OLPC San Francisco Bay Area

About

OLPC San Francisco Bay Area is an general interest group in the San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. The group intends to meet once a month to promote interest, generate ideas and learn from each other in a face-to-face environment.

First meeting

This group met face to face on Jan 12, 2008. The meeting was attended by 22 people. Most of them had XO-1 MP (mass production) laptops.

Details about the meeting are at: http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/445 (also posted below):

Calling all San Francisco Bay Area OLPC enthusiasts! If you have an XO laptop, or are just interested in seeing how they work, come on down to SF State campus for a get together this Saturday. If you have an XO or two (or ten), bring them! If not, bring your enthusiasm.

What: OLPC meet at San Francisco State University

Why: Curiosity, strength in numbers, plain fun!

When: Saturday, January 12, 2008 from 10am to 2pm

Where: Business Bldg. 219, SF State main campus (1600 Holloway Ave. San Francisco, CA 94132).

   Map: http://www.sfsu.edu/~sfsumap/

   By car: http://www.sfsu.edu/~parking/directions/main_campus/car.html

   By Muni: http://www.sfsu.edu/~parking/directions/main_campus/muni.html 

Who: Sponsored by IMSA Student Association (http://imsa.sfsu.edu/). RSVP would be appreciated. sverma@sfsu.edu

Report on the first meeting

Also on the web at http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/446

We had the first meeting of OLPC/XO enthusiasts at San Francisco State University on January 12, 2008. I have had a B4 unit since July 2007, and some of my colleagues decided to get theirs via G1G1. So, we decided to get a group together on campus, but then opened up for others in the Bay Area. After all, there is strength in numbers! We had 22 enthusiasts who came by on the 12th.

The meeting started off with a minor scheduling glitch. Our room was double-booked. Luckily, I had keys to our Ubuntu lab, so that was handy. Next, we had Christian Einfeldt with his camera filming people as they came in. His videos are part of a documentary called Digital Tipping Point, a series of interviews about how free and open source software is enabling people all over the world. DTP videos are available in their raw (source code) goodness at http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=digitaltippingpoint

We also had Charles Francis who took still pictures for DTP. His photos are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/digitaltippingpoint/SanFranciscoBayAreaDigitalTippingPoints (see photos 5 through 11).

I have some other photos at http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=olpcmeet&w=52302911%40N00

We had two five year olds in the group - way better handlers of the XO than any of us - who showed the attendees a thing or two about using the different activities. I was quite impressed at how a five-year old was able to comprehend and work through various activities on the laptop. One of them showed us how to build cartoons using the CartoonBuilder activity.

Many XO owners got into measuring distance using the Acoustic Tape Measure, an activity that allows you to measure distance between two laptops using the speed of sound. The microphones on both machines detect the sound (departure and arrival) and estimate distance. At first the readings were off the scale (292 meters or so) but then stabilized rapidly. We got saner readings such as 3.78 meters. That was a lot of fun.

I had set up an access point for the event (SSID xoxo) but most people were interested in joining the mesh and chatting with each other! Very interesting. Many meshers also shared write activities, photos, and video.

In all, the first meeting was terrific. Attendees were from different backgrounds and that made it a lot more interesting. We hope to keep the ideas flowing by meeting once a month. Currently, the approach is to find a venue around the Bay area and rotate to Peninsula, South Bay, East Bay and back to San Francisco. If nothing works out, we'll meet on campus at SF State in a month. Stay tuned.

If you are interested in keeping up with this group, drop me a note at sverma@sfsu.edu. I'll keep you informed.