Win a free seat and a free embedded board in one of our upcoming public training sessions
At Free Electrons, and at our partner company CALAO Systems, we owe a lot to the Free Software community, and we’re doing our best to give back as much as we can.
For our upcoming embedded Linux and kernel public sessions, we decided to offer a free seat to one deserving contributor to the community:
- Linux kernel and driver development – Toulouse, France, Mar. 8-12, 2009
- Embedded Linux – Toulouse, France, Mar. 29 – Apr. 2, 2009
Each seat has a commercial value of 1950 € (including materials, embedded board, lunch and laptop rental). The winner will even walk away with an embedded board donated by CALAO systems!
Conditions to benefit from this offer
- You must have made visible contributions to the Free Software community, through any project: documentation, code, support in mailing lists, participation to local user groups, Free Software advocacy…
- You need to be available at the next session (if needed, by taking vacation days) and be ready to travel to the training location at your own expense.
- Professionals are also welcome (as long as they are contributors). There is no problem if they belong to a company who could have paid for their session. No problem if they do this on their working time, and if their company pays for their expenses.
- You will need to familiar enough with English, to understand the training materials and the oral explanations.
- If you are interested in one of the above sessions, you should send a mail at most 1 month before the session starts, to award@free-electrons.com, summarizing your contributions to the community and your motivations to join the training session and letting us know which session(s) you are interested in. We will only use your e-mail address for this particular offer.
- People who already participated in the selection but didn’t win are welcome again.They just have to let us know that they available at the next session and wish to try again.
- On the day after the deadline, we will select the 10 "best" candidates, balancing past contributions and the potential for further contributions thanks to the training session.
- We will draw then the winner with Python’s
random.randint(1,10).
Why you should take your chance
- Even if you do have experience in this topic, you will be pretty likely to learn something new. This will also be an opportunity to ask questions and share your own experience with other embedded system or kernel developers. See testimonials from participants to our sessions.
- The session can be done during your working time, if your boss agrees. No need to take days off. For employees in France, you could do this through your Droit Individuel à la Formation.
- Not so many people dare to apply, so you have a real chance to win.
- For people living in the Nice and Toulouse areas, the cost is really zero.
- For people coming from abroad or from other regions, there is a significant number of cities where low cost flights to Nice are available. Your extra expenses (typically hotel + dinner won’t exceed 100 EUR / day if you stay at our partner hotel.
Conditions for winners
- Only the training fee, materials, embedded board, lunch and laptop rental will be free of charge. Traveling to Vence, accommodation and food (except lunch) will still be at your own charge.
- This offer may be revoked if the session is canceled because there are not enough participants. If this happens, the next session will be proposed to you.
- You will have to confirm your participation within 3 days after your election. Otherwise, we will try to draw another winner.
- The winner is not allowed to transfer her or his seat to anyone else.
- The winner must take the whole 5 day training session to walk away with the embedded board.
If you are interested in our public sessions and what to be sure to have your seat, you can also ask your company to register you. 
Past winners
Laurent Guerby (session in Toulouse, Oct. 19-23, 2009)
- Founder and main admin of the GCC Compile Farm project as volunteer for FSF France
- Minor contributor to GCC, mainly to Ada support
- Member of many free software associations, currently APRIL/AFUL/FFII and Toulibre/Linux Tarn.
- Money donator to the FSF France for the past 7 years