Deployment meetings/20090127

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?