[OLPC-Chicago] Chicago-IL summer nucleation group

[Mel Chua]

(First: my mailbox just got totally borked last night and I lost all new 
emails from Monday, so if you've sent me a private email since Sunday 
night and I have not yet replied, please resend it if you still want me 
to write you back - thanks, and sorry about that.)

And now back to our regularly scheduled mailing list. Chuck, this is 
excellent material to consider - thanks for starting the discussion! I'm 
going to section this email into three parts: (1) some starter responses 
to Chuck's great questions on location, (2) some thoughts on what this 
nucleation group will be /for/ in the first place, and (3) the 
semi-obligatory disclaimer.

I've moved a lot of discussion to the wiki, and will do my best to port 
convos back and forth between mailing list <--> wiki (help welcome!) so 
respond in whichever you feel more comfortable in.

(1) Location/Space needs

What do we need?
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mchua/Braindumps/Chicago_office#Needs.2C_definite

A somewhat different take on professionalism:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mchua/Braindumps/Chicago_office#Professionalism

What might we need?
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mchua/Braindumps/Chicago_office#Needs.2C_under_discussion

Possible (types of) locations:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mchua/Braindumps/Chicago_office#Fallback_option:_Basement
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mchua/Braindumps/Chicago_office#Option:_Downtown_apartment-office
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mchua/Braindumps/Chicago_office#Option:_Downtown_office-office

My personal favorite:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mchua/Braindumps/Chicago_office#Option:_Mobile

(2) Nucleation group charter (Note that I didn't call it an office here!)

So, "OLPC Chicago Grassroots Office" may be a misnomer.

First: we should not ''only'' be about Chicago. There's a whole state 
out there - a whole world, really - of kids whose worlds we can help to 
open. Let's not forget that there are excellent hackers in the south, 
that we should reach out and hold events throughout the suburbs as much 
as we should in the metro areas, that the network of IL schools reaches 
far past the bounds of the commuter rail, and that the seat of our 
legislature (which I'm guessing some of the grassroots groups on this 
list will want to contact eventually) isn't in the gigantic hub up 
north, but in a bustling hive of activity in the middle of the state.

Second: we should not just be about an office. In fact, we may not need 
a physical office, and I'm leaning towards not wanting one. It's 
probably more accurate to say that we're a regional nucleation group, 
and that our charter is (or should be) not to get a big monolithic lump 
of bureaucracy downtown, but to do things in order to help ''other'' 
grassroots groups in the area thrive, with a sunset clause set firmly 
for the end of August.

Think of the nucleation group as a team of full-time pro-bono OLPC 
consultants with various areas of expertise and ongoing projects of our 
own - consultants you can call on all summer to help with your 
OLPC-related groups, projects, events, and more. (We'd appreciate couch 
crash-space and calories if you keep us on-site for more than 24 hours, 
though.) We're here to build tools, resources, networks, contacts, and 
provide occasional catalytic kicks. But we're ultimately here for the 
summer so that by the end of the summer, you'll all know more than we 
will about everything - if we're successful, by the end of summer, the 
nucleation group will have rendered itself unnecessary and obsolete.

In the words of a far wiser person than I, "We're in business to put 
ourselves out of business." It's not that we don't want to stick around, 
but that since "what's needed" is an open question and the answer is in 
flux, I'm deliberately trying not to build up long-term infrastructure 
under the nucleation group. I want to avoid an XO monoculture, 
especially in these crucial starting months when nobody knows what's 
going to happen or what works. Since we want to seed lots of 
independent, diverse options and let best practices emerge, I want to 
put an explicit sunset clause of end-of-August on the nucleation group 
and use that date as a target for "how many crazy different OLPC 
grassroots experiments can we run within that time?" and then step back 
as a community mid-summer and see where we are and where our individual, 
collaborative, and collective efforts might go next once the sun sets on 
IL Nucleation Group V.1.0. (Who knows? It could always rise again.)

So, to recap: Nucleation group, here in Chicago this summer to help you 
get your groups and projects to the next level, encourage 
experimentation, and seed/start/make many local grassroots groups 
(yours!) stronger. If we do our job well, we'll be obsolete before 
September.

(3) Semi-obligatory disclaimer, or: wherein Mel explains the roughness 
of this email and the page it links to.

Yes, this email is rough. The links embedded therein are also rough. 
(They're on a wiki. Please edit/comment either here in the list or there 
on the page, as you prefer.)

This is deliberate. I'm trying to keep "office" operations as 
transparent as possible from the beginning so that there won't be 
anything anyone will need to keep in the strictest confidence, so that 
everyone knows and can chime in on what's going on, and so we're all 
encouraged to share ideas even if they're not completely worked-out (the 
important part is to get them to the point other people can do something 
with them). We're coming out this summer for *you folks*, after all. But 
that's part of the point, really - that the world is open-source and 
hackable, and that we can all contribute patches to improve it without 
having to be approved by some arbitrary Rubber Stamp of Authority first.

There is no "secret information" on the office that hasn't yet been 
released - well, almost nearly none, and the part that hasn't been 
thrown open all deals with finances of individuals (mostly mine). A lot 
of things are in flux and will be settled out over the next several 
days, and I'm trying to keep the discourse flowing so we can have the 
full benefit of all the brilliant minds on this list hitting these 
ideas; I believe that the open-source development axiom "given enough 
eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" applies equally to software development 
and infrastructure development.

I want to make it really clear that the trio of full-time staff (so far; 
we may have up to 5) aren't any more special or official than all of you 
in any way. We aren't employees of OLPC-the-nonprofit, we aren't stamped 
with the Official Seal of The Almighty, we're just extremely active 
volunteers who've been around long enough to believe that what we're 
doing is good enough that we're setting aside a summer (or longer, in 
some cases) to work on this full-time, currently without pay, to help 
out grassroots groups in what we consider to be a crucial spot with lots 
of potential and spectacular people to work with - and in my case, at 
least, to give back to a place that I call home.

(NB: We're not the only ones crazy enough to do this. See 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bernie_Innocenti_interview - and yes, we're 
applying for grants and trying to break even.)

That having been said, things can't remain in flux forever. They need to 
move into implementation at some point - and when major final decisions 
are made (program dates, office location, etc), they'll be announced out 
on this list for sure. But having a rich body of discussion and 
information to draw from when we ''do'' make those decisions will be 
immensely valuable, and enable the community to anticipate, better 
understand, and steer in the helpful-hat direction many of the things 
the nucleation group will be doing. So please, please, do speak up - and 
thanks to everybody who's written in so far!

(4) And finally.

Comments, questions, thoughts, limericks, criticisms, ripostes, and 
words of wisdom highly sought, O Great OLPC Chicago Metabrain.

-Mel

PS: Also, see 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Chicago#Summer_projects:_Definite for the 
project ideas so far (and please contribute/join!)

PPS: Reminder to resend any emails you may have sent me on Monday, 
because I lost my inbox then due to my first (mis)adventure with the 
offlineimap library.