User:Nlee/Sandbox

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Mel's ideas

  • 0. Mel is hosed feel free to act and don't worry about
  • Tank, are you going to be with us this summer?
    • Do you need housing?
    • Stipend?
    • Any other equipment/requests/accomodations?
    • What do you want to do?
  • Funding
    • We need it
      • Stipends (Mel would like to pay people... and wouldn't mind breaking

even herself, although that's far less important)

      • Rent
      • Van
      • Class supplies
    • Where can we get it?
    • Josh Gay has offered help/contacts from Chicago-local FSF folks
    • The person who writes grant proposals for IMSA has offered

mentorship, editing, and introductions to grant-granters, but says it's much easier to do this as a nonprofit (more on this in a sec)

    • (Very Bad) Backup Plan: "Mel's Life Savings" (...as a buffer, while

grants/donations haven't come in yet)

  • Legal structure
    • Do we need it at all in the first place?
    • Incorporate as nonprofit?
      • Not necessarily now
      • Tax deductible yay!
      • Easier to get contributions/donations
      • Especially if the low-cost laptop bill passes and this becomes a

statewide effort

      • On the other hand, bureaucracy and paperwork sucks
      • Mel would like to avoid it, but is torn b/c long-term planning is

good and it's not that big a deal to set up a nonprofit

    • Nonprofit umbrella? see Software Freedom Conservancy' (SFC) and

'Software in the Public Interest' (SPI) and similar

      • Should there be a nonprofit umbrella for OLPC grassroots groups in

the US in general, similar to one of the umbrella orgs above?

    • Piggyback w/ existing nonprofit org?
      • OLPC itself?
      • a school? which?
  • Location
    • Kathryn Satewicz introducing us to Boys and Girls clubs about renting

cheap/free office space for summer in exchange for teaching a mini-boot-camp at their location (win-win)

    • Kevin Crews talking to his dad, who owns an office building, about

the possibility of free space for a few months

    • Looking at Evanston-area tech incubators (problem: expensive.

solution: nicely-worded letter.)

    • local companies/schools/libraries/orgs etc have offered their spaces

for meetups, but this is not a good long-term solution

    • Still very in flux... need lots of help, ideas, advice
    • biggest problem: what rent can we afford?
  • Van/mobile office
    • one of the biggest arguments for going nonprofit or under a nonprofit

umbrella (so an individual doesn't have to take personal responsibility/liability for a vehicle)

    • yay craigslist - for less than $2k Mel can get a van from NYC or Boston
    • also looking at used vans from rental car agencies
    • ugly van + rustoleum ---> pretty van! (a-la ian bicking's car)
    • Also saves us plane fare from Boston to Chicago
    • contains: staff, XOs, XS, EE equipment, library
    • goes: freakin' everywhere
  • Supplies
    • need XOs (asking for ~50), should look for a local pilot that wants

them and can pay for them and will loan them to us for the summer in exchange for setup help.

    • should we start purchasing XOs off eBay? (Mel would rather not, at

that quantity)

    • we have a lovely library, or the beginnings of one - kindly donated

by O'Reilly

    • school server; Mel would like to have one, trying to persuade Chicago

people to work on one

  • "hiring," quote-unquote
    • do we need any legal status to be able to 'hire' interns, even unpaid

ones?

    • if not, let's not do it
    • if so, start paperwork now... or convince someone to let us be an

umbrella under them

  • teh interwebs
    • ilxo.org (name; less chicago-centric, there's a whole state out

there. we will be mostly in the chicago area though)

    • chicagolpc.org - office (subset of ilxo; just an url)
    • turtlemobile.org - van (subset of ilxo right now; just an url - if

successful could expand but not counting chickens atm)

Ok, that was the boring stuff. Now the more fun part:

  • local support
    • high!
    • super-excited!
    • holy cow were local people at PyCon psyched and really want to do this
    • IMSA and MVCC going nuts with activity, plans for summer
      • hosting Jam (MVCC) after Larry's 2-week programming class for teens
      • off-grid power research (IMSA) and who knows what else
      • people with contacts to legislators in IL left and right
    • including ChiPy, PyCon people, programming book authors, CS teachers

willing to volunteer time and help teach and train at OLPC events (but not organize events themselves, at this time...)

  • support from
    • google (incl. at least one dev who wants this to be 20% time)
    • chipy (many members, at least - will try to make this a little more

formal)

    • imsa (institutionally - current president of imsa == former state

superintendent of education, and he's *insanely* cool and *loves* OLPC)

    • mvcc (institutionally)
    • students/profs from U of C, U of I, probably others
    • members of the IL legislature (big fans!)
    • many, many other companies, parents, hackers, students, etc. from the

area

    • brightstar, presumably? at least they're nearby and they work with

olpc at the moment... no contact from the /hat{grassroots} direction though, yet - don't think we're comfy making that contact without "permission" from 1cc

  • the low-cost laptop bill
    • YAY!
    • olpc-chicago list rocketing off on getting support in the legislature
    • what can we do to help?
  • activities
    • personal projects (off-grid power, accessibility, ?)
    • getting other projects started
    • getting other grassroots groups started
    • getting pilots started
    • getting all of the above to be independent - explicit sunset clause

at end of april (people can restart/continue then if they wish, but we're setting up so other groups can become strong enough that we can go away and let them run themselves)

    • boot camps - for students who want to start OLPC chapters in their

schools/communities

      • local libraries offering to provide classroom space
      • imsa-olpc student wants to intern and TA these classes; working out

details now, currently unpaid - so that could work out nicely

  • relationships w/ other olpc stuff
    • can we hang out and learn at 1cc first (possibly part of 2nd) week of

june? (pilot mini boot-camp)

    • what do you want us to accomplish
    • what makes a good grassroots group
    • any restrictions/constraints or at least strong suggestions?
    • what is the relationship between olpc the organization and olpc

grassroots groups?

    • what resources does olpc have that we can take advantage of?
  • meaning of life?

Summer

The general gist of this is to figure out what we're doing for the summer; completely undirected hopping around won't accomplish much. So, what are we up to?

People involved

Others:

  • IMSA?
  • Chicago grassroots people?

Purpose and projects

What is the function of a grassroots office? What are our goals? What should our goals be?

  • continue working on repairs and hardware training
    • XO hacking?
    • repair jams?
  • grassroots outreach
    • local mentoring
    • support of projects

Organization

What do we want? What do we need?

Timeline

uhm.

Other random notes

  • meet Greg Smith and invite him to get involved with Olin chapter
  • go through repair center meeting notes
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