<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div><div dir="ltr">Hey Mel,<br><br>Thanks much for the introduction and apologizes for the huge delay in response.. As you know, I took a job with the Obama campaign a bit before meeting in Chicago. Soon after this email, my life became completely immersed in campaign work. Just a few days ago (after a week of much needed rest), I decided to continue those efforts with the campaign in DC. For this reason, I won't be able to work with the Chicago OLPC groups at this time (DC either, perhaps in a few months). </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">I noticed a while ago you sent out a good article on grassroots efforts an the Obama campaign. As evidenced by the Nov 4th win, grassroots efforts work and very effective in building groups of people to support a chase, if not moreso than traditional organizations. From what I've seen as a volunteer, it's important to tie together what potential supporters' interests into the cause being supported. I remember speaking at our lunch about bringing in non-tech folks into the OLPC efforts to learn together with children to think of new ways of the OLPC learning platform. I think ideas like this are fantastic and spread the word outside of our tech-lists and meetups. The more community support a program has, the further it'll travel. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Curious if anyone has experimented running the Sugar OS in multinode, non-XO environments in the US? I know the purpose of OLPC is to build a low cost computer device, but I see a lot of usable equipment around that could be used for the same educational purposes. I love how the Sugar environment is uniquely geared towards children and believe they work well within it. However, at $400 per laptop via G1G1, I believe it's cost prohibitive for US community programs/schools. I know of a few programs back in Atlanta that may want to run with this, but curious to know if it's been attempted. I have run Sugar in a few non-XO environments for development purposes. Thoughts?<br><br></div><div dir="ltr">Jason<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 9:03 PM, Mel Chua <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mel@melchua.com"><a href="mailto:mel@melchua.com">mel@melchua.com</a></a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Folks,<br>
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I'd like to introduce you to Jason Hoekstra, an OLPC volunteer who grew up in - and is moving back to - the Chicago area. He's interested in getting some local pilots started and has plenty of experience in drumming up grassroots initiatives and making community-run programs happen - but needs help doing so. Jason, can you introduce yourself and share some of your ideas with the list about what you'd like to do and what you need? (The same goes for everybody here, really - what are you interested in?)<br>
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One promising option is to start slowly by running workshops, weekly or biweekly, in the fall. Each week a different topic, with a different organizer, taught with the XO as some component of it - one week it might be a sociologist talking about relationship networks and having kids look at Myspace/Facebook/Linkedin profiles to talk about how people show their connections, maybe another week a speech pathologist can use Speak to talk about phonetic systems in different languages... This is mostly the approach being taken by a school in Boston that is planning to launch a full-scale, one-grade-saturation pilot in the spring term.<br>
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The library in Evanston was interested in doing something and might make a great host for this, but I've been woefully terrible at following up with that what with moving to Boston recently and all. I'll get back in touch with them this weekend, but if you're interested in this (Hans and Bob, I know you are) please let me know (or holler to this list) so we can all coordinate instead of swamping the library in queries and offers of help. ;)<br>
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-Mel<br>
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