OLPC Chicago/Jan 22 2008

Many thanks to Ian from OpenPlans for setting us up, and Fitz, Jon, and Kate from Google Chicago for being absolutely amazing hosts, as well to all the people who came out on a cold night to make this gathering happen.

Notes

Feel free to add to these notes or edit them if something is missing or inaccurate!

• Google Chicago served food. Very, very good food.
• Mel Chua gave a brief overview of the OLPC project and ways to get involved
• Students from the Illinois Math and Science Academy Chapter gave rocket-pitch overviews of their projects
  • an EKG module and basic sensor input for the XO - looking for electrical engineers to help with design; hoping to make something easy to fabricate from basic parts in the field
  • a multilingually-subtitled short film on Measure and the scientific method with emphasis on cultural appropriateness (thumbs-up gestures edited out, conservative clothing, etc.)
  • A Time activity, written in Python
  • Documentation, including a tutorial for Sugar emulation in Windows
  • Experimentation and calibration of Acoustic Tape Measure
  • Comprehension-based language-learning software (starting with Spanish)
• Other hackers gave spontaneous presentations of their projects
  • Running Ubuntu on the XO. See Ubuntu On OLPC XO.
  • Running xfce on the XO as a window manager
  • Playing with the camera in Python - time-lapse photography and a time-delay display (which is very trippy to look at; the screen shows what you were doing 5 seconds ago).
  • Others we forgot?
• Announcements of upcoming events
  • Chris Brown looking for OLPC presenters in Wilmette for Feb. 5 to demo/explain the program at a teachers' tech conference. More details here.
  • OLPC at PyCon 2008 in March; attend, network, present, hack? Scholarships available!
  • Full-time OLPC-Chicago office-hub and repair/service center opening this summer - volunteers welcome.
• Broke into discussion groups based around topics.

notes

Comments, blog posts, etc. about the event? Add them here.

• Peter Christensen's blog notes - Smart Kids + OLPC = Better World
• Karen Smith's blog report - World Domination by a Bunch of Geeks, which is crossposted at OLPCnews here.
• Gabriel Burt's work on the XO camera, including that creepy delay function and time-lapse photography [1]