Hi DeLisa, I found the post very interesting and would like to add a point to be discussed.
In your examples about how HR could impact on the brand recognition one of the bullets was:
<cite>Brand ambassadors: How can you identify and support the most enthusiastic proponents of the brand and culture within the employee ranks?</cite>
Well I think that when a brand, like Red Hat, is perceived to be so strongly linked to a community (open source), then it actually benefits from the culture/brand of the entire community.
I'd like to hear more about this from you, but this seems to me to be one of the reasons why many other companies like Google, Facebook or Twitter, not strictly related to the open source community, they still care to give outside an image of their brand linked to the open source ecosystem.
I would pay the individual users. That would give people more control and choice leaving to them a chance to choose how to get "connected".
Give a look at <a href="http://www.fon.com">FON</a>