Support meetings/20080113

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

4 - 6:15pm EST

Attendance

  • Amit Gogna (OLPC India),
  • FFM,
  • Iain Davidson,
  • Nikki Lee,
  • Mel Chua,
  • Kurt Maier,
  • Dan Bennett,
  • John Webster,
  • Phil Bordelon,
  • Steve Holton,
  • Matt O'Gorman,
  • Caryl Bigenho,
  • Greg Babbin,
  • Sandy Culver,
  • Bruce vanNorman,
  • Aaron Konstam,
  • Guynn Prince,
  • Seth Woodworth,
  • Austin Appel,
  • Michael Burns,
  • Kate Davis,
  • Richard Smith (core developer staff),
  • Chih-yu Chao (QA/support intern),
  • Innocent Bernie (core developer volunteer),
  • Arjun Sarwal (intern, author of Measure),
  • Kim Quirk (Product Manager, QA Lead),
  • Andriana Ferti (Legal Intern),
  • SJ Klein (Director of Community Content),
  • Adam Holt (Support Gangster in Chief).

Agenda

Introductions, fast!
  • Special Guest Amit Gognaa, from the OLPC India team, calling in from

Mumbai, India. Amit will be talking about the pilot project in India, its challenges, and the road ahead for potential OLPC deployments across India. We're thrilled to have Amit, guest of Arjun Sarwal -- as Amit's deeply involved in all aspects (technological and educational etc) of the India project, and staying up very late Sunday night to join us.

Dial up connection...very slow with XO. Trying to get high speed connectivity. No means of streaming broadband.

XO had improved attendance at school. Kids don't like holidays!

Someone(Mr Surve) is tracking XO activities. Has done projects with water cycle and solar system with XO.

Many people coming to them who want to buy XOs. State government official is talking about scaling up in numbers by 1000s or 2000s. Plan to talk to other state governments.

Mostly using mesh network sharing photographs, writing, calculator, chatting. Their XOs are in English rather than the local language. Next build will have the local language. Not much content available in local language. Hope to get community building content in local language.

Seth is working with someone else(name?) making "easy reading" readers in English. Want to develop easy reading materials using local stories not just translations from English.

Amit wants to have teachers able to share lessons...we have a group working on upgrading the educator's section to include a place to exchange lesson plans and ideas worldwide.

  • Proposal: Community Repair Centers in the USA & Canada? -- Good News

& Bad News from Kate Davis, Adam Holt, Ian Daniher & Kim Quirk.

Kim...Perhaps we could divert 100 defunct XOs to use for spare parts for volunteer repair centers. It could give us a short term solution to the repair problem. There are several volunteers interested in helping with repairs.

Check the emails about this and continue the discussion there.

Don't give money back if they have opened the box OR if it's beyond 30 days after their purchase/payment date.

National Unix Users Group (LUG) wants to get a special group for XO computers. LUG can be worldwide and very active. Will come back to discussion of LUGs in the future.

  • Richard Smith...in charge of battery problems.

He is working on the problem where the battery thinks it is fully charged and it isn't. He needs more information about the problem to be able to fix it. Sometimes the problem is intermittent. Could be connection, bad battery, or??? May be a problem with the firmware or software. Most likely hardware. Most reports...the red light doesn't come on. Battery incorrectly set to "fully charged." If concerned about the 30-Day repair window, best to get genuine problems RMA'd. Seth needs some of these so he can run tests and figure out what the problem is. Need to get them as early as possible.

Assign tickets to Adam, Kim, or Babbing for problems that will need RMAs

Brightstar Chicago had been doing upgrades to 650 before shipping. Haven't decided about any other upgrades. We could ask them to upgrade to 653, but for now they are just shipping out unopened boxes.

Digitech (Digikey?) sells a power connection that fits the XO. Richard will post information.

Remember: keep as much info as possible Public & Sharable within irc and public wiki!


  • Special Guest from Greece: Andriana Ferti will very quickly mention a

few OLPC legal issues she's helping us with, allowing international deployments to happen.

She has mostly been concerned with license agreements, open source content issues, and the like.

Many levels of laws are required for certifying OLPC for sale in Europe. May do a G1G1 program in Europe if laws are all satisfied etc.


  • Clarification on the accidental shipment of many dozens of extra G1G1

machines by OLPC's distributor, and the solution currently in place going forward.

Kim...one batch of order numbers were truncated, but some were OK. Brightstar asked for data again but didn't realize they had already shipped some of the loptops. Now working on guarantees to prevent it in the future. We need to help the folks who received an extra computer to send it back. Sending them an email and following up with a prepaid label or allowing them to pay another $399 to keep it. They should contact (email prefered) donor services if they want to buy the additional XO.

  • Virtual Call Center -- update from MOG & JPhigan, with very 1st live

training mini-session included if possible (or at the minimum an Audio demo we hope!) Have prompts back from voice talent. Also have 617 number for calling in and 800 number for volunteers to call in. Ready to start training as soon as tomorrow. Scripts are set up so we can use RT ticket numbers but some work still needed on this. Can start without that. MOG will start training people Monday Jan 14th 7PM EST...won't go live until we've completed basic system testing. Matt will send out an email to support-gang announcing Monday's 7PM conference call details.

Babbing...once someone knows the help number, it becomes public information. Concern is that people will want to call about information they can find on their own. Initially we will certainly require ALL callers have an RT ticket number before we help them (forcing people go online for help first before getting phone support).

Training will also need to explain to volunteers how to diplomatically cut off overly needy and aggressive callers.

  • QA/Testing Update from Chih-yu Chao and Kim Quirk. Adric may join.

Anyone Else Feeling Testy?! Plz, plz join this group if you believe in Quality!

Chih-yu...has been testing different versions of the updates for the operating system for the next release. Hope to get the release out by late January.

There is a link on the wiki on testing...Community Testing

Everyone should check out ... http://dev.laptop.org

Need lots of help with testing. If you want to help with testing, contact Kim


  • Each Support Volunteer make sure to Speak Up! What's the biggest

obstacle YOU faced this week presented? What/who are you missing in order to contribute your best to our North American and worldwide XO owners?

Questions about cut and paste, in Terminal and beyond. Can't paste to browser address. Clipboard kind of "wonky". Can't cut and paste from one place to another. It is a bug and will be fixed in new release.

Router should be set so it doesn't jump from one channel to another.

If network manager crashes, need to reboot.

Bruce (BVM) vocabulary...suggests we need a glossary, let's build this out: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Glossary Should have all terms that should be puzzling...needs to be enlarged and updated. If there is a term you can't find...put it up and ask someone to answer.

OLPC needs a shared calendar for devoted volunteers like the 24+ on this call!


  • SJ Klein & Adam Holt on OLPC's new and growing Volunteerism /

Ownership models, and how entirely new kinds of people may get involved going forward.

Local groups are forming. Trying to give local groups "ownership" of problems they are working on. There is a fairly large group in Europe. Projects to show the computer and distribute information to different groups are in the works.

Talking about setting up blog-type interface for people to get together and share experiences. SJ is working on a blog/newsletter. Nice to have rss feeds that will help collect blogs with someone watching different subjects and putting them together.

Will test getting local groups together with their own blogs.

Phil Bordelon... can we have an "OLPC-ZINE" to show what is going on that is friendlier than a corporate web page and less overwhelming than the information-rich wiki. (spontaneous 2hr followup meeting occurs later on exactly this topic!)

  • SJ Klein will very quick introduce our expanding

Documental^h^hDocumintMintMint efforts. Adam will ask all contributors present (Kate Davis etc) to present their current direction!

Some people are working on documentation. A Minnesota State Univ prof volunteered to have a class work on documentation as a project. Still in discussion.

Can get machines through the "developer's" program. Takes time, but it is a possibility.

Meeting ended at 6:29 PM EST

Some folks stayed around to discuss the ideas of much-stronger community outreach using a Weekly zine (discussion here) and other newbie welcoming/networking organizational tools.

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