[Grassroots-l] Health Jam 2008

Bryan Berry bryan.berry at gmail.com
Tue Apr 29 15:20:24 EDT 2008


iXO, 

let me think about how much I can contribute. I am pretty maxed out
working on Nepal's deployments. 

I highly recommend you guys talk w/ Greg Smith for a structured project
plan. He can also funnel info to you guys from what the latin American
pilots need.

I probably won't be in the US for another 10 months. I doubt you want to
wait that long :)

Bryan
Kathmandu

best of luck

On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 12:13 -0700, Ixo X oxI wrote:
> Bryan,
>   Great ideas !
>   Let's continue this health related discussion over on the OLPC
> Health mailing list (we are veering off the general grassroots topics
> here), and see about bringing your ideas to the next Health Jam...
> maybe someone can speak up and propose a time/place on the east coast
> instead of the west coast.  *hint* *hint*
> 
> Sorry that you are so far away, it would be great to have you there.
> (Maybe align the jam to the next time you are in the area ? :)
> 
> -iXo
> 
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 11:47 AM, Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>         absolutely,
>         
>         Start w/ some simple goals for Health
>         
>         1 activity for first aid
>         1 activity on nutrition
>         1 activity on the causes of disease
>         
>         1 good pdf on the causes of disease
>         
>         Then do some work on them to get started. After you have some
>         prototypes
>         __then__ go look for help. The argument is "Here are our
>         goals, here is
>         what we have so far, please help us improve what we have.
>         However, if
>         you are think you could create better content yourself by
>         starting from
>         scratch, please do so."
>         
>         If you ask the larger community for help w/out having any
>         existing
>         prototypes or precise goals, everyone goes off in different
>         directions.
>         
>         Martin Langhoff's e-mail motto sums it up quite well
>         
>         "don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first"
>         
>         Since you have an all-volunteer team on OLPC Health, you need
>         projects
>         where folks can contribute a few hours a week. I recommend
>         avoiding
>         architecturally complex or esoteric technical projects, it
>         will be hard
>         for folks to put in the necessary time and for others not so
>         acquainted
>         w/ that obscure platform to contribute. We are running into
>         this problem
>         w/ EPaati since it is coded in Squeak.
>         
>         If you could get some of Greg Smith's time, he could help you
>         put
>         together a project plan. He has been very helpful to me. He is
>         also
>         resident in Boston
>         
>         hope this helps
>         
>         
>         On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 00:01 +0530, Arjun Sarwal wrote:
>         > >  Why didn't the Health Jam focus on getting folks to help
>         w/ the
>         > >  development of these activities that you described?
>         > >
>         > >  Too many OLPC content projects are characterized by
>         > >  1) Lots of great ideas
>         > >  2) Lack of focus
>         > >  3) Lots of excitement, wiki pages, and e-mails
>         > >  4) Not much output in terms of finished activities or
>         activity bundles.
>         > >
>         > >  Sorry to be blunt but we need to change this.
>         > >
>         >
>         > Ideas on getting started with this change ?
>         >
>         > (just trying to push the conversation forward in this
>         direction as I
>         > agree with your point to some extent)
>         >
>         > best
>         > Arjun
>         >
>         >
>         > From: Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com>
>         > Subject: Re: [Grassroots-l] Health Jam 2008
>         > To: Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>
>         > Cc: olpc-open <olpc-open at laptop.org>,   Games for the OLPC
>         >        <games at lists.laptop.org>, grassroots at lists.laptop.org
>         > Message-ID:
>         <1209493566.7102.84.camel at dell.linuxdev.us.dell.com>
>         > Content-Type: text/plain
>         >
>         > >There's no contradiction between activities that are fun,
>         or with
>         > >complex ideas behind them, and those that teach the most
>         basic health
>         > >and survival skills to children.
>         >
>         > Teaching basic health and survival skills to kids is
>         actually quite
>         > complex.
>         >
>         > EKG's w/ the XO or the VistA healthcare suite are neat apps
>         but not what
>         > is needed by most deployments.
>         >
>         > When I refer to "complex" I more precisely mean problems
>         that are
>         > technically interesting but not directly not related to
>         education for
>         > kids ages 6-12, OLPC's primary focus.
>         >
>         > Why didn't the Health Jam focus on getting folks to help w/
>         the
>         > development of these activities that you described?
>         >
>         > Too many OLPC content projects are characterized by
>         > 1) Lots of great ideas
>         > 2) Lack of focus
>         > 3) Lots of excitement, wiki pages, and e-mails
>         > 4) Not much output in terms of finished activities or
>         activity bundles.
>         >
>         > Sorry to be blunt but we need to change this.
>         >
>         >
>         > On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 13:47 -0400, Samuel Klein wrote:
>         > > There's no contradiction between activities that are fun,
>         or with
>         > > complex ideas behind them, and those that teach the most
>         basic health
>         > > and survival skills to children.
>         > >
>         > > There are three health-related games being proposed and
>         worked on at
>         > > the moment that are good examples; all of which could use
>         further
>         > > specific input.  Food Force is closest to having something
>         playable...
>         > > pehaps Muriel and Deepank can say a bit more about its
>         recent status.
>         > >
>         > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Water_Wonders
>         > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Malnutrition
>         > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Food_Force
>         > >
>         > > SJ
>         



More information about the Grassroots mailing list