Hi Greg<br><br>The laptops were first with what are probably the biggest bunch of OSS hackers in Christchurch, the bunch of companies that call themselves Effusion (<a href="http://effusiongroup.com/">http://effusiongroup.com/</a>) and a Catalyst employee who lives in Christchurch. <br>
<br>The second trip they were with a girl who was unable to start a group and I am not aware of her managing to get people together even once to be honest. When you arrived I gave her your details and asked her to get you involved. I sent her emails regularly but that didn't seem to help. <br>
<br>I took the laptops to a few TVIC dinners (<a href="http://groups.google.com/group/tvic/">http://groups.google.com/group/tvic/</a>) as that is a bunch of geeks who meet regularly. They were interested in the laptops but had no commitment to doing anything with them other than at the dinner event. <br>
<br>I also took the laptops to Creative Space - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Fchchspace.nztech.org%2F&session_token=mDTcmehJ9fL9fHGCUyrgm5E-nLl8MTI4NTExNzIyMQ%3D%3D" target="_blank" title="http://chchspace.nztech.org/" rel="nofollow" dir="ltr" class="yt-uix-redirect-link">http://chchspace.nztech.org/</a> (they have a promo movie if you want to learn about them - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt4UpwUu2bw">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt4UpwUu2bw</a>) - but they didn't seem interested to be honest. <br>
<br>The reason any of this promotion was possible was because I used to travel to Christchurch regularly for work. This is no longer the case. <br><br>I would have liked someone to take them to the ULearn conference (October <a href="http://www.core-ed.org/ulearn/">http://www.core-ed.org/ulearn/</a>) and to have had a Sugar workshop for teachers. Rumour has it someone is going to talk about Sugar, but I don't have any real details of the depth. New Zealand schools don't have much if any understanding of Sugar and/or olpc and the potential Sugar has for developing critical thinking and engaging students. Events like this one are a good place for us to start. <br>
<br>The realities - it takes a lot of time and energy to get a testing community setup and to keep it humming. Wellington and Auckland meet every Saturday. They meet at the same place and the same time. Any changes to those three variables - time, place, frequency - and the community falters. If you want to take up the challenge and have the time and energy to commit to it, then we can send them back to Christchurch. I would dearly love to see a community in the South Island. There are some XOs scattered about (e.g. Otago) and a support network locally would be fantastic. If you are up for the commitment, then please provide a courier address (off list) and we will send them back to Christchurch for attempt number three. <br>
<br clear="all">Kind regards<br>Tabitha