OLPC:News/2008/Week 6

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the week in review: Week {{{2}}}, {{{1}}}* feel free to comment and update with footnotes and links to the talk page.

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Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat +

Style note: bolded terms in items from the week indicate pages on this wiki that have been updated with new information as a result.

^ Overview

Update.1 moves closer to completion with RC2
Active learning discussions this week help review trials
Community meeting times become a bit more regular, with regular minutes from IRC 
  (library, health, games, testing, support, open)
Calendar : 
  FOSDEM Europe -- sugar hacking, OLPC Europe, and more
  XO roadshows grow internationally; Cambridge Science Festival jam
Roadmaps : for a contributors program, for local groups, for Update.2 (features)   
  under discussion:
    Library activity : becoming its own activity; updates to Browse's main page
    community review process  

x Interactions

opportunities, people, engagements

Weekly meetings

• Sunday, 1300 EST / 1800 UTC : health projects and content : on #olpc-meeting
• Sunday, 1400 EST / 1900 UTC : general meeting : community and grassroots projects, local trial development, q&a
• Sunday, 1400-1700 EST : office hours @ the OLPC offices in Cambridge
• Sunday, 1600 EST : support meetings, repair center discussions
• Tuesday, 1600 EST / 2100 UTC : library meeting
• Thursday, 1600 EST / 2100 UTC : testing meeting (time change this week)
• Friday, 1600 EST / 2100 UTC : open discussion on IRC and by phone

There are also regular team meetings for other specific teams. If you have a meeting or gathering you want me to include next week, drop me a line.

Conferences and Events

If you're near one of these upcoming events, drop a line to olpc-open or the grassroots list and let everyone else know; or plan a meetup.

Asia

Istanbul : OLPC Turkey takes off

• Istanbul presentation on OLPC Turkey

  Alp Simsek of the MIT Turkish Student Association (MIT-TSA) has been drumming up support among MIT students and students in Turkey to develop an active OLPC Turkey chapter. They organized a press conference on Friday with partner NGO Ari Movement, who hosted the affair. Reporters fom national papers Milliyet and Hurriyet attended. They are pursuing close ties with university groups in Turkey and hope to attract contributors from the humanities and from computer science.

India : Sayamindu D. is at Gnunify, presenting about OLPC...

North America

San Francisco : GDC 2008 is a week away

• GDC 2008 - the annual Game Developers Conference - will be Feb 18-22 in San Francisco. Many OLPCans will be there, including some of our active games developers; groups from CMU's ETC and MIT Gamelab, various Second Lifers, the Jordan Brothers (well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad), OneBigGame, and more. Also some groups doing fascinating things with interactive environments, such as GMD Studios.

Boston : We have our weekly open house Sunday 1400-1700, as usual, in Cambridge.

· Artefacts

projects, events, news, materials

News

• OLPC:News : 16 updates from the office and the field

• The pilot issue of the Community zine is finally underway, with a separate section for the new activity within OLPC Europe

• Help wanted : We could use help wikifying OLPC:News when it comes out, and updating individual pages on this wiki with notes from current and past editions of (including pulling out the we're keeping the archives and keeping them on-wiki) --Sj talk

In the press

• Maharashtra trial under discussion
• OLPC in New York City

Milestone: Update.1 RC2

• Please test Update.1's rc2 release (Build 691) and report your results.

  For activities : please test all activities to see what has changed; test the browser and its speed with various javascript apps

  For collections: Test installation and uninstallation of new collections; in particular, test the on-disk collections that can be installed via the "find activities" sidebar from the browser's home page.

= Fundament

tools, status, deadlines, process

Portals

• The OLPC Forum has a slightly updated look. olpchelp and olpc.osuosl.org redirect here; now with more security. Thanks to Peter Harrison and Michael Burns for making the recent merge so smooth.
• The Activities page

Timeline: Update.2

There is discussion of relying more on community review and assessment of activities and collections for update.2. Help us refine our critera for the best projects, and nominate activities and collections you like for featuring/testing or for peer review.

Update.2 Library

We're working to make the creation, assessment, and packaging of bundles easier and more compatible with existing systems. See discussions about a move to more sensible and unified bundle metadata, and new auto-bundling tools being developed with curriki.

Please make sure any bundles you work on include needed metadata about their sources, authors, and licenses : including the info included in Template:project-summary and any bibliographic information

Update.2 Features

see the git milestones page for a rought timeline with features.

+ Priorities

milestones, sequences, first and next

Library

• Test the library of Peruvian textbooks (1-6, 15 books per grade) for display speed, ease of adding/removing books
• Make addition of new collections easier in the absence of a network -- via USB
• Test and finalize library-core#Update.1
• Finalize a draft review process for choosing featured content (potentially including library-core#Update.2)

Localization

• Test and refine l10n for XO Core and Update.1
• Add more projects to pootle (especially XO Bundled)
• Review localization priorities for new localization recruits
• Properly integrate library strings and core collections (such as Getting Started) with pootle

Local chapters

• An OLPC Europe meeting is being organized for FOSDEM.
• Get Weekly zine/0 edits and translations

  Draw in contributions and interviews from new community members for next week

o Reflection

review, updates, analysis, feedback

Keep your own 'week in review'

• Feel free to use this or other templates; keep track of the projects you're working on, who you are collaborating with, where you hope to be next week, and what you're excited/worried about.

Feedback on the week

• Share your ideas on OLPC, and on education in general, in your own userspace -- post, link to inspiring blog posts, capture the best discussions from mailing lists, help us refine a body of ideas and knowledge future contributors can build upon.
• Post ideas, links, or suggestions here; or submit them directly to the weekly zine.
• Bring questions and ideas to our weekly community discussions -- Sunday afternoons, for grassroots projects and initiatives, or Friday afternoons, for broader open discussion.