[OLPC-Chicago] Chicago Office Needs...

[Langellier, Larry]

> I can only laugh when meetups in Palos are suggested.

Commuting Wimp. ;-)

I use to commute for work daily from La Grange to the exact research park that you mention in Evanston. I worked for the Institute for Learning Sciences at 1890 Maple in the late 80's and early 90's when the research park was first being built. I'll admit commuting from the southwest side to Evanston was a long haul, I suppose it's pretty long in the opposite direction... What's a few miles for a worthy cause?

I concur that the Evanston research park (or something similar) would be an interesting site to investigate for an office, if the option of having an office is chosen. Locating near a major university would likely have its advantages.

Your idea of having access to some School Servers is AWESOME! In my opinion, the Give Many program has a stronger likelihood of success if local, full-scale deployment experience becomes part of the support model. I would definitely love to have some access to a school server this summer, whether I had to travel to it or if it came to me in a van.

Best Regards,
Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: olpc-chicago-bounces at lists.laptop.org [mailto:olpc-chicago-bounces at lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of Robert Myers
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 4:20 PM
To: olpc-chicago at lists.laptop.org
Subject: [OLPC-Chicago] Chicago Office Needs...

Mel,

_School_ _Servers_

The XO is part of a system. Those of us that only get to play alone
aren't getting the whole picture. If we had access to school servers we
could get a better feel for the whole system.

Getting the Chicago Jabber server up is a good start, but not the whole
experience.

The only time I've really had a chance to interact with other XOs was
just about long enough to make me realize that I had no clear idea of
what to expect.

So I'd suggest in descending order of priority:

1) WAN school server accessible to Chicago area XO users. Probably
remote admin access to those who are interested in seeing how this end
of things works and looks. no local mesh antennas needed.

2) School server for the Lab-In-A-Van. Full mesh.

3) School servers for seed labs. Single mesh antenna.

Now that there's an off the shelf spec for a XSX school server
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XSX_Server_Implementation), it should be
practical to roll our own. The spec notes an Athenatech 600 Series
Mid-Tower case. The first samples have a really boring silver and black
one. The same internals are available in jazzier externals with color,
all at about the same price. How about #605 cases with XO green trim?
http://www.athenatech.us/ -- click on 'A600 (MidTower)', scroll down to
A605.

The Active antennas also look like they should be getting easier to obtain.

I'd be willing to help assemble and load the servers.

_More_ _XOs_ in peoples hands

I really feel like a buzzkill when I show off my XO and then tell
someone that they can't have one. How about lobbying for an open Give
Many, where someone could buy an XO from OLPC Chicago for a Give Many
price, say $300? Maybe if OLPC were nice they'd even kick back some of
that to OLPC Chicago to help finance local operations.

A couple of other possible location suggestions (budget allowing).

What about a tech incubator like the NU Evanston Research Park
'http://researchpark.com/'?

Are there similar incubator or shared office spaces geared to
non-profits? Maybe they'd offer a better deal than the commercial shared
office space you mentioned.

Rather than an apartment with an office shoved in, why not look for a
live/work loft space?

Bob

PS. I'm located in Evanston and share some of your can't get there from
here pain. North and south is quick, but going west is nigh on
impossible. I can only laugh when meetups in Palos are suggested.
_______________________________________________
OLPC-Chicago mailing list
OLPC-Chicago at lists.laptop.org
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-chicago