[OLPC-Chicago] OLPC Chicago meetup: the aftermath

Karen T. Smith kayti99 at comcast.net
Fri Jan 25 21:06:27 EST 2008


Like Peter, I did a writeup of the meetup. I submitted it to Wayan Vota over
on OLPCNews.com and it's posted as the top entry on the main page right now
(the blog entries update about 2-3x/day, so I would expect it to not be the
top entry by morning.)

It is currently located here:
http://olpcnews.com/

But once it bumps down it'll be here:
http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/user_groups/chicago_olpc_community_meetup.
html

It was a great meeting. I also have this post on my personal blog here:
http://beckersmith.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/01/world-dominatio.html
I have a few posts about the XO as well (including a photo of my XO all
tricked out for grown-ups with a Targus foldable keyboard, external mouse,
and the screen swiveled 180 to make room on the table.) I'll be moving them
to another more tech-centric blog soon (and yes, Mel, adding it to the wiki
page you mentioned below.) This one's just my mommy blog, but hey - it's
something. :D

Great meeting so many of you on Tuesday. I look forward to future meetups.

Karen Smith
St. Charles, IL
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mel Chua [mailto:mel at laptop.org] 
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 1:38 AM
To: olpc-chicago at lists.laptop.org
Subject: OLPC Chicago meetup: the aftermath

You're getting this email because you came to or would probably be
interested in last night's OLPC Chicago grassroots group meeting. (If
you RSVP'd for a friend or colleague, please pass this message on to
them as I may not have everyone's email.)

First, thanks for coming out - we had about 50 people, many from out of
town and even out of state on this night of Bitter Cold, and you folks
were what made the evening happen, and happen spectacularly. Also, many
thanks to our excellent hosts at Google!

And now, the numbered list of Informationness.

------------ notes -------------

0. Notes and commentary from the meeting are posted here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Chicago. If you've got anything to add,
feedback, a blog post, pictures, links to projects that you showed off
last night, whatever - please edit/post/link to it from there.

------------- mailing list -------------

1. Join the mailing list: http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-chicago.
This is probably the easiest way to keep up with Chicago-area OLPC
happenings - if you're starting a project, looking for help, planning
your own gathering, or just want to toss around ideas, *please* email
the list so others will know. Discussion has been sparse of late, but we
can and should change that. In particular, the Chicago office this
summer will be sending out announcements to the list as we build
ourselves up.

------------- wiki and resources -------------

2. Check out the wiki - http://wiki.laptop.org. If you're new to wikis,
email me back - I and others would be more than happy to teach. We're
trying to keep as much documentation and as many projects as possible on
the (multilingual!) OLPC wiki to make it easier for people to find (and
contribute) to your work. If you've got a project, please host your site
there (we also provide code hosting - see [[Project hosting]]) or at
least make a wikipage summarizing and linking to what you're doing.

(Note that [[PAGE NAME]] is "wiki shorthand" for
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/PAGE_NAME, so that [[Project hosting]] link
should be http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Project_hosting.)

------------- good pages to read -------------

Other pages you might want to check out:

* [[Core principles]] - good to know.
* [[OLPC Chicago]] - yep, that's us.
* [[IMSA]] - the high schoolers who presented at the start of the
meeting have all their notes and projects here.
* [[Participate]] - a little rusty/under-construction but a good
starting point for resources on how to get involved.
* [[Educators]] - for the teachers; this page also has pictures and
reports from pilot sites. Also see [[Review squads]] for one way to get
kids involved.
* [[Developers]] - for the coders in the audience. Also see [[Hardware
specification]].
* [[Translators]] - want to use your XO in different languages? Want to
help others do the same?
* [[Wiki cleanup]] - as you may have gathered, the wiki is in a constant
state of flux. We're always looking for ways to make it better and
people to help.
* [[IRC]] - how the global OLPC community chats. (I'm usally in channels
as mchua.)

In general, searching the wiki should turn up useful
resources/answers/projects/contacts that make good starting points for a
lot of questions/interests you might have.

------------- lists and forums -------------

And threee non-wiki pages:
* http://olpc.osuosl.org/chat - the easiest way to start talking to 
other haXOrs from around the world. (for those who use IRC: it sends you 
to #olpc-help on irc.freenode.org.)
* http://lists.laptop.org - mailing lists, including
development/grassroots/community-support ones.
* http://olpc.osuosl.org - discussion forums (some are mirrors of
mailing lists if you prefer to read those online). This link will change
to something easier-to-remember soon but there should be a redirect.

------------- pycon -------------

3. PyCon! Python is the (easy to learn, fun to code in, yet powerful and
fast) programming language that the vast majority of OLPC software,
including the Sugar UI, is written in. If any of this sounds
interesting, you're in luck; PyCon (Python Conference) is in Chicago
this year, and it's *the* Pythonic place to be this spring. There are
tutorials and sessions for all experience levels from "what is this
Python thing?" to "I invented it" (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_van_Rossum). There is also an OLPC
session: http://us.pycon.org/2008/tutorials/SugarFletcher

For more information, see the conference website at
http://us.pycon.org/2008/about/. There are student rates and financial
aid is available. Financial aid *is* available. As Carl said repeatedly
during the meeting, don't let money keep you from attending.
http://us.pycon.org/2008/registration/financial-aid/.

------------- ask! -------------

4. If you have any questions, ideas, comments, want to start your own
grassroots group, run a pilot, play with software, hack hardware, hook
up with the rest of the OLPC community, meet people, etc... DO IT. The
operational words are "ask forgiveness, not permission." Everything's
open source/content/licensed, so you can just jump right in.

If you'd like any help getting started, poke the people you met last
night, holler on the mailing list - between last night and this email,
you should have a good list of resources to get yourselves started. In a
grassroots project like this, volunteers like us are the ones who make
things happen.

I'm also trying to follow up with everyone I talked to yesterday but
have a Very Leaky Brain so please email and remind me at mel at laptop.org
if there's something I can help you with, questions you have, feedback
on last night, things you'd like to see happen, or just something you'd
like to talk about.

Thanks again - and happy hacking!

-Mel
[[User:Mchua]]

(Apologies for the belatedness of this email - my mother made me go to
bed last night.)



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