[OLPC-SF] Eight years on...

[Sameer Verma]

Greetings,
This list, and this volunteer group has been going on for over eight
years now (First post: Jan 24, 2008.
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sf/2008-January/000000.html).
We have formulated and modified our direction as and when the need
arose. We are still largely a local group, as in a group of people
local to the San Francisco Bay Area, who have projects around the
world. We have stepped up to accommodate, and even facilitate sessions
for non-local needs, such as the OLPC SF Community Summit 2009-2015.

In that spirit, and to ensure that we don't pursue things to simply
maintain tradition, we went through a brief exercise. Here are the
proposed vision and mission statements of OLPC San Francisco, as
worked on by the "core" group. The "core" is the group of people who
meet monthly and help in hosting the summit.

Vision:
A world where children and their communities are empowered through
education and learning.

Misson:
OLPC San Francisco is a community that brings together educators,
technologists, enthusiasts, and volunteers. We share stories, exchange
ideas, solve problems, and foster collaboration around the original
mission of One Laptop per Child to empower communities through
education and learning worldwide.

So, what's new in all this? Not a whole lot. We realize that our group
and people's interests have spilled past the OLPC and Sugar world. We
look at not just children and learning, but their communities as well.
This is evident in our projects that use OLPC XO laptops, but also
other computers. They rely on the OLPC XS School Server, but also on
RACHEL, Pathagar, SolarSPELL, and such. The list goes on.

Most importantly, it's a reaffirmation to us in OLPC-SF and related
projects that we'll be around for a bit longer, and we are not done as
yet!

Onward and upward.

Sameer
-- 
Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Professor, Information Systems
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/