"Weekend" report.

[Jim Gettys]

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." - Wizard of Oz

I want to explain a bit about how things happen behind the scenes, and
encourage the OLPC community to contribute.

Once a week Walter Bender prepares a "Weekend report" that goes to the
sponsors of the OLPC project; it also forms the basis of the public
reports you find in the wiki (e.g.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Current_events).

Walter gets grist for his mill from OLPC staff who send him material
after some collection and editing.  For software, these people are Chris
Blizzard and myself.  Chris handles the UI, applications and Sugar end,
and I handle the firmware, base operating system and libraries and run
time environment.  These reports have been sorted through and edited by
Walter on the "weekend"; that is where the name comes from.

It is all too easy for us to make mistakes and overlook important items
from community members who happen to not be OLPC staff, or for the work
OLPC staff are doing integrating what is primarily community work to
over emphasize staff people's work (e.g. integrating drivers or
activities others have done most of the work on). On at least one
occasion, I've felt extremely stupid making such a mistake and had egg
all over my face. And activity is now to the point where often Chris or
myself fall behind reading mailing lists, and literally don't know
everything that is happening. 

If you have an item you think may be of general interest on what you (or
others) been doing to send it to Chris or myself for possible inclusion
in weekend.  Just put "weekend" in the subject line, and we'll know your
intent.

I take the reports I get from people and reorganize them into topics,
but I try hard not to leave anything out; in this way, Walter also gets
a global view of software end of the project.  By reorganizing into
topics, we can avoid needless duplication, since so much work is done by
collaborations of people. Sometimes Walter leaves items on the cutting
room floor as he makes the call on what is most interesting to the
general audience; there is no guarantee that any particular item
necessarily will appear in weekend.

If you do send Chris or myself a note for weekend, please try to get it
to us by mid afternoon Friday Cambridge, Massachusetts time, so that we
can get a weekend roll up to Walter in time that he doesn't necessarily
have to spend his weekend editing weekend, and so everyone can read it
on the weekend instead. :-)  

You can also send us concerns you have that should remain private if you
wish; please mark such concerns clearly that they are not for
publication.
               Thank you all for all your hard work and help!
                                     Jim Gettys

-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child