[olpc-help] Fwd: OLPC Help - The One Laptop Per Child XO Forum Community

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Michael Burns wrote:
> Several weeks ago, Ivan the Great (or someone of similar status) suggested I
> contact the two known OLPC forums and see if we could integrate, merge or
> collaborate somehow. One is the quickly growing OLPC News forum (alas, I
> received no reply from Wayan) and the olpchelp.org site.
> 
> I don't want to have scattered groupings of user communities, but am having
> trouble seeing a clear path to reconcile. Ads, hosting and differing visions
> are all open questions. Thoughts? Suggestions?

As I've noted elsewhere, these sort of things tend to self-organize, and
over time I'm sure things will reach some kind of unification. People
start blogs, forums, wikis, etc. for reasons of their own and I don't
see that changing.

For example, I started a Google group specifically for people "near"
Portland, Oregon with actual XOs. I am not going to kick anybody off the
list if they live in Corvallis or Eugene or Centralia, WA, or even
Chicago or Lagos, Nigeria. And I'm not going to kick anybody off if they
only have an emulated XO and not a real one. But what that Google group
is "about" is XO owners getting to know their machines and each other.
And I *will* kick flamers and other miscreants off the list. :)