Once again, this year the Dutch high-school students participating in CodeYard can compete for the CodeYard Capgemini Open Source Award, which goes to the project(s) which are deemed most innovative, coolest and best imbued with the Open Source spirit. Friday we will host the semi-finals of the competition, during which all the projects (ok, so “semi-finals” might be the wrong word) present themselves to the jury. Four (I think, as I don’t have the competition rules handy) will go on to the finals for the cash award.

It’s always fun to push kids to make cool stuff and get school credit for it; now that I’ve (re)joined the team we need to start planning for next school year, actually. Getting more participants from more schools is at the top of the to-do list. That will help, ever so slightly, in escaping from the proprietary software trap that the Dutch educational system has fallen into.

[[ Case in point: I can’t schedule my days off from the university because I don’t have Internet Explorer 6. I kid you not. Consequence: I don’t schedule them, and the salary administration ends up going nuts over all the vacation days I’m “not using”. Ugh. ]]

[[ Random addendum: I’ve seen the posters for the Amsterdam Girl Geek Dinner and they’re shockingly pink and kind of cool. I’ll have to get one for Mira. Attendance seems a little sparse so far. ]]

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