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

[Jim Gettys]

The issue is one of supervision.  Are you able to find
such mentors/supervisors to keep the students on track?
                           Regards,
                                - Jim


On Mon, 2006-05-15 at 11:41 -0700, Dan Leslie wrote:
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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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-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child