[OLPC India] Minutes of Meeting of OLPC India Conference on 18th April, 2008

[Sameer Verma]

amit gogna wrote:
> Following is the link giving details of OLPC India Conference :-
>
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_India/Conference_calls#Minutes_of_Meeting
> _______________________________________________
> India mailing list
> India at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india
>   
A few points that I'd like to add:

The conference call sound quality was a bit of a problem, although I 
don't think this was a problem with the setup. It sounded like someone 
on the conference call was sitting in traffic...way too much traffic 
noise. It was also suggested that we could perhaps look for a hybrid 
conference call setup which would support dial-in and VoIP calls. I know 
that Gizmo supports such a feature, but AFAIK the call in number is a 
US-based number. See 
http://gizmo5.com/pc/products/features/conference-calling/ for details.

In terms of the upcoming installs or pilots in India, I would reiterate 
that interested people and parties should look to other pilots for 
"lessons learned". Nepal and Pakistan come to mind, given their 
proximity. I've seen a lot more public info on the Nepal pilot, though. 
http://www.olenepal.org/ There are several issues that can be 
categorized into hardware, software, localization, repairs, training, 
etc. Many of these will be largely the same for most deployments, so no 
reinvention is necessary. Some issues will of course be specific for 
deployments in different parts of India, and those will have to be 
addressed on a case by case basis.

Another item of concern is the level of awareness. I've talked to people 
at a couple of different LUGs in India about the project, and I got a 
sense if indifference from them. Perhaps we need a stronger push to 
connect LUGs into different OLPC projects. LUGs tend to have goals 
similar to what OLPC has. LUGs aren't really about Linux or FOSS as much 
as they are about education! This was my suggestion to Gaurav (from 
Punjab University) on the phone call. Gaurav's group at Punjab 
University is doing interesting things in reaching out to the 
communities. Gaurav: Can we hear from you on some of those activities? 
Perhaps pointers to slides, blogs, etc.?

LUGs all over India can get involved and spread the word. They can go 
out to the local communities and improve awareness. There is also a 
perception that if you don't have an XO, you can't really do much. This 
is not the case if you are using a live CD though. The current batch of 
Live CDs (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/LiveBackup_XO-LiveCD) provide a 
large proportion of the functionality that one would see on an XO. 
Perhaps this avenue should be explored more. After all, its really a 
Fedora-derived distro. You could very well run an entire classroom of 
these LiveCDs on regular desktops and still avail the features of Sugar!

Then we have the localization bit. Sayamindu Dasgupta and others have 
done a great job of setting up this resource. We need to be able to use 
it to its fullest extent.

On Pootle (https://dev.laptop.org/translate/), we have:  Afrikaans, 
Amharic, Arabic, Aymara, Basque, Bengali, Bengali (India), Bulgarian, 
Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, 
Danish, Dari, Dutch, Dzongkha, English, English (South African), English 
(US), Finnish, French, Friulian, Fula, Galician, Georgian, German, 
Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hindi, Icelandic, Igbo, Italian, Japanese, 
Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Korean, Kreyol, Macedonian, Malayalam, Maltese, 
Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, 
Portuguese (Brazil), Punjabi, Quechua, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, 
Sindhi, Sinhala, Slovenian, Sotho, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, 
Templates, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Wolof, Yoruba, 
pseudo L10n

Look at the list and see if you have a language/script that's not on 
there but you'd like to help with. For basic instructions on how to use 
Pootle see http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/452 The screenshots are a bit 
dated, but the idea should get across. You'll notice on that same page 
that the slides have been translated into Bulgarian and Chinese. How 
about converting the slides into some Indian languages?

In all, I am quite excited to see things moving again on this list. 
Let's hope we keep up the momentum.

cheers,
Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/