Health Jam
Schedule | Registration | Venue | Press | Sponsors | Budget | See What We Made | Feedback
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NOTE: The contents of this page are not set in stone, and are subject to change! This page is a draft in active flux ... |
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In A Nutshell
Health Jam Seattle<br\> Where: {{{location TBD}}}<br\> When: April 18-20, 2008<br\> Goal: We're doing intensive project sprinting on hardware/software/content development for the TeleHealth Module and other Health related activities with the goal of having local health professionals test them in a mock "clinic" on the final day.
What is a Jam?
An OLPC Jam is a content creation crunch that gets participants from idea to reality in just a few days. By the end of the Jam, you'll have something finished to test with local schoolchildren and health professionals. It's a great way to get started developing for OLPC. Click here to learn more.
Introduction to the Health Jam
About OLPC
The One Laptop Per Child project is a non-profit based out of Cambridge, MA, with many volunteers in grassroots groups across the world. The goal of OLPC is to improve education in the world^s least developed countries. The method is a low cost educational laptop for constructionist learning - but "it's an education project, not a laptop project," and that's something we always have to keep in mind.
About OLPC Health
The Health group at OLPC is an interdisciplinary group working on medical-related projects associated with the XO, including software, hardware, and content. Health projects can be a local grassroots undertaking, a student group project, a pilot implementation, a global community creation-sprint weekend - we cut across geographic, disciplinary, and institutional boundaries to help all health-related OLPC work move forward. Our basic premise is that existing Healthcare infrastructure in the countries with XOs could be extended and supported by using the XO.
The Health group is working on three main areas: Content, Software and Hardware. In content, we are working with several Healthcare organizations that have already created basic health, sanitation, and dentistry education materials in several languages. Some of this material is printed, some digital, and we are working on converting it to easily displayable and translatable formats. In Software, we're working to create medical diagnostics transmission protocols to allow XOs to send data to remote doctors and specialists for analysis in real-time, while conversing with a patient who might be at home or unreachable in a remote area. In Hardware, we are attempting to design a $15 USD peripheral that can take measurements from a variety of sensors (EKG, pulse oximeter, stethoscope, etc) at a higher resolution than currently offered by the analog-in port and bundle it up for transmission to remote doctors/specialists. Other projects along these lines are starting up, and new projects and participants are always welcome.
About OLPC Health Jams
This Health Jam is a 3-day project sprint experience that gives participants the tools, knowledge, and resources they need to begin - or continue - contributing to OLPC Health projects. A healthy dose of this is open work time with experts in technology, education, and public health floating around for ready consultation, but there will also be (attendee-run) tutorials on the side for folks who want to pick up new skills or teach others what they know. We'll culminate on Sunday afternoon with a public demonstration of our hard-won projects to local kids (our testers and judges), health professionals, and the local community and press.
Experience in health-related fields, software/hardware development, grassroots communities, and open source/content is helpful, but not required. The desire to help and a willingness to learn, contribute, and teach others what you know are far more important. Registration must be done in teams, with each team proposing a project to work on that they believe their members collectively have the know-how to see through to completion in 3 days.
This Jam is a community-organized event.
I want to participate!
Jams are collaboratively organized events, so the best way to get started is to just dive in and introduce yourself. Participating in this Jam? Have ideas? Want to coordinate rides, teams, projects, or talk about the Jam? Edit the Jam Talk Page!
Registration
Registration is not yet open at this time. We expect it to open on or before the first day of March 2008. Update: We're still working on confirming our location - it's asympotically being settled, but we want to make sure we have rooms solidly reserved, that all the necessary administrative people have been informed, etc. before throwing the doors wide open. If all goes well with meetings tomorrow, we should have registration open by Thursday, March 6. Mchua 19:09, 3 March 2008 (EST)
How to help
This space and the subtopics below it are not complete.
The best way to make sure the Jam runs in a way that helps you and your projects is to help us plan the Jam. Contact Mel Chua if you're interested in pitching in for pre-Jam planning, and Seth Woodworth if you're local to Seattle and want to help out on the "ground crew" during the event (but don't necessarily want to help prep beforehand). You can be on a Jam team and help pre-plan or be on "ground crew" - it just means you're willing to help us set up tables, or take photos during judging, or run out to local restaurants to pick up donated food, or put up an out-of-towner on your apartment's couch.
For specific things and people we're looking for, read on below.
Space
Note that these rooms don't have to be separate - we're looking for a set of spaces that fulfil the following functionalities, however many spaces we need to do that.
- A space or spaces for between 30-70 people to work collaboratively on various projects. This requires wifi, ready access to electrical outlets, desks and chairs that are moveable so that teams can cluster together - at least a few workbenches that hardware teams don't need to worry about accidentally scratching up. Having room for at least 20-30 people in each space is ideal, as is having some sort of whiteboard/blackboard where schedules and notes can be posted. This is the main area of the Jam.
- A space where people can eat food.
- A space where people can rest - separate from the work space described above. Somewhere quiet, with comfy seating.
- Small breakout spaces where teams (of up to 5 people) can go and huddle. Hallway nooks with clusters of chairs work fine, or empty offices/classrooms.
- Small breakout spaces where tutorials can be held. Electricity and wifi and some sort of are ideal, but not required.
- Presentation space - somewhere with a projector (and electricity and wifi) where everyone at the Jam + audience (at least 100 people) can fit comfortably for kickoff and closing gatherings.
- Demo space - somewhere attendees can set up their projects as demonstrations so that an audience of interested community members and the local kids judging the event can go through and try them out. Think "conference poster session," but much less formal.
- Judging space - somewhere with blackboards/whiteboards/writing-surfaces where kid-judges can gather and deliberate after the demos, separate from the space with demos so that Jam participants can rest, but not hear what's going on.
Note that this sounds like a lot of rooms, but at the first Jam in Boston (summer 2007) the entire Jam consisted of two rooms: one large classroom with clusterable tables used for work and demos, and one auditorium-style room used for everything else except the breakout spaces, which were held in the hallways. Far over 100 people came through that Jam at some point.
Equipment
- Electrical engineering equipment, or access to such (soldering irons, wire, common components like resistors, oscilloscopes and multimeters, helping hands, wire cutters/strippers...)
- Wifi
- Loaner laptops or desktops for attendees who might not have their own (perhaps they have desktops at home). A computer lab would work, but isn't particularly optimal - we'd like to be able to bring these computers right into the Jam work room.
Food
People
- food runners
- photographer/journalists/bloggers
- set up and take down
- donation solicitors (of food beforehand)
- message runners
- judging coordinator - recruit local kids to judge, greet them when they come, and manage the entire evaluation process (big role!)
Contact
If you have any questions about the Jam, please email queries to the Health mailing list or contact Seth Woodworth and Mel Chua, the coordinators of the Jam.
