Red Hat throws down challenge to students

• Second regional Red Hat Challenge announced, kicks off on Nov 2 with theme 'For the students, by the students'
• Competition part of commitment to help grow and shape next generation of IT professionals

RED Hat Inc has announced the second regional Red Hat Challenge, a knowledge-based technology competition aimed at students from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. 
 
“Following the positive response from our inaugural Red Hat Challenge last year, we’ve decided to scale up and open the contest to more students from the region,” said Sachin Shridhar, senior director, Services, Red Hat Asia Pacific.
 
The competition is open to all full-time students from any university, polytechnic or private school in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan, the company said in a statement.
 
Each contestant will be tested on Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administration, network administration, security administration and virtualization tasks.
 
The competition begins on Nov 2 and the top two finalists from each country will travel to Beijing to take part in the final round on Dec 15 (see below for more detail).
 
The theme for this year is “For the students, by the students”, and will feature a platform built by engineering student Lim Guo Wei from Singapore Polytechnic.
 
Designed and coded on OpenShift, which is the company’s free, auto-scaling Platform as a Service (PaaS) for applications, the platform will be used to test participating students’ knowledge.
 
“This year’s theme is an extension of collaborative innovation. We believe that this framework, which is built on sharing ideas and driving innovation amongst users, goes beyond developers, IT professionals and enterprises. We want to show that students also play an important role in open source communities,” said Sachin.
 
According to a recently released 2012 Linux Jobs Report by the Linux foundation, 81% of companies have indicated that hiring Linux talent is a priority in 2012. In Asia, this percentage is even higher, with 86% of companies indicating that hiring Linux talent is a top priority.
 
Sachin said the competition is part of the company’s commitment to help grow and shape the next generation of IT professionals in the region.
 
“We are confident that the Asia Pacific region will continue seeing an increasing demand for individuals who have the relevant IT skills to help companies transition and leverage on new and emerging technologies,” he added.
 
Regional Red Hat Challenge:
Stage 1 (Nov 2, 2012) – Conducted online, this speed round would require each student to answer up to 118 multiple choice questions, on over 20 topics, in 60 minutes. The top 20 students from each country will be selected to move to the second stage.
 
Stage 2 (Nov12, 2012) – Each of the top 20 students in each country will visit the Red Hat office nearest to his or her residence for an in-person interview with a Red Hat Certified Instructor. Each student must resolve three different problem scenarios presented by the Red Hat Certified Instructor. The results will be scored, and the top two students from each country will move on to the final round of competition.
 
Stage 3 (15 December 2012) – The top two students from each country will travel to Beijing to compete with one another in an open book competition on virtualization.
 
For more information, click here.

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