OLPC Boston/Monthly Meet-ups/031709

Attending

• Diane
• Liane
• Deb
• George
• Bob Herrmann
• Caliban (Matilda)
• Aunurag (Pat)
• Owen
• Seth
• S J Klein
• Stefan
• Aziz Shirzay
• 6 other people whose names I didn't get

Casual Discussions During Dinner

Dell Netbooks

Deb brought her Dell netbook (purchased through her work in Worcester Public Schools). She explained that she has a hard time with the keyboard as Dell moved some keys for space saving. This makes it very hard for a trained touch typist to use the keyboard.

"Tabbed" browsing using Browse

Deb showed us how the bookmarks work in Browse - creating a small thumbnail of the bookmarked page and placing this thumbnail on the bottom of the Browse window. This takes up real estate on the screen, but lets the user easily move between multiple sites. The instance of the Browse activity saved in the journal keeps these bookmarks, but the next time Browse is opened from the Home screen there are no bookmarks in this new instance on the Activity.

Creating a Teacher's Group

Deb is interested in a once-a-month meeting of teachers so they can create lesson plans using the XO. Liane suggested that a joint project among Worcester areas colleges (Holy Cross, Worcester Polytechnic, and Worcester State Teacher's College) and the public schools might be a good mix.

OLPC Corps

Eight students from 3 local universities (BU, BC, MIT) came to talk about OLPC Corps and their teams and the process of applying to OLPC Corps.

OLPC Corps Goals

Fighting poverty, but OLPC is open to creative ideas from teams. OLPC has expressed a preference for rural deployments, and MIT group was concerned that their proposal might be rejected because they are thinking about working with an established NGO in urban South Africa.

OLPC Corps Meetings

• A meeting specifically to focus on OLCP Corps is needed.
  • BU - There is an existing BU OLPC User's group. BU students interested in OLPC Corps should use the OLPC_Boston mailing list to shout out and get connected with the group.
  • Harvard - There are several Harvard groups. Similarly use the OLPC_Boston mailing list to connect to groups here. There is also a Harvard group doing international development work in Kenya in parallel with OLPC.
  • MIT Sloan - Nicki Gomez has a languishing project.
  • Olin? - Olin College is an engineering school in Needham MA. The OLPC project at the school has been very active for a couple of years. The Repair Center at Olin is a result. A (weekly/monthly?) Saturday seminar run by ex-OLPC staff is ongoing there.

Training & Hardware

Each team needs a laptop to work/experiment with. Katelyn @ Harvard is the contact for this. She is part of the loop team from One For All. Email AuntiMame for Katelyn's contact info.

AuntiMame is willing to run a basic training class on a Saturday. Sugar basics and basic hardware repair.

Visit to 1CC

As the meeting was wrapping up, Seth invited everyone across the street to 1CC to see the OLPC offices. A general tour of the office and XO experimentation ensued.