[OLPC-devel] What to do with 30 part-time student developers?

[Dan Leslie]

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Hello,
As I mentioned prior I've been canvassing fellow students at Simon 
Fraser for interest in working on the OLPC project.  During the 
semester break the response was enormous with 30 students claiming to 
be willing to commit significant time to this project.  The first 
meeting was recently convened, at which approximately 20 students 
attended, and half a dozen more gave reasonable regrets.

There was much interest in working on network service auto detection, 
systems optimization (ranging from high-level usability through to 
minimizing power usage), edutainment, and an appropriately usable GTK+ 
theme.  However, as none had as of yet researched much into the current 
state of the project, due to the prior several weeks of vacation, it 
was decided that we would reconvene this Thursday.  Additionally, the 
general consensus determined that we dearly wished to avoid duplication 
of effort, or wasting effort on frivolous activities.  The wiki page 
provides interesting discourse on possible tasks but no official 
guidance.

Thus, I am asking this list - if you had around two dozen students each 
willing to commit around half a dozen to a dozen hours per week, with a 
strong cohesion and team dynamic, what would you have them do?  As 
stated, we have been brainstorming plans, and are quite capable of 
taking our own course, we simply wish to ascertain if there is an 
immediate need for our efforts in a specific task.

I should state that these students aren't a shabby bunch by any 
measure.  The much greater portion are senior computing and electrical 
engineering majors with several years of (often relevant to this 
project) work experience under their belt.

Thanks,
- -Dan Leslie
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