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Talking to SJ

support

  • find people at UChicago who care about OLPC
    • sponsorship!
  • Google Chicago are good friends :)

bootcamps

(we will go over this during the first week or two of summer)

  • introduce people to OLPC
  • introduce them to the XO
  • how to set up a local group
    • networking
    • project support
  • hardware hacking

Mel's ideas

meta

0. Mel is hosed feel free to act and don't worry about

people

Mel, Nlee, Tank, Chris Carrick.

Others: IMSA? Chicago grassroots people?

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

Stipends (Mel would like to pay people... and wouldn't mind breaking even herself, although that's far less important)

  • Rent
  • Van
  • Class supplies

Sponsors

  • 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?

  • probably not just for the summer, but OLPC Chicago might consider setting up at least a bank account.

Incorporate as nonprofit?

  • Not necessarily now
  • Tax deductible yay!
    this really isn't as interesting as it seems
  • Easier to get contributions/donations
    but not for small contributions, and it takes a year or so to take effect
  • 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
My advice : work under an umbrella first, worry about incorporation and then nonprofit status later.

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?
  • These are all good ideas. There are general nonprofit umbrellas.

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. 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 for the fun part:

local support is high!

  • people are 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

  • the low-cost laptop bill
    • YAY!
    • olpc-chicago list rocketing off on getting support in the legislature
    • what can we do to help?
  • local support:
    • 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...)
    • 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
  • 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

  • Plan ahead of time : pilot mini boot-camp at 1cc first (possibly part of 2nd) week of june
    • 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?


Other random notes

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