[Olpc-open] Fwd: Code For A Case: OLPC Hackathon

[Edward Cherlin]

Can anybody help with a southern California OLPC event?


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Hodge <dhodge at usc.edu>
Date: 2008/3/14
Subject: Code For A Case: OLPC Hackathon
To: devel at laptop.org

Hello,

 My name is David Hodge. I'm the treasurer of University of Southern
California "Association of Computing Machinery" (ACM) and a member of
"Free Culture USC". These two groups are partnering on upcoming event
that I thought you might want to know about.

 In about a month we are going to have a new "Code for a Cause"
programming event on the USC campus. The last "Code for a Cause
event", called "SS12" had students develop innovative, empowering
software projects for disabled persons. This upcoming event will focus
on the theory and the technology behind open-source software and your
emerging OLPC platform. The fact that your "XO" laptop is loaded with
open-source software and is easy to develop for makes it a great fit
for our "Code For A Cause" event.

 Like in the SS12 event, we will attract students ranging from
freshmen undergraduates all the way through Ph.D candidates and put
them in mixed teams of about five people. After an in-depth
introduction to the OLPC platform and a kickoff ceremony, student
teams will be challenged over a week-long period to develop
open-source software for the OLPC platform. Teams will be given
guidelines for their projects, but be left enough discretion to
leverage their own creativity to produce unique solutions. Software
experts and OLPC hardware will be made available during office-hours
throughout the week of the event. At the end of the week, students
will submit their projects and receive prizes for their work at an
awards ceremony. The goal of this event is to raise awareness for
open-source software, to promote the OLPC platform, and to be
educational and fun for all participants.

 We will have an orientation session on Wednesday April 9. The actual
competition will start with a kickoff event and full day of coding on
April 12. The "Office Hours" where students can test their code on
actual XO laptops will take place for a few hours a day from the April
13 to April 19.

 While our planning for this event is moving along well, we thought
you might be able to offer us some help. Specifically, we're looking
for OLPC and python experts to have at the competition and we thought
that you might be able to offer us some advice on where to find them.
We'd like these experts to provide help during the "office hours"
sessions throughout the week. Additionally, while we have already
secured two loaner laptops for use during the office hours, we are
looking for another one or two laptops to have on hand so that
everyone can have access. So if possible we were hoping you could send
us a development laptop. Last, while we realize your development
laptops are scarce and may only be available on loan, having a laptop
as a "grand-prize" for the winning team would be an excellent way to
help them continue their work on your platform.

 We are very much appreciative of all the work you have put into this
platform and would be grateful for any additional assistance you could
provide. I look forward to discussing this with you further. Feel free
to shoot me an email at dhodge at usc.edu or give me a call at  (415)
717-0262.

 We're currently working on our website for this event. If you're
curious about our last event, you can take a look on http://ss12.info
to see what "SS12" was like.

thank you!

- David Hodge

P.S. Also feel free to contact...
David Richardson - President of USC ACM - dlrichar at usc.edu
Cameron Parkins - President of Free Culture USC -  cameronparkins at gmail.com
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-- 
Edward Cherlin
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