I just finished giving an introductory talk to both my DPS911 and OSD700 students, as well as Fardad's and Jordan's DPS909 and OSD600 students. I can't tell you how exciting it is to get a new group of students at Seneca joining us as we do work in our open source projects. To be able to watch the students go from no knowledge to working on real bugs is very rewarding, and I never tire of it.
As I've mentioned before, Fardad and Jordan, are taking our open source education model and applying it to the Eclipse WTP and OpenOffice.org projects. It's going to be an interesting way for us to test what we know about how to bring new contributors to large community based projects. I know that we'll learn as much as the students.
I wanted to let you know that these new people will be arriving on the scene and will be looking for help and guidance from the various open source communities with which we work. Please follow their blogs via our Open Source@Seneca Planet. If you see them poke into irc, say 'hello' and help them feel welcome. It's intimdating when they start, and made much easier when there are real people out there wanting to see them succeed.