[Grassroots-l] Story Jam New York - help spread the word

[Mel Chua]

Dear friends,

Please help us spread the word about the upcoming Story Jam in New York, 
held at UNICEF's headquarters in Manhattan on the last weekend of this 
month (March 28-30). We're hoping to get many teams of software, 
content, and hardware hackers working on projcets as well as a 
continuous stream of school groups coming in to record stories.

If you could forward this to friends, mailing lists, and students and 
professors at universities around your area (New York, Boston, etc.) - 
computer science departments, free culture groups, local LUGs, 
journalism/education students, prolific writers, actors, storytellers, 
UNICEF/OLPC fans/volunteers/activists around the area, anyone you think 
would be interested - we would tremendously appreciate it (and offer you 
prolific thanks, and cookies, if you come.)

Also, if you know K-12 schools/parents/students/teachers around the NYC 
metro area, spread the word to them as well, and ask them to contact me 
- we're looking for groups, especially groups of children, to come in 
during the weekend and record their stories and make teaching videos and 
content for other kids around the world.

Hope some of you will come yourselves (a few getting this email already 
are. ;)

Thanks, everyone!

-Mel

---- begin invitation ----

Story Jam Invitation Letter

You are invited to Story Jam New York!

UNICEF, the world's leading children's organization, and One Laptop per
Child will be holding an open Storytelling Jam and Hackathon from Friday
March 28 through Sunday March 30. The three-day event will be hosted at
UNICEF's headquarters in Manhattan, NY.


The focus of this event is to build and implement free and open-source
tools for collecting stories, as well as gathering and spreading the
stories themselves.

UNICEF is inviting software and hardware experts of all types to create
tools that enable young people to capture and share their stories on
various hardware devices including the XO.  UNICEF's Youth Section has
been actively involved in developing various projects in this area,
including a radio station on a USB stick, software to allow people to
access web pages through SMS / Text messages, and ways to capture the
voices of young people through their mobile phones.

Developers will be working in groups to either extend existing programs
or create new ones.  Check the projects page to see a list of proposed
projects or propose one of your own.  In addition to a viewing for the
attendees on Sunday the 30th, Monday the 31st will feature a public
viewing at UNICEF HQ where work from the weekend will be displayed and
visitors will be able to record their stories.

To register or to view more information, including how you or your group
can participate, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Story_Jam_New_York. We
hope to see you there!


About UNICEF

UNICEF is on the ground in over 150 countries and territories to help
children survive and thrive, from early childhood through adolescence.
The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries,
UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation,
quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of
children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS.  UNICEF is funded
entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses,
foundations and governments.

About OLPC

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization created to
design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently
inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge
and modern forms of education. The rugged, Linux-based,
mesh-networking-enabled, and power-efficient laptops have begun to be
deployed to children by schools across the world on the basis of one
laptop per child. OLPC is based on constructionist theories of learning
pioneered by Seymour Papert and later Alan Kay, as well as the
principles expressed in Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital.