the second wave of e-learning) says:

In an article in THE Journal, a magazine that covers the application of technology in education,
Kim Jones, vice-president of education at Sun Microsystems, suggests that the "digital campus" is
now truly on its way. "Thanks to some innovative technology trends, the educational landscape is
transforming," she explains. The key is not so much the technologies themselves, as the way in
which they are being drawn together into a unified network, thus creating "a seamless, secure,
collaborative environment for learning, achievement and administration that is available to
everyone".
Not everyone is convinced, however. In an article in the Electronic Journal of E-Learning from late
2004, a team led by Djamshid Tavangarian and Markus Leypold of the University of Rostock in Germany
reported on a survey of online learning programmes at various levels, and were strongly critical of
what they found. "Current e-learning systems on the market are limited to technical gadgets and
organisational aspects of teaching," they commented. "As a result, the learner has become
de-individualised and demoted to a non-critical homogeneous user." They criticised online learning
programmes for being insufficiently flexible, particularly when it comes to allowing users to
configure the programmes and add their own content, and berated designers for being too wrapped up
in technology and failing to provide adequate support for learners. "Our demand to designers of
e-learning systems can only be to drop their preoccupation with technical gimmicks and instead try
to achieve a true understanding of the learning process," they concluded.

it-education.ru conference

Оказывается есть Открытая всероссийская конференция "Преподавание Информационных Технологий в России".
http://www.it-education.ru/
Проходит с 2003 года. Порадовал список спонсоров, как впрочем и их непосредственное участие (доклады) в конференции. От ИТ-образования список участников не менее представительный. Как я понимаю, организовывает меропрятие Форт-Росс.

А еще, теперь есть Международная научно-практическая конференция «Современные информационные технологии и ИТ-образование» (прошла первый раз. Москва, МГУ им. М.В. Ломоносова, факультет ВМК, 19-22 сентября 2005 г.). Список спонсоров снова порадовал. Список организаторов, как и участников неимоверно представительный.

General System, Ad-hoc Educ. is a part

It's obvious to me now, that ad-hoc education is just a project (but one of the most serious) in a more general system of open collaborative activities. And ad-hoc education could be a starting project to run the general system.Another elaboration: the open projects register (where such projects, sourceforge.org alike, are listed) must be separated and independent from the engine that supports collaboration. The reason is that someone wants to list a project and has more appropriate tools to support it. Or a group tries to do something using the engine and does not mind making it public (at least till a moment).

FT on Openess and Collaboration

Financial Times issued (September 20 2005) its first special report in a new Digital Business series. Very enthusiastic content! (for some time it will be in free access). There are wonderful articles with examples I was waiting for - of what kind of activity can host the system I'm trying to describe.

Some quotations:

1. “How open source gave power to the people” By Richard Waters:

The sedentary art of software development and the extreme sports of kitesurfing, sailplaning and canyoning would appear to have little in common.
However, both are examples of a new force that could eventually affect a far broader range of companies and industries: the power of users to shape how products are developed.
In the internet age, it seems, the next big idea to change your industry may come from an unexpected direction.
As related by Eric von Hippell (Democratizing Innovation. Eric von Hippell, The MIT Press), professor of management and innovation at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, followers of extreme sports have become expert at adapting and refining the equipment they use. Sometimes, the way these informal communities work can look very similar to the way open source software developers create their elaborate products.

Kitesurfers, for instance – who stand on surf boards holding kites which whisk them over breaking waves, producing acrobatic leaps and twists – have taken to using sophisticated computer modelling software to design the most efficient kites. They then share their ideas over the internet, refining their concepts before sending them to a manufacturer.
Sophisticated tools that let individuals take part in the process of creation, the internet as a means to draw together communities of like-minded people, a willingness to share ideas for the common good – these are the basic ingredients of a new approach to innovation.

End of quotation 1.

2. “The march of the web-enabled amateurs” by Lawrence Lessig:

“There are tens of thousands of projects built through the collaboration of millions around the world – blogs, free software, newsgroups helping people do everything from knitting to using Microsoft products – and the phenomenon is just starting. Open collaboration was once just a dream. The net has made it a reality”.

On wikis:
“Grand collaborative projects carried out by volunteers have been made possible by ‘wikis’...
In 2001, a former Chicago futures trader, Jimmy Wales, started a similar “open source” project. In a request posted on the world wide web, Mr Wales asked for volunteers to help write a web-based encyclopedia.
Using “wiki” software, in which anyone can add to, or change, what anyone else had written, people from across the world started “writing” what would be called “Wikipedia.”
Thousands soon joined the project. Four years later, there are more than 2.3m articles within Wikipedia, about one-third of which are in English and the rest in more than 100 other languages”.

Not on wikis
“Nasa has recruited “clickworkers” to map craters on Mars, and soon, asteroids, after finding the work of volunteers was better – and much cheaper – than the work of paid professionals”.

AIESEC seminar

Yesterday I was at a seminar organized by Petersburg’s AIESEC. The things were set in the following manner. Real people from real business (and often top management) meet students and tell really important things. Various cases are proposed for students to solve. IMHO the main message of the event: “Don't relay on University – do that is interesting and keep eyes open to what is going on around”.

Open Project Documentation

В статье профессора Шалыто «Ещё раз об открытой проектной документации» в PCWeek/RE #11, 2005. Нашел строчку: «упор в нем [движении за открытую проектную документацию] делается не на документацию программ, а на документацию проектов их создания», по которой получается, что идея открытой проектной документации (Foundation for Open Project Documentation) вполне вписывается в общий ход мыслей об ad-hoc education. И в контексте ad-hoc education идея, по моему мнению, не имеет столь спорного характера (см. дискуссию на zdnet.ru), как при применении ко всей софтверной индустрии в целом.

E-Bay Analogy

E-Bay is an example of how a single web platform (in cooperation with post services and e-money) can systematize and bring to a completely new level an activity that has been exist ages before. I mean selling & buying used things (and some other stuff - what is really important). So there is a chance a unified education-focused web-based system can do something that is the same to E-Bay effect.

By the way (a bit off-topic) E-Bay is a wonderful example of how consumerist society spurs re-use culture.

And Marketing...

An article in The St. Petersburg Times by Sveta Skibinsky (September 13, 2005) confirms (IMHO) my suggestions that marketing sphere also could benefit using ad-hoc education system.

Here are some (or more precisely a lot of) excerpts from the mentioned ‘Practical Marketing About to Start with “You!” ‘:

The gap between theory and working reality has serious repercussions, not least in marketing — a field in which up to date knowledge of social trends and concepts is vital to achieving success…

“After graduation, marketing majors have very little understanding of what the actual profession entails, even if they have had internships in the field and done various case studies in college,” said Natalia Lantzevich, an education programs specialist at Competenz consultancy…

“The poor student has to have some sort of ‘playing field’ to go from test-books to practice. Problem based learning systems are the answer to that,” [Polina Petrushina, marketing and development director at Trust Management, a strategy consulting company] said…

Problem based learning (PBL) programs are those that allow students to participate in active educational methods, such as projects, case-solving and business games, said Competenz’s Lantzevich…

However, experts say using case studies and project methods during the course of education is not enough to prepare students for the real world. “The shortcomings of such practices within a university course are that there is little communication between the actual company and the students, the results of the project give no feasible benefits to the companies and there is no feedback from practicing professionals,” said Philip Guzenyuk, who is one of the founders of a marketing professionals association Brand People…

To work out a way to organizing a program that would include that student-company interaction, in June this year Brand People conducted a business game among marketing professionals, which focused on developing a PBL program fit for the city.
“About 25 marketing and human resources experts from leading St. Petersburg and Moscow companies participated in the game, and the result was a proposal to create a project-based business-school called “You!” purely for marketing students,” Guzenyuk said.
In the program, students from the city’s top universities will conduct market research, develop advertising campaigns, and brainstorm new business development ideas for program’s partner-companies. The process is to be supervised by representatives of those companies, business-coaches and university professors, who would grade the input of each student and help the students find suitable employment in the future, Guzenyuk said.

PCWeek/RE: 3 new software development centers crash labor market in Petersburg

Блог начинает приобретать черты некоего собрания констатаций о том, как в ИТ-индустрии уже сейчас очень не хватает людей, так что сей пост постараюсь сделать если не последним, то одним из последних в этом жанре.
Цитирую заметки о ROSS-2005 (Russian Outsourcing Software Summit) Эдуарда Пройдакова в PСWeek/Re #23, 2005:
“… Тех немногих, кого выпускают вузы, нужно доучивать. Уже сейчас надвигается следующая беда — через пять лет не будет и преподавателей… Примеры отдельных локальных решений этой проблемы не меняют общую картину. (Компания МЕRА, например, создала свой учебный центр — Нижегородский институт информационных технологий, работающий с вузами региона.) О чём говорить, когда появление в Санкт-Петербурге трёх центров разработки, открытых западными компаниями и занявших всего 800 человек, сломало рынок программистов в пятимиллионном городе! О какой конкуренции с Индией, имеющей уже 450 технопарков, или с Китаем можно сейчас вести речь? ”

CNews: IT in Russia, lack of brain resources

CNews отметился статьей о нехватке ИТ-кадров в своем бумажном издании под заголовком «ИТ в России: неурожай умов» (на сайте можно посмотреть краткую версию).

Цитирую вводную к статье:
"Для обеспечения инновационного прорыва в сфере разработки и аутсорсинга ПО в России в ближайшее время намечено строительство четырех ИТ-технопарков с государственным участием. Но уже сегодня компании испытывают кадровый голод, а завтра им не хватит программистов не только для прорыва, но и для поддержания роста на уровне последних лет."

Sun Microsystems & Open Source. Next phase

I'm not going to post all open source related news. But this one I've found very important in relation with any open nature activity in the big business.
August 18, 2005 ZDNet News says:
"Sun Microsystems on Wednesday night launched an office dedicated to open-source matters, signaling a new elevation of the collaborative programming philosophy within the server and software company. Simon Phipps, already Sun's open-source officer, will lead the Open Source Office and report to Hal Stern, software chief technology officer. In an interview Thursday, Phipps said the move formalizes a role he's had in coordinating Sun's open-source efforts and communicating with outsiders regarding open-source software." See more: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5838721.html

Draft Concept: English Edition V2e

Self-organizing education system (Active ad-hoc education)

Motivation

CIS Region
The speed of changes in IT & telecoms makes it very difficult to define education standards and programs in non-fundamental disciplines. The State (especially in countries like Russia) has no ability to set directions in this area. Meanwhile the industry shows strong growth every year. Accordingly the need of qualified employees grows too. The current situation is that the number of advanced students (who do not rely on the University program and practise self-education) cannot satisfy companies’ needs anymore. What’s more, there is no culture among students to investigate what knowledge and skills will be expected (e.g. by reading job postings). Moreover, demographic issues are going to start affecting the labor market in the nearest years. So to allow further development and save (secure) competitiveness of the region (cost of workforce and high professional level) the business should play an appreciable role in educational process, which could be done in some aspects without spending many resources on it (that is now possible as a result of new technologies).

Worldwide
It seems that the lack of IT professionals will remain for years in all parts of the world. At least if we do approximation basing on the previous times. There are countries where the situation is similar to Russia.

System concept
An online system can be established which will allow to create and booste positive processes. Business publishes what knowledge and experience it expects from graduates (in the near perspective of 1-3 years and middle-term of 4-6 years). Sometimes it is not so easy even for the technology leading companies to precisely predict areas that will emerge, but they've got strategy planning teams and there are market research agencies. They can put their vision. It could be more valuable for students when not the government institutes, but the top companies and the brightest local ones say what to learn and what to do. Because companies give jobs and they (at least in theory) know what they need. Usually companies (but not government) are considered as employers.

The system should contain:

1. Scope of areas to learn with appropriate resources to study (recommended books and online materials – only links, not content)
2. Common actual tasks (Linux installation, apache configuration, punching UTP cable, make a floor plan in AutoCAD…). Such a list could help with orientation – which areas are interesting to dig out and which are not. Practice is very essential. It is boring to study without playing with real things.
3. Open, non-critical for the current business tasks which companies post on the system (e.g. small tools development, beta-testing, process optimization, playing with frontier technologies, light research, market research even in non-tech areas). It is all interesting to play in a sandbox but it cannot always drive mad with enthusiasm. Contact with the real world is important. Curiosity should be maintained by real world tasks
4. Enthusiasts search for enthusiasts. Posts of ideas to implement. (E.g. a professor search for student(s) to implement his/her idea e.g. a test model creation or developing some software). This feature could attract people who have the same needs and interests and some free time and experience.
5. Enthusiasts search for a serious task. A team with relatively comprehensive skills (4-5 year at the University) looks for an interesting project (idea) to implement within area they already got some experience.
6. Some business incubator function (seeding startups). Projects started in the system could evolve into new original businesses.
7. For relatively complicated tasks the system’s engine should support some project management functionality (that supports online collaboration, project tracking, documents management; allows integration (at least links) with other new systems like sourceforge, blogs etc). It is important that the system should establish proper project management culture.
8. Rating system - E-bay alike (task openers and task doers rank each other). Companies with good history will attract more attention, as well as a student with few successfully done projects will be the top candidate for many employers. Ratings of areas of knowledge, skills and standard tasks also could be started.

Content of features #1 and #2 is a consolidated results of many participants. From the other hand could be useful an ability for a particular team in a particular department of a particular company to post its own list of desirable knowledge and skills that are required. Such customized lists can be interesting for the students who target particular companies and particular areas.

The main goal of the system is to promote this active ad-hoc approach to education and to form the environment that boosts use of it. The system should attract and involve people by showing interesting examples.

The proposed system possess a property of self-organization, the system that inherently has an ability to catch new directions and trends. It does not matter what the area it is: IT, power generation or economics. The more new knowledge and experience emerge, the more projects that required them are posted on the system and more buzz for these areas appear. As a result, more people will face emerging areas. And this is what we need in fact. There is no task to swap existing institutes (the Univerities, high schools etc.). The system concept is an attempt to catalyze a parallel and independent process, the process that could in time adapt to any changes that appear at high speed. Futurists predict that 25% of the jobs available by the year 2025 will be in positions unknown today.

The system of that kind has more chances than ever before since the very special knowledge, devices and software look as features of the past century and technologies which are common and posses open nature here come to stay. More and more study materials, documentation and SW are available for free via Internet and the only hardware needed in the most cases is a PC (better 2 or 3 networked) and its standard off-the-shelf periphery. The second reason is that the Internet (forums, wikies, blogs) allows to act in ‘one to many’ mode. There is no need to waste time explaining a task for each who is interested. An explanation that is done once is in use for everyone. And of course online collaboration will play a great role.

An important thing is openness. In this context - anyhow the way the process goes it should be visible – intermediate results and current project state must be reflected (presented) in the system. At least the minimum that must be shown are a task definition - 'request for result' and results - what was done, how it was. The best case is when all interim, support and final documents, negotiations, time tables etc (i.e. the whole history of a project - are available for public access (directly on server or links to external places). Possible gradations of openness: totally open, …, closed research (only area of task and opinions on results).

Involved parties

• Companies (employers)
• Students (employees), enthusiasts
• Recruitment companies (they get a resource to trace bright candidates on early stages, meanwhile such companies could coordinate activities within some components of the system)
• Publishing houses (just to sell more books and periodicals, from their part some information support could come)
• Market research agencies, consulting companies (can play roles of mediators and coordinators)
• Venture funds

Benefits for employers

• Recruited people already shaped (at least they’ve got an idea) to current activities at company
• Gain overall students’ competence level
• Tasks which were done successfully
• Reaching talent people from regions
• Company’s promotion (making positive image)

Benefits for students

• Gain motivation and get broader view in current technologies and labor market requirements
• Opportunity to understand what is interesting to work with and what is not in fact before any full-time contracts (before going into industry)
• Actual knowledge and experience
• Opportunity to get grants, part-time contracts via the system
• Opportunity to get over geografical borders in some cases

Implementation
Web-based system, maybe with offline clients. Not to create implementations of existing tech engines, to integrate them or just use in the current context (maybe use external blogs, wikies, CVS (sourceforge.org), instant messaging systems etc.). Cashing information from external resources is possible. Among the known existing open engines (systems) NetProjectJournal looks the most suitable (see here: http://www.npj.ru/node/english_description). Unfortunately, it’s still under development altough it’s already usable.

Inspirations
Open source (www.sourceforge.org , www.osdl.org, code.google.com/summerofcode.htm ), Open source hardware (www.opencores.org, www.openhardware.ru, www.openhardware.de),

shared R&D idea (an article inFinancial Times http://www.rand.org/commentary/082504FT.html ),
www.wikipedia.org, www.intuit.ru, www.e-graduate.ru, www.iec.org, www.innocentive.com,
www.respublikaidei.ru, www.e-generator.ru, www.firststeps.ru, www.freeagent.com)

Examples of tasks to post

• Write a tool to analyze (compare etc) logs
• Deploy Jabber infrastructure (for 50 workplaces)
• Develop a small DB
• Build cluster on old computers
• Deploy an open source ERP (in University)
• Make IT audit - define scope of work. Team that successfully finished a project can define scope of work for another project.
• More broad initiative: digital home open architeture (protocols, components, SW & HW implementation, accent on standard componets, old HW reuse)

Other issues (additional comments)
Companies with well established processes could be more interested in the first two components of the system, while for chaotic and stingy companies the main interest could be in the remaining parts.

To establish and maintain the core system functionality a forum (consortium) of international (Cisco, Siemens, Sun, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Samsung…) and local companies (like Digital Design, CBOSS, Nienshanz…) could be formed. It is especially important for local companies to gain average level of graduates, since global players have more abilities to attract the most interesting people.

The very important thing is strong and aptly targeted marketing of the system.

The system should not be considered as a profitable business, it is rather a strategic social/technological project to develop the ground for further ICT industry growth. Nevertheless if the system works well, points of profit could appear.

The system must not be targeted only at high-school and university students. It could also be a resource for retraining.

The whole engine of the system should allow activities related not only to technical stuff but maybe economical, social, culture, art. The system should be allowed by its born to evolve into something like a project fabric (forum, market, mall…).

Companies make students and techies competitions. All that is known after a competition is often only names of winners. Conditions, results and maybe some intermediate stuff could be placed at the server. In this case distributed teams can be involved.

I classify students into 3 groups (it’s a very rough and subjective division). The question is how it correlates with the reality.

1. those who are interested in nothing (regarding to education)
2. those,who are interested. And they discover and dig out and study by themselves (in borders of standard educational programs and often far beyond the borders – in emerging areas). They not just attend lections and practice, they do a lot more.
3. Others (about 30% - 60%) could potentially be intersted. But it’s hard to begin because it is not, of course, a trivial challenge (and there is no motivation often) – to take control on the education process.

And the idea is to help group #2 - give them a more focused roadmap and a playground for their activity. And to stimulate an incentive for group #3 - to show them that they could do things like those who are in the second group.

Rumors in the St. Petersburg times

TOP STORIES at Issue #1092(58), Tuesday, August 2, 2005:
Russia Google-Eyed at the Possibilities For New IT Parks, By Yuriy Humber

According to unacknowledged information: "Google is interested in setting up a research center with 3,000 staff on a site by St. Petersburg’s State University of Telecommunications, which will act as a base for the IT park".

And what is the source, where we can take such amount of people (especially to satisfy Google requirements)?

Buzz in the St. Petersburg times

The St. Petersburg times published "IT Firms Call for Teaching Refo" By Maria Levitov, July 26, 2005.

I found there some interesting (for me) points to check:

The UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE) in Moscow.

"Intel ... works with the Russian Academy of Sciences to formulate up-to-date university curricula". Is it there: http://www.curricula.ru ?

A mysterious "IT Dvizheniye"...

Center for Information Society Development http://www.riocenter.ru/
(looks like state supported organization)

PCWeek/RE Discussion Continues

Продолжение темы (в 2005 году) поднятой Андреем Колесовым на страницах PCWeek/RE.

"Аутсорсинг: что "мы" хотим от вуза, или Какие кадры сегодня нужны" Влад Боркус. Собраны мнения представителей отечественных аутсорсинговых компаний. В частности, Михаилом Македонским (Aplana) поминается возможность "решения ряда внутренних задач [компаний] силами студентов".

"Кому нужны ИТ-таланты?" Анатолий Шалыто (в том числе о том, что очень выдающиеся студенты у нас адекватно не востребованы, если я правильно понял мысль)

"Подготовка ИТ-кадров: что мы хотим от аутсорсинга" Андрей Колесов.
Момент о котором редко вспоминают, цитирую: "... нужно сказать, что очень серьезная ответственность за преодоление разрыва "вуз - работа" лежит на самом студенте. К сожалению, у нас еще бытуют оставшиеся с советских времен представления о том, что поступление в вуз и последующее получение диплома автоматически означает получение работы и определенный карьерный рост по специальности. В результате многие студенты только на старших курсах осознают, что освоение нужных профессиональных навыков требует от них дополнительных усилий".

Computerra (The darkness of education)

Еженедельник «Компьютерра» посвятил проблеме обучения ИТ в отечественных ВУЗах тему номера - "Тьма просвещения" (от 28 июня 2005 года).
Очень символичный cover.

Особый интерес вызвало интервью с Максимом Отставным. Очень мне близко его видение текущей ситуации.

В статье Виталия Дмитриева есть небольшой исторический экскурс (включая сегодняшний день) о роли энтузиастов и самоорганизации в отечественном образовании.

В «послесловии» Леонида Левкович-Маслюка «врезаны» примеры "конвергенции" ИТ-индустрии и образования. Поставлен вопрос о среде «Вопрос в среде - как ее оживить и усилить».