XOCamp 2

The XOcamp 2 miniconference, which was scheduled for late November, has recently been postponed until early January. Specific dates will be announced shortly and will likely be immediately before or immediately after FUDCON in Boston (Jan 9-11). The purpose of the XOcamp is to help frame our long-term software development effort. In addition, we will work on prioritizing requirements, features and goals for the next major feature release called XO Software Release 9.1.0 and the Sugar 0.84 release. It will probably be similar to XOcamp 1 in nature.

Subject Matter

Please submit proposals for topics to cover. These may include, but are not limited to:

• Top concerns and requirements of users and countries including reviews of available feedback
• Learning priorities and tools needed to support them
• Technologies, applications and software design proposals
• Process and infrastructure proposals
• Current and needed research

Agenda

on hold pending rescheduling

This is a very early proposed agenda : please feel free to edit and improve it!

Mon  : Administrivia, introductions, and negotiation of a detailed talk schedule, followed by vision, goals, process, & review of current feedback

Tue  : country feedback review + scheduled talks

Wed  : brainstorming + more talks

Thu  : more talks + scheduling/resourcing discussions

Fri  : summarize actionable items, publish week in review, update the roadmaps

Sat+ : reflection for the next miniconf; thoughts for Jan's community conference

Proposals

Propose talks below and list your name below talks you'd like to see. Other talks are being proposed by email to devel@lists.laptop.org, so feel free to propose their instead (or as well).

To add a proposal, please use the following format:

: '''TITLE''' - description - presenter [if you have one in mind]
:: more description, if needed

Title - please make this as short as possible while being precise.

Description - this should be 20-100 words long. Please leave longer descriptions on a separate page dedicated to the subject.

Presenter- If you can present on the topic, include your name. If you are suggesting someone else as presenter, add a question mark after their name unless they have confirmed they can lead the session, and notify them of your interest.

User and Country Requirements Definition

Who is the user and what do they want?

A summary of user input from deployment leads, students and teachers. An aggregated look at the top items requested. An in depth look at the motivation of a few specific requests. Time permitting, can include a discussion of how to turn user feedback in to actionable requirements. Can include a detailed "use case" explaining the technical environment and social context of a target school.

Gregorio 19:21, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes, Follow up owner - Greg
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Uruguay Observations

Chris and I are going to spend a bit over a week in Uruguay immediately prior to the conference. I expect that we will speak about our adventures (assuming that we return capable of speaking!). --Michael Stone 17:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Distributing OLPC

Summary:Making OLPC models of communities and development more decentralized, OLPC has to encourage communities of free software developers around the world, has to listen to teachers and students inquires and has to give them ways of making them happen.

The distribution has to be in all the layers, technological, content, and pedagogical.

Communication between this layers has to be improved, developer meetings like the XOcamp must be also done in major deployment sites. RafaelOrtiz

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owners - Greg, Rafael, Mel
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

General topics

Annotation - storing general annotations for documents and other works. Formats, tools, Sugar/Journal integration. - ???

--Sj talk

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Mel and SJ
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Book reading - reading texts : interface[s] for reading, bookmarking, annotating; combining readers for different formats; models to follow. - [sayamindu?]

--Sj talk

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Mel and SJ
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Searching - there are various places where one searches for information in daily use of an XO. Improvements to search (in the journal, in sugar views, in browse) are discussed

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Mel and SJ
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

i18n and l10n: 9.1 and beyond: The areas I would like to cover include:

• Input methods: Out current input system (XKB) is not enough for Chinese/Japanese/Korean, and even existing customers like Ethiopia have needs which are met with considerable difficulty with XKB. For 9.1, I propose that we switch to SCIM[1], which should take care of most (if not all) of our current requirements.
• Multiple, non English fallback languages: Many of our users will probably be multilingual. A Aymara speaker would like to see the UI strings falling back to Spanish translations in absence of Aymara instead of the normal, default English. We have the existing infrastructure in our core i18n infrastructure, implementing this is simply a matter of making changes in Sugar (and maybe Rainbow).
• Language packs: The current system of language packs is not very reliable (it overwrites the original translations in the system, installations cannot be easily undone, no versioning, etc). I want to switch to a RPM based language pack system for 9.1, which will be easier to deploy (especially if the customization key mechanism gets support for RPM). This will require support for multiple locale directories, and I'll talk about that as well (Ubuntu uses a similar approach - I plan to reuse their patches if possible).
• User modifiable translations: There has been a number of ideas on this - initially (during my last visit to 1CC), we were thinking of a "Translate Activity" which would let children add/modify translations, and optionally let them share the translations over the mesh. SJ and Scott have recently suggested a wiki-like editable UI, which would, definitely be much cooler ;-). I want to brainstorm on this, and try to figure out the amount of time we need to do this, the advantages, risks, tradeoffs involved etc.

Presenter: Sayamindu

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes, Follow up owner - Sayamindu and SJ
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Language learning on the XO - tools for language learners.

Presenter: Cjb

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes, Follow up owner - Chris
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Multiplayer wikipad - sharing a namespace of versioned editable docs. MikMik update. - [Mako?]

--Sj talk

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Mel and SJ
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Customizing skins - setting desktop themes and backgrounds is another quick rewarding way to feel ownership of one's system

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner ?
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

School Server

--User:Walter - It would be great to get a status report (from Martin?) and set expectations as to what services we can expect to leverage within the XO/Sugar ecosystem.

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Martin
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Customization, Imaging, and Activating XOs

--User:Reuben and/or User:Kim-A discussion of where we are now. What current deployments are doing. How we can make this better.

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes, Follow up owner - Reuben and Kim. Also need engineering lead
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Automated testing tools

--User:Mchua and/or the QA team (Kim, Joe, Frances) - what tools are being used now and where to find howtos on using them, what tools would you like to see made/improved, how should test automation fit within our develop/test/release workflow, what testing tools can be developed and/or run by the community.

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes, Follow up owner - Mel
• Time: 60-90 minutes should be sufficient for both demos and discussion combined.
• Who: Mchua and the QA group can demo what the QA group is using right now, send a call for/invite/ authors and users of existing testing tools to give mini-stand-ups during this time, and moderate discussion.
• Prep: Call for (and choose/schedule) mini test-tool demos, prep demo spiels for existing QA tools (I'll have to do this anyway regardless of an XOCamp presentation, for community test)... some code customization to make tools work (better) for OLPC will likely be needed. Mchua

How does support work today - what can we do to make it better/easier?

--User:Kimquirk, User:Reuben, and/or User:Mchua How our deployment tech support structure work for "official" large deployments for both 1cc tech support, developers, 1cc interns, in-country deployment tech teams and those they serve, the volunteer community at large, and others? Once we have established those processes and roles, how can we prepare the various groups/people to use them?

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Mel and Kim
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

View source key everywhere

Thread from Tomeu at: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020576.html

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Scott and Tomeu (may only need a "flash" session.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Report Cards on XO

See thread started by Yama on Devel: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-October/009472.html

see also related submitting homework thread started by Mikus: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020436.html

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - No, Follow up owner - Greg to contact Yama and Mikus
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Power management

Continuing to evolve software to wring all potential power savings out of the hardware. Timed wakeup, allowing screen blanking to recover power and allowing more aggressive suspending. Measuring power usage to avoid regressions. testing for power against real world usage, pushing the remaining suspend-related bugs to completion. Keeping a close eye on software and hardware needed to really reduce power in Gen2.

See also thread on power at: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020538.html - gnu

Presenters: User:Cjb, User:Rsmith, gnu?

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes, Follow up owner - Deepak and CJB
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Eliminating Mesh, keeping 802.11

Mesh barely works. We should expand our hardware choices and avoid locking our software into a failed effort, by moving our software and documentation to straight 802.11 ad-hoc and 802.11 access point configurations. We are almost there now, just need to clean up a few loose ends. - gnu

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Greg to contact Gnu and may fold in to a two hour Gnu's top issues block.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Eliminating DRM in G1G1

Now that Fedora runs out of the box on the XO, it's become more obvious that shipping jailed laptops is bad policy. It's been done via a misguided "security = good" mindset and a lazy "fewer SKUs is easier" approach. - gnu

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - No, Follow up owner - Greg to contact Gnu and may fold in to a two hour Gnu's top issues block.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Whether and how we want the volunteer community to help us with 9.1

If OLPC-the-organizations says that we support the open-source mentality and that we encourage volunteers, we should articulate exactly what kind of volunteer support we want and need, the kind of relationship the organization would like to have with the community, and the kind of support (including support and resources that are conditional) we can provide them with. Mchua 16:54, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I personally think that it is especially important to articulate the kind of volunteer projects we won't support and do not have resources for, so that community members know what they have to do completely independently of OLPC. Knowing the answer is a no is better, for planning and getting-things-done purposes, than remaining in a nebulous "maybe?" state. Mchua 16:54, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Mel and Sebastian. May also combine with Support item above.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Forgotten or Missing Tools

I've worked on a variety of tools or tool-like communication aids which I frequently wish were better known. Therefore, I'd like to advertise, give some demos, show off some tricks, and request some criticism, suggestions, and patches! --Michael Stone 17:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Sugar

Replacing Sugar Totally - whether and how to climb out of the dead-end without further investment - gnu

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Greg to contact Gnu and may fold in to a two hour Gnu's top issues block.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Fixing & featuring activities - process and progress about activity updates; from maintainer pinging (newsreader, paint) to regular activity-review (gcompris sets, simcity). Similarly, publicizing partly-finished activities (shikhar's email, b-logo).

Next-generation journal ideas

--User:CScott (I can give a talk)

--User:Walter (I"d like to talk about portfolios--possibly a closely related topic)

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes Follow up owner - Scott
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Interoperation with legacy apps

--User:CScott (I can give a talk on this topic, but others may be more qualified)

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes. Follow up person - Scott and Marco. Also combine with Marco's Compatibility with desktop applications proposal below.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Printing -- XS runs CUPS, XO prints to XS, profit! discuss

--User:CScott (I'd like to hear a talk)

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - No Follow up owner - ? (Scott?)
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Libraries -- can libraries be more than static content? can they be merged with activity bundles?

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer Follow up owner - ?
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Performance -- System-level performance tweaks for UI responsiveness.

--User:Erik Garrison (short demo)

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes Follow up owner - Erik, Marco and Deepak. Also merge with Marco's performance item below.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Compatibility with desktop applications - Marco Pesenti Gritti

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes Follow up owner - Marco to merge with Interoperation with legacy apps above
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Top five performance problems - Marco Pesenti Gritti

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes Follow up owner - Marco to merge with performance item above.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Web based activities - Marco Pesenti Gritti

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer Follow up owner - Marco
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Sugar as an upstream project - Marco Pesenti Gritti

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer Follow up owner - Marco
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Files

--User:Erik Garrison (Can give a talk providing a concrete set of proposals)

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer Follow up owner - Erik
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Shutdown - The power button is currently underutilized. It should allow either shutdown or suspend of the laptop, with the help of an on-screen dialog or menu. [1]- User:pgf

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes. Follow up owner - Paul to merge with Power item above.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Networking

Network principles -- how do we find others and collaborate with them?

--User:CScott (I can give a talk on this topic)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Asynchronous internet --- offline caching and browsing, library integration?

--User:CScott (I can make a brief proposal; I'd like to hear others present)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Link local presence/collaboration -- improving serverless presence and collaboration including integration of Cerebro

--User:Morgs (I can facilitate discussion - need Poly and Collabora's participation)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Server presence/collaboration improvements -- improving XMPP server based presence and collaboration including Gadget

--User:Morgs (I'd like to see Collabora talk about Gadget implementation and deployment)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Removing sugar-presence-service -- Collabora proposed a complexity reduction by moving PS into Sugar

--User:Morgs (I'd like to see Collabora's ideas presented)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

File or Journal Object Sharing -- Ability to transfer information for distribution or asynchronous collaboration

--User:Morgs (This too needs a discussion with several participants. It might not make 9.1.0 but we need to plan for it.)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Collaboration

-- Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, definition and requirements.

An idea for achieving greater scale for synchronous collaboration by using centralized management and groups.

An explanation of how asynchornous collaboration can be used. A discussion of the lessons learned from the EduBlog and Amadis experiences and consideration of the applicability of Moodle.

Gregorio 19:27, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Linux

Filesystems -- replacing jffs2

--User:CScott (I hope Deepak can give a talk on this topic)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Updates -- Updating faster/better for 9.1

--User:CScott (I can give a talk)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Fedora 10

-- entered by Gregorio 16:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC) Not sure who can present. Main topic is what will it take to get to Fedora 10, what are the benefits and costs.

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Dealing with Low Memory conditions.

-- Thread started by Deepak on low memory at: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020543.html

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Security

Theft-deterrence -- what are we doing, what can we do better

--User:CScott (I can give a talk)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Isolation and untrusted (versions of) activities

--User:CScott (I hope that Michael will speak on this)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Activities and Applications

Activity compatibility

Making it easy to run Fedora Linux apps on the XO. (intro on requirements by me but discussion of technical feasibility and options must be presented by someone else). Gregorio 19:28, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Flash, options for better performance and compatibility

Needs presenter (maybe Wad?). Gnash update and status, hardware acceleration issues between AMD and Adobe, other performance issues, options for full Flash plugin, playing YouTube. Gregorio 16:55, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Media players, video and audio

Needs presenter. Possibly related to Flash above. Technical options for greater media players. Mplayer, video and audio sites and codecs. Performance, codecs and compatibility. Gregorio 16:55, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Demo <video> and <audio> tags embedding OGG directly in HTML in Firefox 3.1 — performance vs. Totem plugin.

What does an electronic textbook look like?

Since the 1960s there have been experiments in high-powered educational software, but not a lot of textbook development that integrates this software into the text, and very little classroom experience. This session will look at the available materials, the types of software and content available, and the implications for future curricula.

What do we know? What examples do we have and what do they show us?

What opportunities can we see? How do we make this happen? What questions should we ask next?

Examples:

• Edison Talking Typewriter to teach reading and writing to pre-school children
• Ken Iverson's textbooks, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Calculus
• Smalltalk and the Dynabook concept
• Matlab, Mathematica, and other powerful software
• Notebook and workspace formats and capabilities
• Teaching programming to children: Smalltalk, Logo, APL, others

Submitted by Ed Cherlin--Mokurai 02:13, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

What's an "Activity"???

I've long wondered about the ambiguities and puzzles inherent in the notion of 'activity' rather than 'application'. Therefore, I'd like to talk about them! --Michael Stone 17:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Activities as Building Blocks

If one chooses to regard Activities as the "basic building blocks" of learning experiences, then it seems natural to wonder how these blocks can be glued together into larger learning structures. --Michael Stone 17:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Interfacing with Wetware

Teacher Training

It would particularly be interesting to hear about actual experience, success stories, failures, best practices, cultural / ideological issues...

If I had a chance to present, I would want to talk about "the medium is the message: Using XOs to Train in Using XOs"

Yamaplos 19:59, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Getting to Countrywide Saturation

Lessons from winning >$100M customers at Cisco. The business and technical steps to rolling out 3,500 Rack Units of hardware. e.g. RFI, RFP, RFQ, lab trial, field trial, transitioning from architecture team to production team, ongoing technical and operational customer maintenance. Gregorio 15:18, 28 October 2008 (UTC)