Illinois Math and Science Academy Chapter/20080707

ILXO visit to IMSA!

Agenda

How does arriving at 10:30 and leaving after lunch (at Culver's, or somewhere Not Arbor) sound?

• Tour of and intro to IMSA, for Nikki/Chris/Tank who haven't had an opportunity to experience The Awesomeness yet. ;-)
• Catch up on the wonderful things that happened in Texas (Scott, April-Hope)
• Game Jam planning, if IMSA can host - evening of Friday the 11th through Sunday the 13th (Jim, how do we ask about whether we can have the Jam at IMSA?)
• Repair center set up - when do you want to start accepting machines? (The answer can be anything from "July 7" to "sometime during the next school year.") if we get approval from Kim, Henry, etc. we might even be able to set you folks up with RT for tracking machines... or we can set it up on one of IMSA's servers, or a donated server (Mel offers her webspace as a fallback, but it's crawlingly slow as it's shared hosting).
• Build testing for the month of July - I'd like to work out how we can set up the IMSA group as a nuclei for remote testing, if you're interested and will be talking with Charlie, Kim, and Joe back at 1cc to figure out stuff on the OLPC end so we'll know what they want tested and how - there's some on Friends in testing, but much more remains to be put in place.
• Pilots. Let's figure out how we can get you folks some. ;)
• "How to start a chapter kit" - what needs to happen for it to come into being? what should be in it? (what do you wish you'd had?)
• Going through developers' program applications

I'm thinking we can transcribe and send out notes afterwards. If you can think of people who'd want to come or phone in (Kevin? Arjun?) we can try to find a way to do that as well.

Notes (Mel's)

also see blog post

Tour

Wait. Why are they painting the walls yellow now? That just looks weird.

NECC

• Was awesome.
• Was REALLY AWESOME.
• Why doesn't OLPC have an "official" presence at NECC? (Probable answer: Lack of people-resources.) We should see if they can send someone down next year...
• A number of other booths had XOs on them, but were using it as more eye-candy to draw people in, and not actually doing things with the laptops.
• Everyone loves April-Hope. Seeing a student speak about the project is one of the most powerful things ever.
• There were some people in TX who have XO pilots in their classrooms (2 separate pilots)
  • about 30 laptops each
  • looking for things to do with them
  • opportunity to hook up with volunteer groups?
• met awesome bloggers
  • budtheteacher
  • Brian C. Smith
  • Wes Freyer (moving at the speed of creativity)
  • Chris Lehmann from SLA
  • Gary Stager
  • Sylvia Martinez and Dennis Harper from genyes.org
  • kijana voices
  • takingitglobal (has IMSA alum on board)
  • Michael Furdyk
  • Jennifer Cornew (sp?)
• There was a Birds of a Feather gathering in a very visible location that gathered many people

Game Jam

• Should invite KI kids
• IMSA can host - coordinating with Jim for date
• Food donations from nearby companies?
• Good hotels nearby?
• Ahw can talk to press - hurrah!

Chapters

• Give us assignments! quoth chapters. Mel to start handing out testing jobs.

Todo

• see if 1cc can send someone to NECC next year
• Scott to introduce to press folks who were looking for information
• fix Participate so that the people who were interested at NECC have somewhere to go
• Mel and Nikki to round up wiki admin team for above
• Intersession - find a place to go to, a school to work with
  • Uganda?
  • Texas?
  • Birmingham?
• Ahw to look at how we can do local pilots
• Nikki to work with Ahw on IMSA repair center; Mel to ask 1cc re: RT hosting
• Tank to get details re: teacher jam to IMSA so they can help publicize
• Scott, Ahw to introduce people from TX pilots
• Invite KI kids to Game Jam
• Mel to get Ahw testing jobs for chapter to do for build 708