Olin university chapter

This is the wiki-homepage of the Olin college OLPC university chapter. Please edit!

Office Hours

Weekly office hours are held at 1CC on Friday and Sunday afternoons. Use this space to update and organize transportation, as well as giving SJ a heads-up on how many people to expect.

4:30-6:30 pm, Friday 2/1

• Greg
• Nikki
• Andrea
• Sandra
• Jacob W
• Matt J
• kelliott
• Andy P (can't go until 5 if this is possible)

2:00-5:00pm, Sunday 2/3

• drivers
• passengers

XOs on campus

There are currently 4 XOs on Olin's campus. To check out a machine, contact Greg.

• 1 B1 machine with Andy Barry
• 1 B2 machine with Nikki
• 1 B2 machine with Andy P
• 1 B4 machine with Nikki

Projects

To see all projects associated with Olin's OLPC chapter, check out our project page.

Repair Center

We are in the planning stages of creating a repair center at Olin. Past brainstorming lives at Olin university chapter/Repair center.

Hackathon/Mini-Jam

See University Chapter Jam Boston.

Current tasklist

New Tasks

• get involved with rt and bug triage
• get B1s and B2s running latest builds of Sugar (Andy Barry is working on this; contact him to help out)
• nameplates for XOs on campus
• t-shirt designs (open to everyone)

Ongoing Tasks

• schedule visit to the Trotter School, coordinate with Engineering Discovery
• continue Yalp interface design
• schedule office hours
• brainstorming
• documentation

Meeting notes

Archives of minutes can be viewed at the Olin university chapter/archives page.

1/25/08

• We have one XO that is the current build
• Repair Centers
  • Give one get one program launched, started shipping laptops- very hands off.
  • People don't know how to use them, no official repair centers, can't buy spare parts
    • Do we know which laptops are gives/gets? No, but shipping might.
  • Grassroots movement to start local repair centers
    • Buy parts, have them shipped, send you laptop, fix and test, send it back!
    • Pros: Not too expensive for donor, Cheap for us, no $$
    • Another give one / get one program for repairs?
  • Olin Involvement?
    • Scaling is a problem
    • We'd get trained
    • We have a lot of questions to ask
      • How many would we get
      • Streamlining Things
    • We're interested, but we still have questions!
• Sustainable repair center business model
  • See what happens
  • Document!
• Help distribute with give/get many.
  • Less viable, but mentioned
  • Have people distribute to groups that have banded together to order
• Whether or not to design for something to stamp from cardboard so it's easy to ship OLPCs
  • Repair center and distribution benefit from this
  • Fold and tape shut!
• Targeting our skills
  • Designing boxes > Packing boxes
• Hackathon/Mini-Jam
  • See the mini-Jam from last summer for games.
  • Could copy OSA Flash Conference, or be part of it.
  • A week long thing for a couple hours everyday when people drop it and work and write code or build things or play with peripherals.

    This is what IMSA did - it worked pretty well, for the record. More lead time to get parts, info, etc. for physical projects and ones that involved contacting people outside the original team. Mchua 22:55, 28 January 2008 (EST)

  • Nope. Better to have one day.
  • Inviting other colleges?
  • At Olin with student body?
  • Saturday at Olin, get them to pitch in for guests, use dining hall
  • Have projects people can attack already
  • Really open ended now. People can write what they want.
  • WHO WANTS TO BE IN CHARGE? AndyP, Ollie, Yifan
    • Report back within two weeks!
    • Themes,Dates
  • See disassembling later
• Partnering with IMSA
  • They're open but we need concrete ideas
  • Do we want diplomacy?
  • Mentoring, fabrication?

    They especially need someone who can help the circuits team with designing sensor input modules. Mchua 22:55, 28 January 2008 (EST)

  • They seem into coding.

    Actually, not so much - they're open to learning how to code, but want to do other things - grassroots org (they're doing a lot of outreach to the rest of Chicago), curriculum particularly language learning, documentation (especially filming), Health hardware and software but also medical-related content and testing, going out into the field in other countries - talk to them about things that aren't engineering or coding, too. Mchua 22:55, 28 January 2008 (EST)

• Who wants to get back to Ian?
  • Greg will help.
  • Ellen likes to solder.
• Disassembling an XO
  • Videotape profs and students taking apart an XO and talking about what they see
  • Talk about user interface and code
  • One of the jam themes!

    I so want to see this film when it is done. Mchua 22:55, 28 January 2008 (EST)

• Projects
  • YALP
    • Good HFID thing?
    • Usability? Redesign?
    • Yes, we like HFID + YALP! Yay!
  • Ideas?
    • Andy has ideas for subtasks.
  • Streamlining new people so they can use the wiki and be functional and comfy!
    • Get wiki accounts and check these pages
    • Ollie is in charge of the page internships, needs a wiki account.
• Witty insults
  • Python is a leftist programming language, and thus we are communists.
  • C++ is capitalist, if anyone is wondering.

    Sounds like a blast, folks. I miss you all. Mchua 22:55, 28 January 2008 (EST)

Contact Information

The current Olin OLPC Chapter Pong Person is Nikki Lee. Contact her for general questions.