It may be the 100th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America, but this future Eagle Scout has picked a project on the cutting edge. 16 year-old David Browning is already a tech volunteer at his former elementary school, Bellevue Eastside Christian School, and is taking it to the next level by helping the school deploy the Windows 7 RC. Pulling guidance from online resources, his High School’s IT Director, and from his dad (a Microsoft employee), David constructed five different imaging scenarios for the school’s small IT program deployment. The school was running Windows XP on machines that were 5-7 years old, and got a set of new PCs this summer. Instead of moving to Windows Vista, and then to Windows 7 later in the year, David thought his Eagle Scout project provided the perfect opportunity to help move them to Windows 7 early so teachers wouldn’t have to train for two operating systems in one year.
After learning the ropes of Group Policy and IT imaging for the past month (primarily through reading on the weekends), David helped deploy donated hardware and software across 67 new computers this week. The school will run on the Windows 7 RC until upgrading to final code this winter. I’m totally impressed by his eagerness and dedication!