OLE Nepal: Blog Announcements
Announcements
Second OLPC Game Jam
January 30th, 2008 By: Om Yadav
We are going to hold our second ‘OLPC Game Jam’ on 9th February 2008. We are expecting to see quite a few participants from our first jam and new participants too. Please spread the word and sign up on our discussion forum to participate in the discussion and share your ideas.
ACE Institute of Management has generously provided us their computer lab for the event. Special thanks to Ms Prabina Rajbhandari, Mr Jayanta Pokharel, Ms Nirvika Prakash and Mr Bishnu Dhakal for their help and support.
We have a limited number of seats and want to make sure that every participant gets their own machine to develop their activity. If you are interested in participating reserve a seat by sending an email to register@olenepal.org
We're Looking for a Super SysAdmin
We’re Looking for a Super SysAdmin March 4th, 2008 By:Sulochan Acharya
The Problem
Over the course of 2008, OLE Nepal will implement OLPC at a number of schools in Nepal. Some important technical aspects of deployment are the updating the XO’s, back up of student data, maintaining mesh network, and web caching. Much work remains to be done in the general area of the School Server. The School Server is currently under active development and will likely be so throughout 2008. OLPC recently made a great decision in hiring Martin Langhoff to serve as the School Server Architect. Here in Nepal, we need a rockin’ sysadmin that can work with our Kathmandu-based team and with OLPC to implement a school server solution that meets the needs of kids and teachers in Nepal.
We need this person to can commit 5 months full-time here in Nepal. You need to be local because working remotely won’t expose you to the real requirements of schools in Nepal. This is a volunteer position. We operate on a shoestring and volunteers already do a good portion of our organization’s work.
Your Skills
You dream in Bash IPv4, IPv6, Wireless Mesh networking? No problem! You know linux networking inside and out Extensive knowledge of BIND, DHCPD, Squid, Apache, security, etc. Experience working with Moodle would be most excellent Adept with Python scripting or could learn it quickly. OLPC has standardized on Python for scripting You look to implement a practical solution that less skilled sysadmins can easily maintain over a cooler but more complicated solution. You play well with others. You don’t alienate collaborators with rude e-mails that assert your technical superiority (even though you are) Your primary concern is meeting the educational needs of kids and teachers. Your rate technical awesomeness a distant second to meeting those critical needs. What you Would Do
Work with our deployment team to set up and maintain School Servers, customized XO builds, and the Active Antenna Collaborate closely with Martin Langhoff and John Watlington of OLPC to enhance the mainline School Server distribution, move our local additions into the main distribution, and communicate Nepal’s requirements to OLPC Over the course of your stay, work to make the School Server as stable and easy to maintain as possible Document our configurations for our own reference and the use of other OLPC deployments Your immediate colleagues would be
Dev “Where’s the Party Yaar?” Mohanty, in charge of connecting the schools to the Internet
Sulochan Acharya (me), general troubleshooting of all technical problems at the schools
Bryan Berry, leads the deployment team, does planning, budgeting, and basic system administration among other duties
Who Should Not Apply
If you are looking for a vacation in an exotic locale, go to Thailand. We work hard, very hard. We have a lot of fun too.
You are only interested in OLPC’s technology and have little interest in its educational goals. As Nicholas Negroponte frequently repeats, this is an education project not a laptop project. If you are not genuinely interested in meeting the needs of kids and teachers, please do not apply. This is worth repeating. If you are not genuinely interested in meeting the needs of kids and teachers, please do not apply.
You are not able to commit to a 5-month stay in Nepal.
What we can offer you
A fantastic opportunity to work on a really important project. A chance to radically enhance the quality of education in Nepal. A contribution to a larger global initiative. I could go on forever . . .
Now, we would love to pay you but as mentioned earlier our operation runs on a financial shoestring. This is a volunteer position. We can put you up in the OLE Nepal house together with Ties, Dev, and Dev’s lovely lady friend Manisha. Living costs in Nepal are __quite__ low. You can consult our current volunteers Ties, Dev, and Bryan about their expenses.
The Outcome
You walk away from Nepal having implemented a turn-key school server solution that helps kids and teachers collaborate, discover important ideas, and create things that matter to them. Your work will be replicated across OLPC deployments.
If you are interested please send an e-mail to [info@olenepal.org info@olenepal.org]
