Deployment meetings/20090127
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Summary
About 30 people met for three hours on IRC (and some by phone) to share their knowledge of OLPC deployments in Peru, Oceania, Austria, Birmingham, Boston, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Paraguay, Colombia, and India (first half) and to improve the processes they use for sharing their knowledge (second half).
Please enjoy the edited minutes provided below and please share the relevant sections with your friends, translating as needed.
Finally, please do not hesitate to join us in future meetings if you'd like to contribute to similar discussions.
Introductions
Pre-meeting Warmup
ebtihaj> hello
m_stone> shall we start roll-call in, say, 3 minutes?
cjl> finds seat in back of room.
greebo> hi all
greebo> hooray, meeting #2, we'll start in about 5 mins
m_stone> greebo: do we have anything agenda-like?
greebo> m_stone, we always have the running agenda:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_meetings
m_stone> greebo: maybe you'd like to add that to the /topic then?
greebo> sure
greebo> CanoeBerry, heya, thanks for the email out about this, nice work
:)
cjl> m_stone: So who runs a meeting bot that could be invited?
m_stone> cjl: beats me; as you can see, I prefer hand-edited notes.
marcopg> cjl: dogi runs the olpc-meeting one I think
greebo> m_stone, yeah, I'm with you
cjl> Well, if m_stone is volunteering to take notes, they come out
much better than a bot transcript :-)
IRC Intros
greebo> ok, shall we start with introductions? If everyone could please
put their real name, country they're working on, email addy
(which will be in the notes for people to find you if they are
interested), and a bit about your projects, that'd be a great
start
m_stone> well, as before, I'm Michael Stone. I'm a recovering OLPC
addict... you can still reach me at michael@laptop.org. I'm not
really affiliated with any specific deployments. I just want to
keep pushing this snowball until it keeps rolling on its own.
greebo> I'm Pia Waugh, working on deployments in Australia and Oceania,
pia@olpcfriends.org, and we have a load of small projects
happening in Australia for pilots, as well as about 5000 laptops
being deployed in Oceania which I'm providing some support to,
but which is being run by Ian Thomson from SPC
cjb> Chris Ball, OLPC, cjb at laptop, primarily interested in
improving deployment autonomy.
nubae> dont think Christoph is around... lots of studying... but him and
I were recently at the Austrian deployment.... info@nubae.com
anna_bham> I'm Anna Schoolfield with the Birmingham, AL, deployment. We
have 15K XOs out in the field as of last week. My email address
is aschoolf@gmail.com
isforinsects> I am Seth Woodworth, seth@laptop.org, I am involved in the Boston
(cambridge) pilot school, and work @olpc
mp_colombia> hi all, i'm a volunteer named pilar saenz. mail:
mapisaro@gmail.com. I had work with shakira's pilots in Colombia.
dsd_> i have just started working on the deployment in paraguay.
dsd@laptop
sverma> Sameer Verma from San Francisco State University, San Francisco,
California, USA. Working with two pilots: August Town, Jamaica
and Hyderabad, India Also part of OLPC-SF and OLPC-SF XO Repair
Center. Information Systems Professor by day, and OLPC/XO/Sugar
enthusiast by night :-) sverma@sfsu.edu
cjl> trouble-maker, trouble-shooter, ne'er-do-well, support gang
volunteer
bjordan> hi all, I'm Brian Jordan, brian@laptop.org, have worked / will be
working on the deployment in Rwanda
wadeb|w> hi. I'm Wade Brainerd, activity author and newbie SugarLabs
ActivityTeam coordinator :)
rgs_> Raul from Paraguay (rgs@parguayeduca.org)
unmadindu> hello, this is Sayamindu, who works for OLPC's language support,
and also sometimes does whatever else that is required
(sayamindu@laptop.org)
kevix> I'm a Kevin Mark, a friend of Anna at the Birmingham deployment
marcopg> Marco Pesenti Gritti marco@marcopg.org SugarLabs DevelopmentTeam
coordinator
dirakx> from sugar's deployment team ;) email: dirakx@gmail.com
rita> I'm Rita Freudenberg from Squeakland Foundaiton,
rita@squeakland.org. I'm interested in use of Etoys in
deployments.
dfarning> David Farning dfaring@sugarlabs.org A upstream Sugar Labs Guy. I
want to figure out how to take your feedback and help our team
turn it into an awesome learning platform :)
anil_> latecomer: anil, ahdaswani@yahoo.com, plan to spend some time at
the khairat deployment in india on my visit in march/april. and
nepal, if possible
greebo> awesome, we have some excellent deployments represented already,
and some great projects!
Phone Intros
CanoeBerry__> Hi, starting call now! Hernan will join by phone. From Peru.
Kiko too, leading the community repair ctr in Lima. Caryl on the
phone..
greebo> CanoeBerry, call? I was only going to do this by irc to make it
easier :)
cjb> how is the phone link working? is someone translating into
Spanish for Hernan or something?
CanoeBerry__> SJ will speak in Spanish on the call.
CanoeBerry__> Will call Hernan Pachas in ~2 min, please join 866-213-2185
Access Code: -------- to join to voice part of this call!
greebo> CanoeBerry, do you think the grassroots mailing list would make
the most sense for followup conversations about deployments?
greebo> CanoeBerry, I'd rather have the call be irc based if you don't
mind, makes it easier to include this many people
CanoeBerry__> Hernan asked to be on the phone.
greebo> CanoeBerry, phone calls are great for less people, but we want as
miuch participation as possible
m_stone> greebo: let's chat about phones after today's meeting.
mp_colombia> cjb: i can to translate for hpachas if it's necesary
cjb> I agree with greebo -- we should discourage anyone who can use
IRC from using the phone bridge.
Agenda Warmup
m_stone> so, just in case you didn't see them, we have minutes from our
last meeting:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_meetings/20090120. minutes
from today's meeting will go up at
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_meetings/20090127 once I
write them. so let's get down to business. first, thanks to
everyone who has come today!
greebo> I'm going to suggest we jump into general Q&A, anyone have
specific burning questions about their deployment they need help
with?
dirakx> m_stone: thanks to you and greebo for organizing this. :)
greebo> dirakx, np, it is something I also need as a person doing
deployments :) Hopefully it'll make it easier for all of us :)
nubae> have u guys ever considred using gobby, so that documents can be
shown/worked on?
m_stone> nubae: let's talk about it along with the phone-bridge stuff
afterwards.
CanoeBerry__> Hernan & Kiko have requested to go first. Calling Hernan..
cjb> greebo, CanoeBerry__: so, who's actually running the meeting? :)
greebo> CanoeBerry, are you cool for me to facilitate?
cjb> anna_bham: would you be willing to talk a little about your
deployment later on? I'd be really interested to hear how it's
working out.
anna_bham> cjb, ok, as much as I know so far. I'm kinda insulated from the
day-to-day stuff, but I do have a couple issues I can report on
CanoeBerry__> Hernan's on the phonr with ~8 of us.
m_stone> CanoeBerry__: and there are ~30 people here.
CanoeBerry__> Spanish on the phone...
m_stone> CanoeBerry__: we can talk about how to use the phone for the next
meeting, but we're not going to try it now.
greebo> CanoeBerry, a spanish irc bot may help with this :) but yeah,
later
_bjordan> sj's espanol is unparalleled
m_stone> also, spanish is fine here, I think. (if you haven't learned it
yet, you may as well start now. :)
greebo> m_stone, I speak chinese, but not spanish I'm afraid ;)
greebo> CanoeBerry, so please encourage those who can irc to join irc
(I've got instructions for those who haven't used it before on
the wiki page) and we'll discuss best paths for this after this
meeting
nubae> Yo tambien hablo español perfectamente si alguien necesita
traducciones
CanoeBerry__> aside: Kiko introducing himself and Lima's repair center to
Hernan & all on the phone.
_sj_> yikes; I think we should merge #olpc-groups with this chan.
m_stone> _sj_: bring it up after the meeting, along with the proposed
phone & gobby amendments
_sj_> m_stone, what are gobby amendments?
_sj_> can someone put a gobby link in the topic?
m_stone> _sj_: let's talk after the meeting.
Questions
Using 767?
greebo> is everyone deploying 767 atm? anna_bham> we're on 714 for now.
Using XSen?
dsd_> can i jump in with a question? i'd like to ask which deployments
are using XS?
greebo> dsd_, we're using xs on all our deployments
anna_bham> I have a test XS in one school, but it's used primarily for
internet access
Max School Size?
dsd_> greebo: whats the max school size, approximately?
greebo> dsd_, well, my largest so far is about 300 kids. the bottleneck
isn't the xs, it doesn't really do a lot of work, so it can scale
alright in my experience, the bottleneck it the networking
infrastructure. we have about 10 wireless access points serving
that school
dsd_> greebo: ah.. please elaborate :)
greebo> dsd_, we had lots of wireless access points, but the jabber
service on the xs seems to deal reasonably well. Problem is I
wasn't at that site particularly long so I couldn't follow it up
particularly well. I saw it working only up to about 100.
Apparently more than about that you need multiple XS servers to
deal with the traffic
nubae> greebo: hmmm, it should be able to deal with much more than 100
greebo> nubae, I'm not saying it didn't work with more, I'm saying I only
saw 100 online, but I wasn't there when te rest were deplyed
greebo> we've had no complaints from the deployment, and others were
there for a week following, so I'm pretty confident one server
was hosting at least 200 laptops simultanesouly
nubae> greebo: I'd imagine ram is the main factor there
greebo> nubae, yeah, our server with the 200-300 kids had a gig ram
dsd_> greebo: how well does collaboration work on an XS with hundres of
kids connected?
marcopg> dsd_: would be surprised if it works at all ;)
dsd_> greebo: i cant imagine seeing 200 XOs on a neighborhood view..
can you? or maybe they arent really using collab?
greebo> dsd_, no, we had a lot of laptops in the neighbourhood :)
marcopg> greebo: do you have any idea on how much you are able to scale up
*with* an XS?
greebo> marcopg, there is some documentation on the wiki around that, let
me find the link, it was helpful to me
greebo> marcopg, I haven't tried multiple xs's, but that is recommended
for large numbers
Virtualized XSen?
nubae> has anyone here tried using a virtualised XS server... ie virtual
image?
anna_bham> nubae, networking can a PITA on the XS to begin with without
doing it in a virtual environment. I wouldn't want to even mess
with that.
greebo> nubae, hmm, virtualising xs, haven't tried that, but that is a
great idea
nubae> in the west, the option is of course interesting so that it can
stay on all the time
greebo> we are using typical hardware in some places, and are trialling a
new hardware platform for remote/hot/dustry locations -
http://pipka.org/blog/2008/12/11/evaluating-an-ebox-4863-for-olpc-xs-server/
Activation?
mp_colombia> some one is using xs for xo activation?
greebo> none of our laptops are activated to start, mp_colombia can you
talk more about activation, and how you are working with it?
mp_colombia> we need to know about others experiences. we have some problems
with activations.
mp_colombia> greebo: some xo lost their manufacturation tag and we can't
update those without a developer key
greebo> mp_colombia, eww, why don't you get the developer keys then?
mp_colombia> greebo: we get the UUID and ask for the developed key
cjb> greebo: did you want them to arrive unactivated, or is that an
annoyance?
anna_bham> All our XOs came preactivated. I don't recall that we were given
an alternative.
greebo> cjb, I didn't know anything about activation and retrospectively
am glad mine weren't activated as it would have been an extra
hassle. Having said that we'll need that feature for some future
deployments
cjb> greebo: ah, terminology confusion
dsd_> greebo: you mean yours WERE activated :) and did not need
activation
cjb> "not activated" == "will refuse to turn on"
cjb> "activated" == "don't need special magic done to them before they
will turn on"
Peru repair centers
_sj_> kiko is talking on the phone about contributing to the project
_sj_> and what his lab is doing
_sj_> hernan is talking about pedagogical work in peru and deployment
_sj_> kiko: wants to get out broken laptops to work on a repair center
CanoeBerry__> Kiko's been unable to join irc -- he's (on phone) describing his
repair center project.
_sj_> have engineers and 2-3 developers. want to know what to expect
for repair in peru
CanoeBerry__> Very active Lima community space, meeting in person tomorrow
evening..
CanoeBerry__> Lima space rented out for 3 yrs, being renovated, for electronics
jamming etc, incl developing/testing XO's & hosting interested
ppl around Lima. Exciting!
_sj_> asking hernan if community repair centers could be useful
_sj_> hpachas : I think perhaps yes. it would help us to have local
ways to deal with this. perhaps one person who is fairly far
from cities
_sj_> to work with cities? a peruvian group. so yes, it would be
useful for repair. but there are also issues regarding going
into the field and finding out why things break, &c
_sj_> kiko: leaving the question of this aera, I'm aftually more
interested in areas of learning... working with children as
investigators
_sj_> kiko: conversations about repair are part of discussing what is
necessary to contribute
_sj_> say with working on systems...
_sj_> (getting people in local regions to help out)
_sj_> we are motivated to do this professionally, and perhaps find ways
to collaborate;
_sj_> hernan :the qustion is economic... we really do wan tto support
this kind of engagement
_sj_> but haqving people work with a familiar face... it's a matter of
communication
_sj_> motivating people... there are lots of people who would like to
do this or get a small job doing this
CanoeBerry__> hpachas topic: "how to pull off a successful community center" w/
assoc economic & communications problems among ppl already part
of the community
CanoeBerry__> Kiko summarizing hpachas's thoughts, re: hpachas's concerns on
sustainability of voluteers.
_sj_> kiko : notes he is worried about how contsant volunteers can
be... this can be confusing and difficult
_sj_> for the local gropus. kiko agrees. but thinks there are still
many people interested in longer term work. so, try to make use
of this interest.
_sj_> [both]: it would be nice to arrange a network of volunteers who
can travel around, helping repair machings
dirakx> CanoeBerry__: tell hpachas that the official government
deployment can help and take advantage of the community
reparation centers..
_sj_> a call for volunteers for repair could be a good start. economic
concerns -- it's also something to disuss
_sj_> but if its volunteering, covering costs will be less than paying
professionals
_sj_> kiko: if they are motivated, results may be better. but we have
to be sure not to confuse things more.
greebo> CanoeBerry__, volunteers is definitely another discussion we need
to have, how many people are dealing with volunteers?
cjb> CanoeBerry__: I guess it seems like it would be nice for this to
end up written down, since it isn't being heard by most people
here.
greebo> cjb, heh
_sj_> adam : some stats on repair centers worldwide
_sj_> 6 have been successful. so there's a possibility for a local
community model.
_sj_> keep in touch with those 6
_sj_> luke, ian, french and dutch repair centers...
_sj_> use this in peru or othe3r places and it will be great
greebo> we are looking at starting up an oceania repair centre
Phones?
m_stone> _sj_: could the people on the phone agree to prepare an addendum
to the minutes that I can include?
m_stone> _sj_: I'd like their voices to be represented, but they /have/ to
be represented in writing, for today.
_sj_> m_stone, for people primarily on the call, your voices /have/ to
be transferred via voice, for now
Etoys in Peru?
rita> _sj_: do they use etoys in peru?
_sj_> rita: I'm asking hernan
_sj_> you might talk to someone in charge of pedagogy... hpachas can
point you in the right direction.
greebo> _sj_, I think you are hitting an interesting point. I think
pedagogical discussions should potentially happen with educators,
and maybe maybe in the Sugar Labs arena. I think deployment
meetups should potentiall be the people on the ground putting the
tech in place to provide peer support and to help encourage and
develop best practices for deployments. What do others think?
marcopg> greebo: make sense to me
dirakx> greebo: +1
Mesh collab?
nubae> greebo: how was u're experience with mesh collab?
nubae> fo us it breaks down after just 10 laptops
nubae> we have to use ejabberd to make it work properly
cjb> nubae: that sounds correct
greebo> nubae, yeah, I found collaboration breaks down at about 15 or 20,
and we needed an xs for anymore than that
Rwanda
_sj_> on call : bjordan is leaving for rwanda in the next few weeks,
for 2-3 months
cjb> bjordan: cool!
SG + Textbooks
_sj_> sj : working on getting teachers and classes involved in textbook
reuse and reading-list creation w/the internet archive over the
next month
_sj_> danbennett: heading to Nigeria over the spring to work with a
school
_sj_> adam: working with the 100+ people on the support gang, for olpc
support
_sj_> and on a restructured contributors program to better represent
different countries, get people moving faster o nsmall projects
around the world
_sj_> (with ed & sj)
Management tools + PM
nubae> here in Austria, we had a 6 hour sessions with educators asking
us for some essential things that might be for the UI itself...
namely a administration or monitoring option for the activties
like a teachers view something like what gcompris has although it
doesnt exist in the XO version of course
wadeb|w> nubae: are the requests written somewhere? they should be sent to
sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
anna_bham> nubae, the closest thing I've come to an "administrator's view"
is joining sugar chat with pidgin as the admin user
nubae> wadeb|w: Î've just finished writing up a report on it all, and
Ill post it to iaep
nubae> but just the monitoring thing seems to be all encompassing so
thoought Id mention it
wadeb|w> nubae: great, the dev community needs to hear that
wadeb|w> nubae: apple's school deployments have a feature where the
teacher can simultaneously watch all screens in the class. there
is a linux program that does similarly but unknown if it works on
xo
greebo> nubae, yeah, we've been thinking about this too, I think that
should be on the server (the moniroting solution)
greebo> nubae, because the server has all the journals backed up on it
daily, so it could be the browse, search and moniroting interface
to what all the kids are doing
nubae> well, we have something called Italc in ltsp but there is no
reason it cannot be used for xos too
nubae> http://italc.sourceforge.net/
greebo> wadeb|w, we'll be collating feature requests from the deployment
meetings on our wishlist and then sending to the SL and OLPC
developer community lists
nubae> yeah they need to work at their own pace was one of the main
issues the teachers said, and then of course keep track of their
progress
nubae> but I'll talk about the rest via the iaep post
greebo> wadeb|w, there is a vnc viewer for the xo now, so you could
easily join a childs screen
wadeb|w> greebo: agreed, might be possible to wrap it in an Classroom
activity as well (Ok class, eveyone join the Mrs B's Math Class
activity)
nubae> yeah italc needs to go on a server area.... and the vnc
connection works in the clients, but the main thing is, there
needs to be a teachers view
m_stone> greebo: well, either way, it seems clear that monitoring is a
heretofor undiscussed need in several deployments.
m_stone> greebo: so we could do everyone a favor by, e.g., getting a nice
requirements doc written up.
Skolelinux
kevix> with mention of monitoring students and italc, I always wondered
why OLPC never got skoelinux/debian-edu/edubuntu involved
greebo> kevix, yeah, totally
_sj_> kevix; it wasn't for lack of trying... maybe we didn't do it in
the right way?
_sj_> we had 10+ skolelinux folks working with A-test boards or B1s
early on
greebo> kevix, I'd love to take the olpc specific bits of xs and
integrate into a skoleserver, for those who haven't seen the
skoleserver project, they have an awesome foss based school
system
greebo> http://www.skolelinux.org/
greebo> m_stone, yes :)
nubae> we also have edubuntu.org ;-)
greebo> nubae, yes :)
kevix> greebo: I was also interested in their work with
schools/teacher/administrtor like with OLPC is doing
No XSen?
m_stone> dsd_: is your question about "who uses XSen, how many, w/ how
many laptops" satisfactorily answered?
m_stone> or is more data needed?
dsd_> m_stone: i guess.. i think the answer is that not many places
actually use XS.. and the XO can somehow cope with hundreds of
neighbors on the server
dsd_> i'm not clear on the details, but i don't think anyone here is
greebo> dsd_, how are they doing it without an xs? who here is doing
this?
nubae> all one needs is an ejabberd server
nubae> XS is not always necessary
greebo> nubae, true, but the additional features are _really_ important
marcopg> nubae: backups are important for example
dirakx> nubae: but what about security and activation issues ?
nubae> I guess I'm comparing western setups, where we already have
filters, proxies, and firewalls
dsd_> greebo: XS is optional. you can provide internet to XOs with any
standard network.
Backup
greebo> the backup feature on the xs (all clients backup their datastore
daily) is important both for backup, and because teachers can
browse the childresn journals for safety and oversight reasons
marcopg> greebo: are teacher actually using that feature? nice to know!
greebo> marcopg, yeah, it was a really important bit actually, teachers
are concerned about cyberbullying and inappropriate use of the
laptops, so that transparency is vital
greebo> and children know that there is transparency into what they do
which encourages more responsible use of the laptops
greebo> also, the idmgr has been really useful, I register all known
laptops when I deploy, then turn off the idmgr service, this
means while at school all the kids are talking through the
server, but if $badperson parks outside the school with an xo
they can't commnuicate with the kids
dsd_> greebo: its a nice feature, but you can imagine how deployments
can exist without it..
greebo> dsd_, yeah, but I wouldn't do a rollout without an xs, the
features it provides are really important in all the rollouts
I've done
cjb> Uruguay isn't using backups at the moment
cjb> they actually don't want to because they think it would increase
their support costs
cjb> if I understood them correctly
m_stone> cjb: that was my understanding as well.
greebo> cjb, really?
m_stone> greebo: yes, there are two difficulties:
cjb> greebo: in short, at the moment their support center gets no
phone calls saying "hey, help me restore my files", because
everyone knows this is not possible
UY Hardware
m_stone> greebo: also, their hardware is underpowered for the job. they
don't have enough disk space for all of the laptops they'd have
to support.
greebo> cjb, understand, backups means xs and means more hdd capacity
required
greebo> m_stone, how is their hardware underpowered?
m_stone> greebo: they don't have enough disk space for a full backup from
each laptop.
greebo> m_stone, right
m_stone> (in many other ways, their hardware is excellent though)
Backup Hacks
greebo> m_stone, they could simply change the backup scripts to only
backup weekly, and to overwrite backups monthly or something,
there are ways to get around the hardware limitations. HDD's are
cheap
cjb> greebo: they don't have enough disk space for *one* copy of each
laptop.
cjb> so it wouldn't matter what the cycle time was. but
interestingly, the support cost thing also seemed to be a big
deal for them.
greebo> cjb, I totally understand the support overhead, but it is only
the datastore of each laptop, so 100 laptops would likely only be
~50GB, that is a small hd
cjb> greebo: they have small hds and large schools :) I think they're
more worried about the support overhead than the technical stuff,
though, which surprised me.
More data!
dsd_> greebo: i'm with you.. but it really seems like there are not
many users
dsd_> i posted to the server-devel list asking for user stories
dsd_> got no response
dsd_> nothing...
m_stone> dsd_: maybe the people who use xs-en don't read server-devel?
dsd_> m_stone: maybe.. any suggestions where i should write instead?
m_stone> dsd_: evidently, here. :)
dsd_> m_stone: well i asked here and hear that it is used in AU + area,
and 1 school in bham
anna_bham> I'd like to see an XS in all the schools, but there was so much
political pressure to get the XOs out to the kids NOW that we
didn't have time for the wireless infrastructure
dsd_> however nobody has solid details
m_stone> dsd_: sure, but it's better than what you had before. we'll keep
poking at it and eventually, we'll find more solid info.
dsd_> m_stone: ok, great
dsd_> m_stone: we are planning to deploy XS here, so maybe we will
become providers of that too ;)
m_stone> dsd_: exactly. :)
dsd_> m_stone: i dont think anyone here knows.. at least nobody has
answered :)
Orthogonal services
nubae> u can replicate most of the XS features on a regular server, be
it Fedora, Ubuntu, or Debian
nubae> but yes the XS is a nice out of the box solution
greebo> nubae, yeah, I want to build an ubuntu xs, but have stuck with
the normal one to date.
marcopg> nubae: I totally agree that it should be possible to install
these services on other distros/setups
nubae> greebo: then we should talk, as I'd love to do the same, and we
are working on the edubuntu server side
nubae> I'm working on main inclusion report for ejabberd so it gets
carried in main
greebo> nubae, awesome! will chat to you about edubuntu foo later then
greebo> nubae, perhaps a subproject for the deployer sig? :)
nubae> greebo: yup, nice
marcopg> nubae: but it's also nice to have the out-of-the-box solution, I
guess
nubae> marcopg: yes
nubae> edubuntu of course also wants sugar on its CD as soon as
possible, but its far from working
UY Security
dsd_> anyone from UY here? or anyone knowledgable about how they
implement their lease security?
dsd_> m_stone: for the minutes, perhaps: i would like to find out more
about uruguay's security implementation.. i hear that they
wirlessly provide leases over an AP? how? XO does not support
that, do they modify the initramfs or something
cjb> dsd_: they have their own security system
cjb> dsd_: it's based on their own upgrade system, which involves
sending shell scripts to be run to the XOs
dsd_> cjb: so they dont even use the same lease system?
m_stone> dsd_: there are two bits to it.
m_stone> dsd_: they use two lease systems in parallel.
m_stone> dsd_: they assume that the XS is located at the default route and
poll it for gpg-signed messages once a day or so.
m_stone> dsd_: essentially via a cron-job.
dsd_> alright..
dsd_> and if no XS is there, in what ways does it cripple the system?
m_stone> dsd_: when they want to disable a laptop, they remove _our_
activation lease.
dsd_> m_stone: and how does that lease get put back?
dsd_> assuming it was removed in error.. i.e. kid was ill for a week?
m_stone> dsd_: /if I recall correctly/, by shipping the locked machine
back to a repair facility.
dsd_> ah, wow
cjb> m_stone: I think their lease time is quite high, though
dsd_> so if a kid is ill for a week, laptop isnt dead
m_stone> sure. if it has the /security/lease.sig lease, then they may just
refuse to boot until it finds their XS.
dsd_> (i'm asking this from the perspective of possibly implementing
something equivalent in PY)
m_stone> dsd_: if you want to implement some of this stuff or PY, we
should talk more afterward.
m_stone> dsd_: the irfs is pretty much all ready to go for this. I'll show
you where.
m_stone> dsd_: you can find the code....
m_stone> http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=projects/ceibal-scripts;a=tree
m_stone> that's the basic idea.
m_stone> dsd_: poke emiliano for a link to newer stuff.
m_stone> (and come back if you have trouble)
dsd_> m_stone: lets talk more about this (perhaps with cjb too) another
time
dsd_> thanks for the info, that answers a lot of questions
PE Contact info
rita> _sj_: can you get the email address from hpachas for me?
hpachas> rita, hernan . pachas at gmail . com
Puppet!
greebo> hey all, I have an idea which would help heaps with both security
management, and with configuration management. Puppet! We could
put a Puppet client on the XO, and then when rolled out the local
XS would push out the config changes automatically, as well as
any security information automatically
greebo> it saves us all trying to write hundreds of scripts, as I'm sure
we've all been doing :)
nubae> yah puppet is cool, but not easy to setup
nubae> takes serious time
greebo> nubae, if we can get a good base setup configuration and publish
it, and bundle it, life gets simple
nubae> greebo: yeah, true, its a one time job and then distribute
Nigeria
CanoeBerry__> phone excerpt: dbennett summarizing Nigeria's project being
attacked from all angles, community/infrastructure/building-
security progression since last week...
CanoeBerry__> dbennett summarizing Muslim countries being more secure
(generally no theft) but this doesn't apply in Nigeria :|
CanoeBerry__> dbennett struggling with email/phone communications to Nigeria,
email being too fragile for building relationships
CanoeBerry__> dbennett will revert to phone to nurture Nigerian relationships.
CanoeBerry__> anticipating early/mid-April trip to Nigeria
CanoeBerry__> greebo: dbennett has been twice, but the culture is not built
around email etc. So he's working the phones.
greebo> CanoeBerry__, I think there are many countries which you just
have to just get there to start. Oceania is similar, many islands
you get 0 communications until you get there, so you have to be
prepared for the worst case deployment scenario (and take all
your own gear) just in case :)
CanoeBerry__> dbennett hoping to post some of his Nigerian deployment photos on
his blog.
CanoeBerry__> FYI: for funding, dbennett working with 2 different Danish
Missionary groups (1 Lutheran, the other an NGO)
Status Updates
greebo> ok, next on the agenda, (although I'm sure we could chat like
this for hours!), we want to briefly look at ideas to help better
support deployments, how we might better support each other
greebo> my main ideas are - deployment meetups (like this), constant
updating of the dpeloyment guide
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_Guide), discussions on the
grassroots mailing list, the wishlist for technical features we
need
greebo> what else would be useful?
cjb> a few minutes from each deployer would be great, IMO, about how
they're doing and what's been hardest and what they most need
help with
cjb> I wonder if we might also build a list of people willing to
travel to deployments to problem-solve, either for-pay or for-
room-and-board and a list of deployments seeking such help?
Paraguay
dsd_> i volunteer to talk for 2 mins about paraguay?
dsd_> we are working in 10 schools in 1 city
dsd_> ~3500 kids
dsd_> power is good (being installed by govt)
dsd_> internet too
dsd_> we expet to hand out laptops in about 1 months time
dsd_> we are 50% through a 4 week teacher training program (150
teachers)
8.2.1
dsd_> biggest problems so far have been with niggly problems like
touchpad recalibration failures
greebo> dsd_, yeah
nubae> heh, seems a common issue
cjb> dsd_: still broken in 8.2.1? :/
dsd_> cjb: no, but 8.2.1 does not exist
dsd_> ;)
m_stone> hah.
greebo> I'm testing 8.2.1 at the moment (although I need it signed to put
it in place, which is actually quite urgent now)
cjb> (A small number of words on that: OLPC is releasing 8.2.1 within
a few weeks.)
cjb> greebo: signing tonight
greebo> cjb, awesome! so I'll have a signed test candidate within a day?
I'll test more and rollout for wider testing next week
cjb> welcome. dsd_'s been doing a lot of work on 8.2.1 too, is very
helpful.
m_stone> (a second small word -- I'm scheduling some testing for this
thursday @ 1cc to do some of the necessary wifi testing)
m_stone> (so email me if you want to join in)
Reflashing is hard
dsd_> and planning for the flashing of 3500 laptops is a big deal.. so
we need careful planning, nandblaster will really help,m etc
greebo> dsd_, I think that is where puppet will help you a lot. If you
install puppet on the xs, and puppet clients on the xos, then you
can put the configuration and apps you want on the xs and it'll
be pushed out to the clients
greebo> much quicker than running scripts on each xo at install
nubae> u can also use clonezilla if u want something more generic
nubae> but puppet is much more customisable
Oceania
nubae> greebo: so I read there are deployments on the oceanian
islands... which ones are they and how many units more or less?
greebo> nubae, all the details are here
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Oceania
greebo> about 5 countries have deployments, with about 1400 laptops in
place
Deployment Guide
marcopg> do we have a page in the wiki (or something similar) which links
to the available deployment resources?
greebo> marcopg, not yet, please create one and link from the deployment
meetings page, and from the deployment guide
marcopg> ok :)
greebo> marcopg, actually, do you mind if I quickly do this? I'll link it
to the deployment guide
marcopg> from a developer point of view I'd be particularly interested to
read about their experience with the software etc
marcopg> blog aggregration might help there too
Austria
Organizing Activities
nubae> one serious complaint by the teachers here was the activities
page on the wiki
marcopg> nubae: oh, what about them?
nubae> well for one, many dont even exist... abcflower for example
nubae> there's a nice little paragraph about it, but no where to be
found...
nubae> then a good 40% dont have lesson plans, so the teachers dont know
what they are about
nubae> or how to deploy them with the kids
nubae> the exception are the mamamedia apps, which were very well
received
marcopg> nubae: mmm that's interesting. We are planning to use something
like addons.mozilla.org for activity user pages
greebo> nubae, ok, so one thing we need is for testing groups to be
actually updating the activities page when they frind stuff that
doesn't work, or perhaps just a way to easily flag activities as
working or not :)
nubae> we need a DB. a wiki doesnt work for this....
marcopg> nubae: but that doesn't really cover stuff like lesson plans
marcopg> nubae: I would make sure wadeb|w knows about this :)
marcopg> (not sure if he is following here right now)
nubae> well, its all in my report about the Graz deployment, which u
guys should get to the list tomorow
wadeb|w> nubae: looking forward to it
greebo> nubae, awesome
wadeb|w> nubae: yeah, we are working hard on getting an activity DB set up
with reviews, tags, download links. it's based on the firefox
extension website addons.mozilla.org but customized for sugar
wadeb|w> nubae: we also appreciate help testing, we are trying to sift
through the 100s of activities that have been started / written
nubae> wadeb|w: ah great, that sounds perfect
wadeb|w> nubae: we can use help btw categorizing and tracking down
activities that exist.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/ActivityTeam/ActivityStatus contains
what we know so far.
nubae> wadeb|w: yeah I've been spending time installing them all to see
if they run on ubuntu. the conclusion was, and this was LTSP and
SoaS, that only 50% of apps, or even less run on Ubuntu
wadeb|w> not surprising; most activity authors have only ever worked on XO
Software
wadeb|w> nubae: awesome, if you don't mind please post that info to the
wiki page I linked, it would be great to know what works already
and what doesn't
m_stone> wadeb|w: I hope you can find some way to slip localized lesson
plans into that. :)
marcopg> wadeb|w: I wonder about stuff like documentation and lesson plans
marcopg> wadeb|w: I guess we could always link out from a.m.o to the wiki
wadeb|w> marcopg: yeah, personally I think lesson plans should be part of
the .xo bundle and sugar should provide a ui to access them
wadeb|w> marcopg: could be as simple as a toolbar button which launches
browse on a static HTML file from the .xo
marcopg> wadeb|w: yeah like the idea of having them in the .xo
dsd_> wadeb|w: have you looked at xol bundles?
dsd_> you seem to have just described them :)
wadeb|w> dsd_: yes, but the sugar support for them is pretty weak right
now.. seems like the general consensus is to fold .xol back ->
.xo
dsd_> wadeb|w: in what ways is it weak?
wadeb|w> dsd_: mostly the library page in Browse. the ideal would be for
content bundles to be first class entities in the home view,
right next to activities
dsd_> ok
Translating Activities
nubae> ah... another thing that came up... is translation
m_stone> nubae: what about it?
nubae> is there an easy way for educators to do this
Java
nubae> oh, and yet another question, now that I remember... they have
coders they want to employ to help with the activities, but they
are java people... I suggested jython, what do u think?
m_stone> nubae: I think we should talk more seriously about shipping java,
actually. at least finding out how big it is, for example.
greebo> who else here would like java? we need it too...
m_stone> greebo: it's certainly easy enough for us, e.g. to take 767 and
rebuild it with java installed. dunno how big it will be, but it
should be fairly easy to find out.
nubae> so java wise... what would be the current recommendation if
someone is going to start coding activities?
m_stone> nubae: the current recommendation is that it's a bad idea since
there are no deployments that ship java. (unless you can make gcj
work?)
nubae> ok, so using an intrepreter then, like pyjamas or jython?
m_stone> nubae: no, the point is that nobody ships even a JVM, so jython
isn't going to help you.
nubae> oh
SoaS
nubae> yeah unfortunately, it stopped us being able to deploy SoaS at
the schools here
m_stone> nubae: mmm?
marcopg> nubae: the reason several activities doesn't work are the xo
distro specific hacks we did
marcopg> nubae: will take time to work all of them out...
m_stone> marcopg: citation?
nubae> ok
marcopg> m_stone: patches to xulrunner and evince, for example
marcopg> m_stone: and to csound
m_stone> marcopg: I totally disagree with you on this. and I don't think
we're going to be able to work it out. :)
marcopg> m_stone: not sure to understand what you disagree about, but not
relevant to this meeting I guess
wadeb|w> m_stone: do you have an alternate theory about why activities
don't work? or were you disagreeing able something else?
m_stone> wadeb|w: let's talk about in #sugar in a few minutes
wadeb|w> k
Paraguay
Teacher Training
rita> dsd_: what are you doing in your teacher training? learning how
to generally use the laptops or special activities?
dsd_> rita: maybe rgs_ can answer.. i am new here and have not (yet)
been in teacher training
dsd_> rita: he is busy. perhaps we can talk about teacher training next
week
rita> dsd_: ah, thanks, can you give me his mail address?
m_stone> rita: it's in the minutes.
m_stone> Raul from Paraguay (rgs@parguayeduca.org)
greebo> dsd_, rita nubae please feel free to add teacher training to the
running agenda on the deployment meeting page for next week,
under "running agenda"
rgs_> rita: we have lots of information in our Wiki,
http://wiki.paraguayeduca.org ... I am trying to find the exact
section on teacher training
rita> rgs_: thank you!
rita> rgs_: is this spanish or portuguese?
dsd_> rita: spanish
rita> rgs_: ok, i will find someone for translation
General
greebo> (same for everyone, please add stuff to the agenda to chat about)
greebo> these early meetings will be a little bit more random while we
find how we all want to use this forum for discussion
Contact info?
greebo> I'd like to create a page with contact details of people doing
deployments and where
greebo> would everyone here be happy for me to add their details publicly
like this? just to make it easier for people to find us :)
m_stone> greebo: I have some thoughts on that as well; may be able to help
you with it.
greebo> m_stone, cool, shall we chat after the meeting?
m_stone> greebo: yes.
Translation bot?
greebo> _sj_, could you ask the phone meeting whether a translation bot
in irc would be ok for them to participate in irc meetings?
_sj_> greebo, I will
_sj_> they are all on irc now. hpachas, kiko : would a translation bot
be handy?
greebo> _sj_, thanks! we would also love you to be able to participate
rather than the amazing translations you are having to fire back
and forth atm
Wiki + mailing lists
greebo> could everyone please ensure they try to send updates both to
grassroots, but also link stuff like this on the resorces page
linked from deployment meetings which marcopg is going to set up
:)
greebo> the more good resources we can pull together, the better!
greebo> also, documentation...
greebo> I put up all the tech documentation, lesson plans and video
interviews with teachers online here
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Australia's_first_deployment
greebo> hey all, I've created a resources page, please add your links to
documentation, reports, etc there.
nubae> oh, one place for putting up ideas is on brainstorm... but maybe
thats too ubuntu specific: brainstorm.ubuntu.com/
Gnash
greebo> also, great (and last) news for everyone. There is a gnash
package coming out in feb by Rob Sayove (a living legend) which
support all things flash, and is much better and faster than
adobe flash. (I know some rollouts have had to deploy adobe
flash.)
dsd_> greebo: as in, a more functional version of gnash? we already
have gnash on XOs
m_stone> greebo: ooh, cool!
cjb> greebo: that seems unlikely to me
greebo> cjb, I spoke to rob at linux.conf.au, it's happening :)
greebo> dsd_, the current gnash shipped on xos is old, and doesn't work
correctly in many ways. It doesn't support swf files (more
important than you'd think) or flash v9.
greebo> current stable version unshipped with xos is better, but the feb
release will be seriously faster than adobe, and support v9
dsd_> greebo: 8.2.0 ships the one-before-latest release. the latest
doesnt have mujch relevance, as far as i can see but the rest of
what you said sounds excellent. thanks for the update
m_stone> so noted that getting something with a new gnash is really
interesting to people.
greebo> dsd_, a big one is the swf file support (aka the ability to play
http://website.org/blah.swf), and the xo shipped version doesn't,
but there are other issues too :)
cjb> is this new gnash release available now?
cjb> or coming later?
m_stone> cjb: we could probably assist with testing betas as it comes out,
even if it isn't ready now.
greebo> cjb, yes, I'd suggest you email rob savoye directly, he's very
responsive, and totally passionate about gnash and xo
cjb> m_stone: I was actually asking for the purpose of release
planning
m_stone> cjb: I figured; I'm suggesting that our release planning would be
better if we planned to help test things we care about.
wadeb|w> regarding gnash, I hope that a future sugar release will also
contain a gnash-based direct launcher for SWF files
Meeting Close
greebo> I think we should probably close the meeting, sticking to 1 hour
will ensure we all don't be late for other stuff :) so, see you
all next week!
greebo> I think the channel should totally be a regular place for all of
us to hang out, but meetings we'll keep to an hour :)
m_stone> okay. anyone have any last words?
m_stone> (remember, we still have a couple of proposed meeting amendmends
coming up)
m_stone> okay. thanks everyone for coming!
m_stone> if you feel like staying up, we'll have another meeting in about
8hrs and then again next week!
greebo> m_stone, yes :)
greebo> thanks everyone! awesome meeting
dsd_> thanks
nubae> indeed :-)
Meeting Structure I
m_stone> now, I think that a couple of us are going to stick around to
discuss the proposed meeting amendments which were...
greebo> m_stone and I will notate stuff over the next day, so keep an eye
on the deployment meeting page for meeting notes
m_stone> a) gobby back-channel
m_stone> b) phone channels
m_stone> c) collecting blog urls
m_stone> d) more generally, how to publish people's contact info
m_stone> did I miss any proposed amendments?
greebo> e) "scope": what should these meetings cover?
Next Meeting
kevix> hopefully everone in irc will come back
greebo> kevix, here's hoping :)
marcopg> another meeting?
greebo> marcopg, these meetings are weekly, started only last week :)
marcopg> greebo: yeah was wondering about the other meeting in 8 hours
m_stone mentioned ;)
m_stone> marcopg: the meetings are also bimodal.
greebo> marcopg, yeah, I'll still be at that one too, the idea of that
one is to capture people who can't make this timezone, if it
turns out to be unnecessary, I'll drop it
marcopg> greebo: ah cool
_sj_> greebo, you said it, this will be a bit more chaotic than future
events!
greebo> _sj_, heh :)
Phone vs IRC
_sj_> I don't recommend phone channels as a primary source of
discussion. more of a back channel
_sj_> in contrast with s-g meetings where they are primary
_sj_> but I have a personal bias for written text
_sj_> please include more info in the irc chan
_sj_> if this is the main discussion area
_sj_> a chanbot can collect all url's mentioned
cjb> _sj_: yet we were inserting the phone channel on top of the
discussion in here, which makes it act as primary (and disrupt
whatever else is being said). I guess I didn't like the phone
idea much at all. and I think I have absolutely no written
visibility into what happened in the phone one. if someone wants
a personal transcription from IRC over phone, that's fine -- but
what we ended up with was two separate meetings.
_sj_> this is #olpc-deployments, not #olpc-meeting where there is
intended to be a single meeting at one time and a reservable
'space' in some sense, at least afaiu
cjb> _sj_: I think it's clear that what we just had was a "meeting"
and not random chatter, though
_sj_> cjb: interrupting one conversaion with another is natural in irc
channels
dsd_> yeah the phone thing didnt work
greebo> _sj_, yeah, if we can move the back channel to the same channel,
that would be awesome :) streamlines the conversation so people
and data can be accessible to all
_sj_> it was natural when OLPC chans were busier as well
_sj_> that happens a lot in irc too...
_sj_> just saying.
cjb> Anyway. I don't want to assert control over the meeting format,
just letting people know that I think the phone bridge wasn't a
good experience.
_sj_> sure thing
_sj_> I don't mind sticking to irc. I think everyone can access it at
the moment
_sj_> if there comes a need to ad people woh can't use irc for some
reason we can start a phone chan or revisit the matter
_sj_> adam has the most luck with pone confs though so he may feel
quite differently
m_stone> CanoeBerry__: ^^
m_stone> _sj_: so would you feel comfortable with me reporting that we
/don't/ have structured phone back channels in future meetings
(unless amended at a later date)?
_sj_> CanoeBerry__, what do you think?
_sj_> adam says he would not consider not having phone meetings in
parallel
_sj_> the question is how to make it less disruptive
_sj_> including asking people if they choose to join a phone dics. to
also be on irc
greebo> _sj_, how do you avoid the back channel. back channels are bad as
you end up with communication loss. Can you ask CanoeBerry__ why
he feels the phone back channel is vital?
dfarning> greebo, might want to consider holding separate phone and irc
meetings. The more the merrier!
greebo> dfarning, yeah, but the problem isn't "more", it is how
distributed everyone is. I'd prefer to not end up with half a
dozen deployer meetups because then we end up back where we were,
with noone finding anyone else
greebo> dfarning, I think making one meeting phone, and one irc might
work, but no one has brought up the benefit of phone for this
kind of meeting :) In my experience once you get more than say 7
people, a phone meeting excludes people
greebo> fine for accessibility, but as a default...
_sj_> m_stone, phones have their use.
marcopg> unless there are strong reasons to do phone, I think we should
stick to irc
greebo> marcopg, +1 and I think a few others agree
marcopg> so we can do irc for now and reevaluate if someone comes up with
strong reasons ;)
m_stone> greebo: CanoeBerry__ seems to disagree strongly.
m_stone> (I obviously prefer irc.)
Translation bot?
greebo> cjb, thanks for the feedback, the main question I think there is
how we incorporate different languages. I think if people started
multilanguages in the same channel, it'd be very hard to
particpate, but a sister channel with a translation bot for each
language would be awesome if feasible
greebo> ok, what do people think about the translation bot idea?
m_stone> greebo: I consider it orthogonal to phones.
Meetbot?
nubae> isnt there a meeting bot? with someone sitting as chair?
marcopg> nubae: nope
m_stone> nubae: intentionally, no.
nubae> its nice to go through a set of topics... and then have the bot
conclude an action
Agenda-setting
greebo> also, everyone, please feel free to update the running agenda, to
add stuff to the wishlist, to the resources page, and generally
to our deployment sig :)(
nubae> gobby is good for that; u have a nice outline that people can
edit.
anna_bham> so what's the mechanism for suggesting topics? I'd like to hear
about how others have dealt with administrators and school
cultures and if y'all have experienced things moving at the speed
of molasses
m_stone> anna_bham: I'd love to talk about it after I get answers on the
first five things.
_bjordan> anna_bham: I think we add topics to
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_meetings#Running_agenda
anna_bham> _bjordan, thanks, I'll suggest that topic for a future meeting,
if no one minds
greebo> anna_bham, definitely!
_bjordan> anna_bham: that'd be great, I'm sure people have a lot of
experience with that sort of thing
m_stone> anna_bham: writing things on the deployment-meetings wiki page is
a good way for now.
greebo> anna_bham, feel free to add to the page (or the grassroots
mailing list) a starting point for the discussion. It might even
be good to capture the experience in the deployment guide to help
others deal with it.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_Guide/Deployment_Resources
added. please add your resources.
_bjordan> anna_bham: Bryan's "OLPC Startup" talk from XOcamp might be of
interest to you: http://www.justin.tv/clip/004e4d553022eb90
anna_bham> Dealing with the complete lack of sense of urgency has been very
frustrating and I'm looking forward to hearing how others handle
it
cjb> anna_bham: hm, urgency for what?
anna_bham> cjb, communication, giving me requirements, getting a test XS out
in the field, setting up wireless - pretty much anything vaguely
technical
Scope
Pedagogy?
_sj_> greebo: to your point about pedagogical discussions -- I find it
slightly harmful to separate them from deployment discussions.
_sj_> every actual deployment I know of has tight integration between
their classroom needs and their tech and on the ground and peer
support needs
_sj_> when they think of it that way
_sj_> and when they don't, it is a sign that the educational needs are
not being adequately met
_sj_> not always, but a general sign...
_sj_> "best practices for delpoyment" of a learning project hopefully
can include projects that HAVE NO TECHNOLOGY.
_sj_> if that is not the case, I probably don't need to be involved at
all :-)
greebo> _sj_, I think that there are people in deployments who know tech
(like me) who know nothing about pedagogy and so can't
participate in the discussions so we'd have a split focus. I
totally agree we should have meetings between different elements
such as pedagogy and deployment, but this forum in my mind was to
support the peple on the ground doing the tech,
_sj_> the conclusion was to have a written discussion about what would
make for a successful repair center
_sj_> and to separate that discussoin from all the other things a
community 'center' could do
greebo> I think if we bring pedagogy into the mix, we have a educator
community who don't understand tech, and techs who don't
understand pedagogy, and the meetings would be utter madness with
outcomes hard to achieve :)
_sj_> greebo : it's ok by me if you want to have ed-specific and tech-
specific agendas
_sj_> but I hope the same people would attend both.
_sj_> which requires scope assessment as well
_sj_> myt experience fo capital-e educator confs is that they talk
about Technology a lot without knowing necc. how to hack it
_sj_> and of tech-for-ed confs is that they talk about Education a lot
without necc. having been in front of a classroom for a long time
greebo> _sj_, last point, I'm working with educators on our trials, but I
as a deployer need support from other techs :)
hpachas' Remarks
hpachas> _sj_, los temas de implementación pasan por 3 temas importantes
hpachas> _sj_, logistico, técnico y pedagógico
hpachas> pienso que se deben agendar reuniones en base a los tres grandes
temas
_sj_> hpachas, los tres!
_sj_> oh, right, logistics
_sj_> hpachas, absolutamente. logistics is its own Field
_sj_> as anyone who has every sat with hernan or fiorella can tell
you...
hpachas> _sj_, en la parte logistica, son muchos pasos que los demás
paises deben entender como realizarlo
hpachas> _sj_, ahora a eso tenemos que añadir: distribución,
reparación, sustitución
_sj_> hpachas, que es sustitucion?
_sj_> support?
hpachas> _sj_, sustitución = reemplazo de un equipo por otro
_sj_> ah! interestante!
hpachas> _sj_, son muchas cosas por las cuales nosotros ya hemos pasado y
estamos pasando
hpachas> _sj_, ahora en el tema técnico, es otro mundo paralelo
hpachas> _sj_, localización, activación, etc, etc
_sj_> hpachas, si, muchas muchas cosas importantes
hpachas> _sj_, tenemos q recordar que la parte técnica va en los
siguientes aspectos: XO, XS, AP, Swhti, Acceso a Internet
_sj_> hpachas, puedes ayudar con los agendas de estos reuniones?
_sj_> tienes el gran parte de experiencia con estos
_sj_> temas, problemas, soluciones
_sj_> y la compartmentacion entre temas diferentes y paraleles
hpachas> _sj_, pienso que debemos hacer una evaluación de como se
encuentran en estos mometnos todos los paises OLPC
_sj_> Swhti?
hpachas> _sj_, quizas tener un site que diga el grado de avance de cada
pais, ayudaría
_sj_> hpachas, estos discusiones son para los escuelas y paises
pequenos
_sj_> solamente
_sj_> pero hay paraleles
_sj_> ah
_sj_> el mapo con "el grado de avance" es muy viejo
_sj_> mapa*
_sj_> hmm
hpachas> ese mapa debe ser interactivo, editable a través de internte
_sj_> hpachas, voy a ver. si...
_sj_> no tenemos cada uno
_sj_> pere sera valable
hpachas> _sj_, si colocamos el programa OLPC en linea de tiempo, diria q
empieza por el tema logistico, técnico/pedagógico
_sj_> si. wikitimeline es interesante para eso...
_sj_> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:EasyTimeline
Meeting Structure II
Phones
greebo> m_stone, I think we have a quieter irc channel, let;s talk :)
greebo> m_stone, which is why I've asked CanoeBerry__ his reasons :) Not
to be difficult, but given a good reason everything is flexible
:)
tonyforster> greebo, i'm in on this late, but skype conference (free) Vent
(cheap) and Elluminate (not free) work fine
greebo> tonyforster, yeah, they both work well for phone meetings, but
considering we had 30+ people (and this is only meeting #2) we'll
likely have irc as the primary meeting and people can do phones
if they like. tonyforster this meeting is likely to mostly be
technical or semi-technical people focused on the practical
elements of doing and supporting deployments. we will be
discussing te scope soon, and there is likely something similar
needed just for educators, and we'll need communications between
the meetings :)
m_stone> greebo: so, what I'd like to see is that /we/ hold our regular
irc meetings as scheduled.
m_stone> and people who like phones can use phones on their own time and
come and present us with a transcript.
greebo> m_stone, great idea, is everyone else happy with that? the
deployment meetings be irc, and anyone wanting to do phone
meetings (I'm sure the meeting might be a backchannel at the same
time)
greebo> but the main meeting is in irc and the backchannel should be
transcribed and linked to the meetings page if possible
marcopg> sounds good to me
m_stone> it seems like a plausible way to start off.
m_stone> CanoeBerry__: I'm going to publish this decision in our minutes
from today. you can bring it up again by mail or after next
week's meeting if you feel it doesn't work for you.
Gobby
m_stone> greebo: okay, now that we've got "phones" out of the way... next
we've got "gobby"
greebo> what does that _mean_? :)
nubae> gobby is a great collaborative tool; the granddaddy of of them.
its used by all the ubuntu devs during UDS and keeps everything
quite structured and organised
cjl> greebo: gobby = http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/ ...Not sure what the
local OLPC gobby address is
m_stone> cjl: pullcord.l.o, (usually)
kevix> its visually fun to watch folks edit with gobby
nubae> kevix: yeah... :-) kinda like abiword
nubae> strange that wasnt ported to the xos actually
m_stone> nubae: it's easy to install on XOs.
cjb> nubae: yum install gobby
nubae> hmm,, but resolution, windows and all that fit?
m_stone> nubae: it works fine so long as nobody types long lines. :)
m_stone> (which happens all the time)
nubae> heh
m_stone> and so long as you don't need to see the chat and the gobby doc
at the same time.
m_stone> (which you always need to see)
cjb> google docs would be a reasonable alternative
greebo> One thing I've been chatting to people about is the consolidation
of tools
m_stone> cjl: anyhow, the basic premise is "use a shared writing system
which permits editing as well as appending"
m_stone> two other things commonly used for the same purpose are google
docs and abiword. :)
greebo> looks at gobby
Purpose
greebo> silly question, why are we talking about gobby? sounds cool, but
I just need the context
m_stone> greebo: not silly at all. the basic reason is because it allows
shared note-taking, which IRC isn't so good for. it's excellent
for, e.g., writing shraed minutes as you go along.
greebo> ah, ok
nubae> yep... the way buntu devs use it, they have a strategy doc and
people ammend it via gobby. works very well
m_stone> greebo: how useful it is depends a bit on what kind of minutes
you want. it can also be hard to coordinate...
greebo> right, well let's answer that question first :)
kevix> gobby has a chat facility, but dont know if its good enough
m_stone> kevix: it's not.
nubae> nah, normally its used alongside irc or even abiword
cjb> I think I'd just propose google docs, these days
m_stone> cjb: we're still trying to decide whether we want any parallel
channel at all.
greebo> my main aim with the minutes of the meetings is to ensure
information goes where it is useful, so transfer into the
wishlist, into the deployment guide, into the resources page
greebo> unless people really put time into it, that is unlikely to happen
automagically (unless you ask people throughout the meeting)
greebo> I think once we add the overhead of thinking of notes, then the
meeting may not be as smooth
greebo> I'm happy to write up the notes each meeting, and move data
around, I like documentation :)
Downsides
m_stone> greebo: what has been a problem is that there are some people who
are very uncomfortable reading documents in which more than one
person is typing at once.
m_stone> (on different parts of the doc)
greebo> m_stone, heh, you'd think this crowd would be ok with multiple
simultaneous authors :)
nubae> nobody forces u to read while people are typing
nubae> if its uncomfortable, look later
nubae> :-)
m_stone> nubae: no, the problem is for people who want to stay on top of
the discussion -- because they want to be able to call BS, for
example -- but who /can't/ when it's going on too much in
parallel
m_stone> it seemed that about 30% of OLPCers complained loudly of this
issue, the last time we tried it
greebo> m_stone, was that 30% people unused to online communications?
m_stone> many were used to them. (e.g. cscott, marcopg)
nubae> really? strange...
kevix> what isssue?
m_stone> kevix: being unable to follow parallel discussions.
nubae> so because there was too much going on I guess...
marcopg> but that's because I'm bad at multitasking... I feel I would have
issues following a discussion going on in two parallel places
How to proceed?
greebo> m_stone, ok, well, shall we try having something like gobby for
notetaking next meeting and see how we go?
greebo> m_stone, we'd like need some structure to the initial doc so we
don't end up with a big list of stuff that roughly equals the irc
log :)
m_stone> greebo: I'm personally not very interested in it at the moment,
but at the moment, I'm going to a fair amount of effort to
collect and prepare nice cleaned-up minutes from our irc
meetings. (which takes me a few hours to do.)
greebo> m_stone, ok, so gobby or google docs?
m_stone> greebo: so, my recommendation is that we sit tight with IRC +
nice minutes for another week or two and see how we're feeling
then.
m_stone> greebo: in other words, I want us to focus on improving the
/content/ of our meetings. (I don't find technology particularly
relevant to that.)
greebo> m_stone, ok
greebo> I also want to do a blog post after each meeting :)
m_stone> greebo: let's talk about that in just a moment. :)
marcopg> greebo: nice!
kevix> +1
Side-channels conclusion
m_stone> greebo: so let's say the same thing we said for phones -- IRC is
authoritative and you have to mention things in IRC if you want
them to stick.
m_stone> but you're welcome to set up a side channel and we'll help you
organize it by giving you a minute at the beginning to give a
link to how to join your side channel.
m_stone> nubae, cjb: does that sound workable?
greebo> m_stone, totally
nubae> sure, there are many jabber servers anyway
nubae> to connect to gobby...
greebo> sorry, I missed something
greebo> what would the side channel be for (sorry!)
m_stone> greebo: in this case, it would be for people who want to
collaborate on shared note-taking while the meeting is going on.
greebo> m_stone, ah, good call
Blog aggregation
m_stone> okay. two down, three to go.
m_stone> blog urls, general contact info, and "scope"
m_stone> so blog urls:
m_stone> I think we should try to get an aggregator going for this kind of
stuff.
m_stone> (or reuse planet.l.o, or something like that)
m_stone> so I'd like us to collect feeds for deployment-related data at
the start of each meeting.
cjb> planet.olpcfriends.org? :)
greebo> hey, we could use planet.olpcfriends.org.... ;)
greebo> heh :)(
m_stone> :)
greebo> snap!
marcopg> do we want to aggregate deployments only or also olpcfriends?
m_stone> I don't feel strongly. anyone else have thoughts?
marcopg> if we want all of them, p.l.o might just be fine
greebo> I think we have a planet for all olpcfriends, and a tag for
deployments if people only want to read deplpyments
greebo> marcopg, yeah, but it is hard to add new feeds
m_stone> greebo: why's it hard to add new feeds?
greebo> marcopg, m_stone well, nowhere on p.l.o does it say how to add
your feed :)
marcopg> greebo: ouch, that's clearly broken ;)
marcopg> (but easily fixable)
cjb> ah, but if I told people how to add their feed then I'd get all
this e-mail saying "blah blah add my feed" and it would be awful,
see
greebo> for software freedom day, we had a very cool way to deal with
planet feeds
greebo> we had a wiki page where people (from the board in that case) can
add their feed and it automagically turns up on the planet
marcopg> sounds cool, I wonder if you are going to have problem with noise
at some point, using that approach
marcopg> i.e. there seem to be no editorial control?
greebo> marcopg, I'm happy with that, a planet is supposed to be
representative of a community, rather than strictly controlled.
If we want a controlled news feed we ask people to blog though a
specific mechanism that does get moderated
greebo> so how about we have deployment/support related blogs on
olpcfriends?
nubae> olpcfriends is in Australia right?
greebo> nubae, well, that is a question, and I forgot to bring it up with
the group
greebo> currently olpcfriends is Aus/Oceania/NZ region
greebo> but it has become clear there is a greater need for the broader
olpc community to a self-managed and directed community org
around olpc
greebo> people who don't/can't work with/for olpc boston, and who don't
fit into sugar labs (as they are focused mostly on sugar). People
like deployers, support people, and potentially other projects
greebo> this is a zygote of an idea
cjb> greebo: is there a good reason not to make it worldwide?
greebo> cjb, totally, looking at making it worldwide, and having
olpcfriends oceania as our regional group :)
cjb> greebo: cool, sounds good
nubae> hm... interesting... educators for sure need a mecca of their own
m_stone> greebo: my recommendation is the simplest, I think. :)
m_stone> greebo: at the beginning of each meeting, we just ask people:
m_stone> "do you have a feed that should be added to any of our planets
(deployments, friends, sugar, ...)"?
m_stone> and then we collect a list of (feed, planet) pairs and we add
them after the meeting. :)
greebo> m_stone, totally, awesome idea
m_stone> marcopg: who controls p.sl.o?
m_stone> cjb: who controls p.l.o?
greebo> cjb, I need time to document the ideas through, and then take it
to the broader community, hopefully over the next 3-4 days
cjb> m_stone: me
marcopg> m_stone: bernie and lfaraone
m_stone> greebo: we've got plenty of time.
m_stone> cjb: thanks. are you good with my suggestion?
cjb> yes
m_stone> marcopg: likewise, in your estimation, for bernie and lfaraone?
marcopg> m_stone: think so
cjb> well, you're just asking people if they'd be willing... the
planet maintainers are then welcome to turn them down
cjb> so I don't think we need to ask the planet maintainers now,
necessarily
Contact Info / Social Networking
greebo> m_stone, heh, cool :) let's move through the other discussion
points, and then come back to that
greebo> (I have to go to work in an hour or so ;)
m_stone> greebo: okay then. let's put my suggestion in to place next week.
in the mean time, we can think about olpc-friends related
planets.
m_stone> greebo: and if we get anything done, then we can ask if people
would like to be added to those as well.
m_stone> two items left; let's keep rolling.
m_stone> next is general contact info publication. as I understand it,
greebo wants us to be sort of "maximally connected".
greebo> m_stone, totally, it supports two functions
greebo> a) connecting each other and interested people as much as
possible and b) public visibility to awesomeness
greebo> currently the amazing goodwill around the project is starting to
wane as people want to see something real. We are all doing this,
living it, seeing the benefits in the field, and we need to
communicate it publicly.
greebo> I've given a few talks over the last few months in Australia
about what is happening locally, and have been told several times
that it is the best talk on OLPC people have heard, not because
it is particularly brilliant, but rather because they are hearing
for the first time real life stories
m_stone> what do other people here think about that suggestion?
kevix> indeed. publicly communicate success stories. +1
marcopg> greebo++
greebo> perhaps our weekly blog writeup about meetings could include a
profile of a deployment, or cool project? and I can ask people in
the meeting :)
marcopg> would be awesome I think
m_stone> greebo: that's a good publicity idea, I think.
greebo> there's no reason why we can't have a wiki page for news :) or
draw from awesome blogs
kevix> when efforts are out of peoples conciousness, they forget.
monthly reports from any depolyment would make OLPC come alive to
them
kevix> any of couse, any video of kids doing cute things is always
loved.
greebo> kevix, totally
m_stone> greebo: essentially, "featured blog posts"
greebo> m_stone, yeah, I think so
greebo> m_stone, it sounds odd, but I'm more interested in resetting the
public debate to this being a real thing, than being a fluffy
idea. I also want to (and I apologise for the political
incorrectness of this) correct some of the messaging coming from
boston :)
m_stone> greebo: no apologies needed to me. :)
kevix> well there is a 'lack' of info coming out of boston IIRC?
m_stone> kevix: I prefer to worry less about boston and more about what
we're going to publish.
m_stone> greebo: so what I want to understand better is what "profile"
info we ought to be collecting, where we ought to be storing it,
etc.
m_stone> greebo: e.g. what do you think of the
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Profiles page?
m_stone> how does it compare with the way that facebook or linkedin would
handle this?
greebo> perhaps we could have a table with deployment contact details (or
even update the existing deployments page) for transparent access
to people. For profile info, we could just have a wiki and put
some examples? Ultimately most people will likely just blog, so
we need to be cross posting good profile blogs to the weekly news
wiki page
kevix> facebook has many OLPC 'groups' but no news form them.
Mechanisms
nubae> u know, this is all stuff Moodle can do very very well along with
Mahara
greebo> nubae, which stuff?
nubae> store deployment details and profiles
nubae> mahara is an e-portfolio that really rocks and links in via xml-
rpc to moodle and others
nubae> I installed it for uni students..
nubae> http://mahara.org/
greebo> m_stone, wow, you have a lot of hair! ;)
m_stone> greebo: it fluctuates seasonally.
greebo> m_stone, cool page, you're thinking something like that for
deployments or people in deployments?
m_stone> greebo: a little bit. it just seemed to me the sort of the that
semantic media-wiki is pretty good at. I'm far from wedded to it
though. really, I just thought it would be a good basis for
discussion of what /you're/ looking for
greebo> I think the personal contact information and links for
deployments should simply be added to the deployments page, and
people encouraged to update that (rather than another new place).
I think the news bit can come from blogs and such.
m_stone> greebo: yeah, I agree with that pretty strongly.
greebo> perhaps using the semantic wiki to capture contact details and
related urls to automagically add to the deployments page?
m_stone> (I don't actually know how to use the SMW stuff myself; I've just
appreciated the work that s.page, cjl, mchua, femslade, etc. did
with it.)
cjl> m_stone: skierpage is the true SMWizard
greebo> ok, cool, let's chat about that later then, I think just
encouraging people at meetings to add their information to the
deployments page is a good start anyway
greebo> nubae, what do you see mahara or moodle as doing that we need?
nubae> take a look at mahara. its a collaborative social networking
tools for workers... it groups people, allows for sharing of
various kinds of info from cvs to mini blogs
greebo> nubae, (having looked at mahara) yeah I've seen it before, I
think it is an awesome tool but the last thing we need is yet
another tool unless we were to replace something with it :)
greebo> or perhaps mahara could be the platform for olpcfriends...
m_stone> nubae: it might be good if people didn't already have their own
sites.
nubae> take a look if u get a chance... its also from your neck of the
woods
greebo> nubae, yeah, the nzers are awesome :)
nubae> yeah they did a library open source tool too; very nice
greebo> nubae, koha :)
dfarning> Highly recommend the use of Moodle. it allows a single community
to stay together while splitting off to spend time on there own
interests
nubae> dfarning: agreed
nubae> the problem is we need more people to start populating it
cjl> nubae: I have to agree with greebo, too many different tools to
master sets the floor too high for entry.
m_stone> nubae: I can see why you thought of it, though.
nubae> yeah i see what u mean
greebo> nubae, thanks!
cjl> I have to admit I never made the step up to gobby when people
started using it, I was just done with learning new tools :-(
nubae> gobby is about the easiest collab tool that exists though
m_stone> greebo: so our basic sadness seems to be that none of the social
networks seem good at pulling together news-feeds or providing
metadata on groups of people.right? and our general feeling is
that we'd like something wiki-ish that lets us tie those things
together. preferably maintained by someone else. :)
m_stone> greebo: is that the general feeling you've got?
greebo> m_stone, agree
m_stone> greebo: I can tell that, e.g.: you want it to be easy to email
people, you want it to be trivial to find someone's blog posts.
you want those blog posts aggregated in an easy-to-find place.
and, finally, that you want it to be quite public.
greebo> m_stone, umm, I think it has certainly been hard to find
information on groups, but I'm not sure we can automate that with
a tool. I think we can however encourage it with a community,
though. any online community is only going to have as much public
access as individuals allow, facebook is a great example of that
m_stone> greebo: no, I don't think automation has anything to do with it.
I think that giving people social incentives to do it is where
the money lies.
greebo> ah, gotcha
m_stone> okay. well, I can at least write that up and see what people make
of it. I'll cc s.page when I do.
nubae> greebo: u are describing mahara
dfarning> Highly recommend Moodle, as it is becoming the default tool among
educators
greebo> I think perhaps we could use olpcfriends (as in global
olpcfriends) with mahara (probably not moodle, doesn't have all
the same useful features) or something similar and then get
people adding profiles, adding blog urls (and aggregating)
greebo> nubae, does mahara aggragate blogs?
nubae> yes it does
nubae> its the most complete social networking tool based on educational
environment I've seen
nubae> ok
nubae> I actually have a review somewhere
nubae> about its integration with moodle
nubae> at my site... nubae.com
nubae> http://www.nubae.com/mahara-e-portfolio-for-moodle
nubae> the good thing is that mahara plugs straigt into it and it allows
for storing of personal items done within moodle
m_stone> nubae: well, you should reply to my RFP when I write it. :)
m_stone> nubae: then we'll see whether other people get excited about
trying it out.
m_stone> nubae: (I'm flexible; it's not my support that you need. :)
greebo> dfarning, will look at moodle, have tried using it, find it
difficult :) I think we'll be looking at loads of tools, and
possibly end up usong a few :)
nubae> greebo: moodle just requires practice... Mahara is easier to
understand
nubae> oh.. I have an example moodle and mahara installed here in case
someone wants to see
nubae> http://nubae.selfip.com/moodle/login/index.php
nubae> logging in as guest should show u the link to mahara and u can
then enter that
m_stone> nubae: why do I have to log in? :)
nubae> example of nicely customised moodle with mahara integration,
thats why
greebo> nubae, I just set up an account ont he mahara website to play
nubae> ah ok... cool
greebo> nubae, if mahara does become a tool of choice, d you have
time/energy to help with customise it for our community needs?
nubae> sure
nubae> the only thing is, I dont want to be left holding the ball... ie,
I'd like some help from others too
nubae> but yes, I'll gladly set up the infrastructure and customisations
greebo> nubae, of course, cool
nubae> actually that would be a really good way of localising activities
too
nubae> so that the groups in question would have the activities specific
to their regions
greebo> nubae, totally
nubae> anyway, I'll stop selling mahara now :-p
greebo> nubae, hey, can mahara do resources allocation?
nubae> greebo: I believe it can
nubae> not 100 percent sure though
greebo> nubae, and project management?
nubae> lemme check
greebo> nubae, don't worry, I'll play and see what I find. Thanks for the
idea
nubae> well it works with groups
nubae> and sends notifications
nubae> allows for membership to institutions and the like...
nubae> theres also lots of custom plugins for mahara
nubae> ooooh... and it can do backups
nubae> it has file quota.... might be a solution for xo backup
Scope
m_stone> greebo: we should talk about scope soon, before everyone
completely fades. :)
greebo> my ideas for the deployer meeting scope include: deployment
logistics, technologies, training, support\
greebo> and also includes deployer needs - wishlists, and news
greebo> and doesn't include: pedagogy, software development, educator
support,
SL?
marcopg> greebo: have you ever discussed with walter about how these
relates to SL local labs?
greebo> marcopg, in relation to SL, yes I've chatted to both Walter and
to dfarning about olpcfriends, and about deployments. My feeling
(and Walter says this too) is that Sugar Labs should focus on
Sugar - on making it awesome, on integrating and facilitating
educator/pedagogy discussions, etc
greebo> so olpcfriends could provide deployment and support to SL
initiated deployments too. I don't think olpcfriends needs to be
wedded to a particular hardware or os platform in the longer
term, but for now the olpc brand is very important, and that
refugee community needs bringing together. plus to xo is by far
the best hardware currently available :)
marcopg> greebo: my main confusion is that, how I understood them, local
labs are also going to deal with deployments
marcopg> and that seem to somewhat intersect with olpcfriends scope
marcopg> (especially if olpcfriends keeps deploying sugar)
greebo> marcopg, the problem is why would SL people want to troubleshoot
networking issues, or faulty HDDs? Basically a SL doing a
deployment in collaboration with the deployer SIG and support of
olpcfriends would make it easier for them to do what they do best
:)
marcopg> greebo: personally I would actually love to have SL *not* deal
with deployments directly
marcopg> greebo: so if olpcfriends can cover that part, all for the better
imo :)
marcopg> I don't want SL focusing on too many things
greebo> I think a lot of people have gone to sugar labs who aren't sugar
centric due to conflicts with olpc boston, so why don't we bring
the deployer/support community together focused on the vision of
olpc, of which sugar is a given, but the hardware/os is
interchangable :)(
greebo> I would love to see olpcfriends having support gang and
volunteers from deployment groups all around the world (whether
they be a sugar lab, or olpc nepal, or a government department)
participating in support gang for support, and participating in
the deployer sig for best practices and peer support.
greebo> This needs to be discussed more with support gang though, very
early days :)(
marcopg> greebo: I think I pretty much agree with your vision
marcopg> greebo: so I'll let you go on with the main topic
greebo> I don't think olpcfriends will be a big top down org, but rather
a grassroots community with people focused on projects, so a
deployment team would be a project, and would share resources
with other deployers and support people to make their deployment
happen. I don't think top down works for deployments at the best
of times.
m_stone> greebo: much more bazaar like than cathedral like. :)
m_stone> greebo: we want to be, well, /buzzing/. :)
greebo> m_stone, heh, strangely, yes ;)
Scope of Deployment Meetings?
greebo> ok, back to scope, anyone have anything to add/remove/discuss
about my proposal? Everything is able to be changed at this early
stage :)
marcopg> greebo: it will be good to keep discussing it with david and
walter, so that we are sure to integrate the two things in the
best possible way
greebo> marcopg, cool, considering SL are currently looking at how to
deal with support, it is great timing. I'm hoping to convince
support gang to become an olpcfriends project (self-managed by
the community) and then SL people can join the support gang to
put suppor ttickets through a common oinfrastructure for peer
support, and to leverage a large body of knowledge and experts
m_stone> was that intended primarily as a discussion of the scope of the
deployment mtgs like the one we just had or was it intended more
broadly as a scope for olpcfriends?
greebo> more broadly scope for olpcfriends, it was totally off topic,
sorry :)
greebo> my ideas for the deployer meeting scope include: deployment
logistics, technologies, training, support\
greebo> and also includes deployer needs - wishlists, and news
greebo> and doesn't include: pedagogy, software development, educator
support,
greebo> my feeling is that educators/pedagogy discussions should largely
happen in sugar labs, considering their feedback and how they use
the platform in the classroom is largely at that level of the
stack
greebo> m_stone, then scope also might include appropriate reporting,
resources and pimpage of deployment success stories
greebo> other ideas?
marcopg> greebo: sounds very good to me. (grr! I agree with greebo too
much, it's not fun :P)
greebo> marcopg, heh, we need some more flames. perhaps we could debate
food, or tv shows ;)
m_stone> greebo: programming languages, clearly.
m_stone> or collaboration protocols. :)
marcopg> hehe
Reasoning
m_stone> greebo: mainly, I'd like to better understand why you want to
exclude the things you mentioned.
m_stone> so anyway, why are pedagogy, educator support, and sw-dev out of
scope?
greebo> m_stone, my thoughts are that the people doing deployments will
likely have people in the team who know that stuff, but largely
can't contribute meaningfully to a educator/pedagogy level
discussion. If we had educators in the meeting too, we'll just
end up with half a meeting where each party doesn't understand
what is going on. I think we need input to both parties from the
other, but to actually get into gritty details of deployments, we
need to all be on the same page (roughly). unforutnately, we have
limited time each week to look at the issues of deployments.
adding how to write software, how to teach a child to the mix
would mean a mixed audience, a mixed discussion, and would make
it more difficult to talk about deployments :)
greebo> also, I think sw-dev is happening in the various groups and their
main comms is through their established channels, we need to
inject deployment needs into that conversation, but if we had
discussions about how to develop a program for sugar, or how to
hack the kernel, then again, it gets away from deployments. Most
deployments I think wouldn't need to do major changes to the base
image.
m_stone> greebo: see, I see more sw-dev happening as a /result/ of the
participation of sw-dev folks in the meetings already than
happened in the entire month prior.
greebo> m_stone, really? I think inviting both educators and software
developers to the meeting is totally cool, anyone can come, but
the scope of the conversattion should be about deployments,
right? for example: I think teacher training is important (and
part of a deployment), but whether "chat" has any pedagogical
value isn't something most deployers can contribute to.
marcopg> I think keeping limited and clear scopes, and having flexible
groups (with people bridging between them), is a good strategy.
it helps focusing the discussion without limiting cross-
pollination
Interfacing
wadeb|w> I think you need to dedicate people to interface between sw-dev,
education, deployment factions. some people are good at
interfacing with other disciplines; they should be identified and
should join multiple groups
marcopg> wadeb|w: right, was about to say... some people can join multiple
groups
marcopg> me and you are here, for example ;)
wadeb|w> right. mostly cause I remembered to put it on my calendar, and
it's a reasonable time EST :)
greebo> wadeb|w, totally!
Release management
m_stone> greebo: you said that you don't think that deployments are going
to want to do any major surgery on base images. where are those
base images going to come from, though? and how do you explain
the fact that people (e.g. dsd) were talking in today's meeting
about doing such surgery? (also remember the java + gnash
updates?)
greebo> m_stone, heh :) actually, I've been thinking about that too. Am
talking to some folk about moving the release management to
olpcfriends as a community managed and transparent process
m_stone> greebo: I seem to remember some conversations along those lines
from last week. :)
greebo> it will take a little while to figure out, but there is no reason
why xo (or any other images) couldn't be community managed
release processes, just like GNOME or Ubuntu
marcopg> I don't quite see how release management fits in the scope we
discussed so far...
marcopg> m_stone: and why they can't interface with software groups to do
so?
m_stone> marcopg: /what/ software group?
marcopg> m_stone: is olpcfriends a software group? I guess that's what is
confusing me from this discussion...
greebo> marcopg, olpcfriends is currently an idea, we are looking at
building a community managed org to meet the gaps like
deployments, support and xo release management
m_stone> greebo: part of why I'm taking such an active role in helping to
organize these meetings is because I think they contribute
productively toward a lively sw-dev community.
greebo> m_stone, I totally agree that customisations and modifications of
sw for deployments are on topic (and dsd's comments absolutely),
I just wouldn't want to see people moving how to do softwarre
devel into this meeting, I think any topic which is focused on
deployments fits, which will include some limited sw-dev :)
m_stone> okay, that makes more sense... hrm. I'd feel better if you and I
(and other interested parties) spent some time (needn't be today)
talking more about how to keep the sw-dev ball rolling and if we
announced that our interest in the same as a parallel process to
the deployment mtgs which we are currently facilitating.
m_stone> greebo: does that make sense?
greebo> m_stone, makes sense, and definitely warrants more discussion
m_stone> greebo: in that case, I'm very happy to support the scope
limitations you suggested so long as we remain flexible about
their enforcement & "drift" over time. :)
marcopg> greebo: I'm not completely convinced release management fits well
with the rest of the goals
greebo> marcopg, so am thinking of proposing the creation of an
olpcfriends release management team, is a seperate projcet to the
deployment sig
marcopg> what does that team do exactly?
marcopg> creates his own customized builds of X distribution?
marcopg> there is no release management without a development team
greebo> marcopg, understand, I see the release management as a seperate
project. the goals we were discussing was for this
meeting/channel/sub-community
greebo> there is no reason why olpcfriends can't have other
subcommunitees and projects :)
greebo> we likely won't be discussing release management ever in this
channel or in these meetings :)
m_stone> greebo: yeah, right. :)
m_stone> greebo: (c.f. your and dsd's interest in 8.2.1 today..) :)
greebo> m_stone, oh, I think we'll generally try to be flexible :) but if
someone starts talking git vs bzr in one of these meetings,
unless they have a really good deployment related reason, I'll
try to move the meeting on ;)
m_stone> greebo: as would I. (as /did/ I....)
marcopg> greebo: ok, so I guess discussing release management here is off
topic
cjb> marcopg: I think mainly greebo's saying that the topic should be
dictated by the deployment folks
greebo> cjb, pretty much :)
greebo> marcopg, yes :) sorry to confused things. It's your fault for not
reading my mind ;)
marcopg> greebo: well I was looking for a bit of disagreement so this is
good and fun :P
greebo> marcopg, heh :)
Wrapup
greebo> ok, I really have to go everyone, I have to go to work :) m_stone
I will write up more stuff when I get back if that is ok, later
today. would you mind posting the irc logs and any notes you
think of, and we'll chat more later
m_stone> greebo: g'day then. :)
greebo> m_stone, heh, thanks :)
greebo> oh, one last question, if the deployment sig was an olpcfriends
project, would it be useful for people to ahve online project
management tools hosted by olpcfriends?