OLPC Birmingham

OLPC Birmingham, Alabama, USA

About

The Birmingham Interest Group is a way for people in the Birmingham area and surrounding locations to talk about and work together on OLPC. We aren't necessarily interested just in trying to bring OLPC into classrooms in Birmingham (although we generally think it's a wonderful idea) we're also interested in volunteering/contributing to the project.

OLPC BIRMINGHAM IS

1. a nucleation point for exchange between local groups, towards the OLPC Boston office and back, and with other groups worldwide
2. helping in organizing XOs for the local groups
3. supporting and cherishing the autonomy of local groups
4. focusing on rough consensus, grassroots involvement, and working projects

OLPC BIRMINGHAM IS NOT

1. going to do a local pilot in your school (although we'll encourage and support you if you want to do one yourself)
2. going to tell you what you are and aren't allowed to do (although we're always up for idea-bouncing and brainstorms)

Contact and chapters

Stefan

Henry

Mailing List

If there's enough demand, we'll set up a mailing list. If you'd like to have an LOCATION-OLPC mailing list, post a link to your contact info (wiki userpages work) below - the minimum number for starting a list is 10 recent requests.

1. Stefan
2. User:Yamaplos

Chapters

If you know of any Birmingham area schools, organizations, individuals, or groups of interested people who have organized or want to organize a Grassroots group or an University chapter, please ask them to add a link below.

Existing Projects

• If you're in the Birmingham area and have a project you'd like to share, please link to it below.
• On Google Groups: Birmingham OLPC User/Interest Group (AL)
• Birmingham Alabama to get 15,000 laptops.

Events

Future Activities

• We're planning a meetup! We'd like to have an informal, getting-to-know-you gathering soon, but need a place to host it, and a date. Can you help? Want to come? Want to help plan? Let Stefan know.

• Tuesday, April 1st, I'll discuss doing a presentation on 4-19-08 at BALU's (Birmingham Alabama Linux Usergroup's - http://www.bham-lug.org/) monthly meeting Stefan 09:53, 28 March 2008 (EDT). Update 4-7-08: Been there. Not sure I want to do it because I am currently struggeling with the XS build 160(+) because of problems with raid support.

• A BarCamp is coming up on April 12th: BarCampBirmingham2 and besides considering many other topics, OLPC is also on the agenda. Actually there is an even less formal opening session on Friday night...

Past Activities

None yet - we're still working on upcoming events, which will be posted here as their dates pass.

Project Ideas

If you're in Birmingham and want to work on a project with someone local, post ideas here.
Also, if you have a soldering iron and phillips screw driver in place of thumb and index finger, we want to support the Birmingham roll out and other near local XO enthusiasts by setting up a repair center. Maybe doing repair jams, or give guidance for do-it-yourselfers, or do a commercially active full service venture. Or all three of these options simultaneously.

News items

Council, BOE approve laptop pilot Bham Weekly, 03 April 2008, K. Whitmire. See also United States country page

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Primary Language	,|x|Language spoken::x}}
Number of Laptops	Number of manufactured laptops::14000
Keyboard Layout	Keyboard::OLPC English Keyboard
Build	,|x|Software release::x}}
Date(s) Arrived in Country	,|x|Has received laptops on date::x}}
School Server	,|x|School server status::x}}
Deployment Status	[[Deployment status::Believe they will run 656. Also using customized versions of FF, flash, mplayer Will use School Server. Exact image tbd Deployment underway, possible target start date of September. Gregorio 09:16, 7 August 2008 (UTC)]]