Extra-curricular IT projects?

Do you do any IT work that is not directly related to your job? Are you involved in any open source initiatives? Do you volunteer your IT skills to an organization? Do you contribute in any other way to a group or project that you aren't receiving compensation for?

If so, what are you doing and how did you get into it? When life slows down a bit, I'd really like to get involved in different areas and diversify the portfolio a bit while making some potentially valuable contacts and learning new things.

Just looking for the best ways to find these opportunities and maybe spitball some other avenues that I haven't thought of ...

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ccnxjr

I'd like to get started on actively working on Open Source projects, but my coding skills are lower than average.
I'm working on that .

However, I do volunteer as a coordinator for my local Linux User's Group.
I'm by no means a subject matter expert, so my role is mostly as a host, getting people talking, and/or helping people that are even less knowledgeable than I am. (which ends up being just helping them google stuff)

tprice5

Very cool ccnxjr, how did you become involved with that?

philz1982

Hackers For Charity

N2IT

A lot of cool ideas.

I actually have an opportunity to work with college graduates coming from a local technical school. One of the instructors is my friend / former program manager as well. He is now teaching and suggest his student reach out to me for a quick 15 - 20 minute phone call. I love it because it's free and I provide a huge service to these new college graduates. The best part is a lot of them have gotten jobs, my friend aka the instructor at the college is always providing me feedback and says a lot of the kids who reach out to me get jobs right away from school.

That is really rewarding to me.

Sorry it's not really a IT project but I wanted to share.

tprice5

philz1982 wrote: »

Hackers For Charity

Nice!

N2IT wrote: »

Sorry it's not really a IT project but I wanted to share.

No no, that's pretty cool. It seems like that would be a good 'in' to becoming an adjunct professor which would fit the description nicely.

ccnxjr

tprice5 wrote: »

Very cool ccnxjr, how did you become involved with that?

For this one in particular it was just a matter of showing up consistently and being friendly.
It started out as me attending a workshop, and returning for other activities, sticking around afterwards to help out on putting furniture back in place and getting to know the people.
Being honest, respectful, just good manners in general.