[Grassroots-l] Hi

[Aaron Kaplan]

On Nov 25, 2007, at 8:25 PM, John Glaser wrote:

> Greeting,
>
> Please send me some information about how I can help.  I work in for a
> technology organization in North Dakota which employs ~300 people, I
> think this may be a good place to start.
>
> Thanks,
> John Glaser
> johnglaser at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
>

Hi John, hi everybody,


Well, I take this question as an opportunity to briefly describe what  
we managed to do in Austria, in the hope that it inspires other  
potential grassroot groups. As a reminder: this list was set up in  
order to share our experiences in setting up local grassroot groups.

--- snip ---


I. what is a local grassroots group?

Well, basically it is a local group interested in contributing to the  
OLPC project.
For our group we decided that we want to contribute since a group of  
~ 30 full time employees at the OLPC HQ in Cambridge is simply not  
enough for a worldwide program. Local involvement seems (to me at  
least) to be the key issue of empowering people in this whole project.
It does help very much to have one or two XO laptops which are shared  
in the group.

A local grassroots group is bascially a way of saying "I do not want  
to be a pure consumer of this product but want to contribute"



II. What do you mean by contributing? What can be done?

Programing, fixing bugs (http://dev.laptop.org), educational content  
(irc channel #olpc-content) or any other cool idea
(see for example: http://www.olpcaustria.org/mediawiki/index.php/ 
Hansel_%26_Gretel)
For an overview see: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Getting_involved_in_OLPC



III. How to get started?

Our experience is that it takes 3-4 motivated people. Meet in a local  
place, face 2 face is still one of the most multimodal experience  
ever :)
Regularly meet in a public accessible place, announce this via local  
media channels and attract talent!
Your mileage may vary widely , but at least this is how we did it.

So: to sum it up:
1) get XOs via the G1G1 program, until they are delivered, play  
around with the emulator (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ 
OS_images_for_emulation).
2) exchange knowledge in a local group
3) decide on what you want to contribute. Document that in  
wiki.laptop.org or your own wiki so that people can see it and so  
that work is not duplicated.
4) create weekend content- or coding jams. These are usually happy  
meetings with good music, good food and lots of high spirits.
5) share your achievements in the mailing lists
6) get teachers and kids involved!


IV. Help I live in *-stan and my internet connection is sooo bad that  
I can hardly keep up with all the messages and progress.

This is a real problem. In my experience (I am frequently in exactly  
one of the *-stan countries and in fact I am writing this email from  
one of them on a 2KBytes/sec line (!!)) this currently hinders you  
very much. Downloading a 200MB emulator image will cost you a fortune  
(by western standards).
I propose to set up something like Ubuntu has - a CD mail order  
service, where you can order a CD image of all the necessary software  
for emulation.



V. But an emulator is not so cool. Can I get an XO?

Well, there is the developer program (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ 
Developers_program). I don't know if this is still operational. SJ?  
Anything new about a developer program after G1G1?



--- snip ---
And a special note to John: in case you have any special questions -  
maybe I can help in answering them.

Again, your mileage may vary. Above points is simply what we did.



***********************************************
Leon Aaron Kaplan
OLPC (Austria) grassroots organization
www.olpc.at
***********************************************