Grassroots bootcamp/Results

Overview

The first OLPC Grassroots Bootcamp ran last week at Boston at OLPC headquarters - thanks to all who attended, presented, and participated and helped us build community infrastructures, share best practices for grassroots movements, compile a list of Grassroots problems to work on, flesh out a Volunteering process, flesh out the role of a Community ambassador (or ambassadors), and - of course, the smaller moments... playing soccer, eating copious quantities of pizza, filling wall-to-wall whiteboards multiple times over with notes ranging from technical specifications to a request for parfaits, and just getting to know people from all walks of life and all corners of the world.

You can view notes and transcripts from each day at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_bootcamp/Results.

Got notes from the bootcamp?

If you attended the bootcamp, took photos, have notes, project files, or any other things from the past week, please post them on the wiki so all can see - a good place to put these is http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_bootcamp/Results. We're particularly in need of notes from Thursday.

Feedback - please help us improve!

If you're looking through the things we've posted and have suggestions for how we can clean up, clarify, and provide context behind some of the notes to make them more useful to others, please post them to the feedback page, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_bootcamp/Feedback (or reply to me via email) and we'll do our best. There were plenty of bugs in the bootcamp process, as this was a rough first round - so feedback and suggestions for how to make a better bootcamp will be enthusiastically welcomed.

Interested in running your own?

Speaking of future bootcamps: One of the goals for this prototype bootcamp was to come up with a framework and resources such that other groups could run their own (better! localized!) grassroots training bootcamps in the future. Are there any groups out there interested in running/hosting a bootcamp of their own (preferably this summer)? We need some locations to help us figure out what resources we need to make available to help non-Bostonian bootcamps run, so please let us know if this something you'd be interested in helping us work out. It's much easier to build resources if you have someone particular in mind you're building them for, after all. See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_bootcamp/Feedback#I.27m_interested_in_running_my_own_bootcamp.

Cheers and thanks to all!

-Mel and the bootcamp crew

Monday

Transcript

See the /monday transcript from the #olpc-groups IRC channel, where we tried to log as much as possible of the conversations that went on. Bjordan also made a File:OLPC Grassroots Bootcamp.mm of the proceedings, and Andreatl, Nlee, and Ccarrick collaboratively took meeting notes.

Undocumented discussions

• Discussed supporting the pilot in New Haven, CT.

Output

• Grassroots problems - a (growing) list of things we're trying to work through
• How To Run A Jam - redone by Bjordan and Mchua
• Volunteering process - created by Nlee and Ccarrick
• Content workflow - revised by SethWoodworth
• University program - revised by Andreatl
• Community ambassador - revised by Rabi, Jonathan, Thulani

Feedback

Add your thoughts here!

• The transcripts are messy - it's pretty labor intensive to clean them up, though. (Speaking from 6 months of experience cleaning up pretty much every single support-gang transcript...) Is there a way we can take cleaner, more useful notes? Can people give us feedback on how to make these notes more legible, and what gaps we have to fill in, before our memories of the occasion fade? Mchua 23:31, 9 June 2008 (EDT)
• Having OLPC staff come in and join us for lunch (pizza in exchange for adding bugs to the Grassroots problems board) was awesome. We should do that again. Mchua 23:31, 9 June 2008 (EDT)

Recap email

sent to grassroots, olpc-open'

Representatives from 5 continents convened at the grassroots bootcamp (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_bootcamp) at 1cc today - the first day of a 4-day event - to collaborate on community infrastructures, discuss volunteer support, and eat pizza, occasionally with artichokes on top.

Highlights include Christoph Derndorfer (OLPC Austria) leading a brainstorm on the most pressing grassroots community facilitation problems that should be solved, and Tim Anderson from World Computer Exchange discussing their volunteer-based international deployment model. Today's grassroots bootcamp results, including full transcripts of discussions (full of typos, but mostly there!) and a "bug list" of global grassroots community program that should get solved at...

*drumroll...fanfare... curtain lift!*

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_bootcamp/Results#Monday

How you can help:

* Add to our community bug list, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_problems - we'll be working our way through that list this week.
* Comment or contribute to any of the things on the http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_bootcamp/Results page.
* Give feedback - help us generalize this into a redeployable event so that people can run bootcamps in their own locales - in other words, "are you interested in running a bootcamp at your location?" Join the discussion at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Grassroots_bootcamp#How_can_this_be_generalized.3F

All errors/emissions/typos in these notes are almost certainly my fault (though I hope others will continue to spell me off in transcribing, because my hands are about to fall off). Please correct/clarify if you see an occasion to improve any of these notes.

Cheers!

-Mel Chua
written at the grassroots bootcamp Monday postmortem - half of us are still here working.

Tuesday

Transcript

See the /tuesday transcript from the #olpc-groups IRC channel, where we tried to log as much as possible of the conversations that went on.

Feedback

Add your thoughts here!

Recap email

sent to grassroots, olpc-open'

The grassroots bootcamp continued today with:

• A discussion led by Jonathan Austin (from the upcoming Birmingham, Alabama deployment) on training volunteers, getting funding, and building local communities. This led into side discussions on grassroots finances and more...

• Chris Ball gave us all a crash course on Pippy, a learn-by-example programming Activity, and how it can be used to develop Activities and scripts for the XO. Again, the topic was so compelling that a cluster could be found huddled in the back corner talking about internationalization of Pippy, even after plates of food had been placed less than 10 feet away.

Special guests included Pam Cooney from World Computer Exchange and Cynthia Solomon from the OLPC Learning Team, one of the co-creators of Logo. Cynthia and Francesca Slade also led a roleplay during the afternoon where the rest of us pretended to be 8-year-olds learning Scratch (actually learning Scratch in the process). I don't know about the rest of the "students," but Chris Carrick, Nikki Lee, and I ended up engrossed in exploring forensic ballistics* with a Scratch activity that Chris had created to go alongside...

All this and more (including - yes, you guessed it, transcripts!) are at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_bootcamp/Results#Tuesday

All errors/emissions/typos in these notes are almost certainly my fault. Please correct/clarify if you see an occasion to improve any of these notes.

Cheers!

-Mel Chua

• we were strange 8-year-olds, yes.

Wednesday

Transcript

See the /wednesday transcript from the #olpc-groups IRC channel.

Feedback

Add your thoughts here!

Recap email

sent to grassroots, olpc-open'

Bootcamp day 3 is done!

Highlights include:

• Feedback from Tuesday's classroom roleplay - next round, we need to find a way to actually work with kids during the bootcamp. This time around was tough because of end-of-school-year scheduling and during-the-day bootcamp timing.
• Pre-luncheon guests Kim Quirk (VP of Software and Support) and Joe Feinstein (OLPC's new QA head honcho) came in to talk about how to get involved in the upcoming surge of community testing.
• Guest speaker Josh Gay from the FSF gave a lunch presentation on "Designing for Participation" - the cycle of defining projects and goals in such a way that it makes it easy for volunteers to get involved.
• Seth Woodworth and SJ Klein led a discussion on "community APIs" and what

Full notes and transcripts from the day (super-helpful, with much more detail - most of these transcripts are quite good, thanks to our volunteers!) are available at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_bootcamp/Results/wednesday_transcript.

Cheers!

-Mel

Thursday

Transcript

See the /thursday transcript from the #olpc-groups IRC channel.

Feedback

Add your thoughts here!

Recap email

sent to grassroots, olpc-open

Technology was the focus of the last day of our 4-day grassroots bootcamp, kicking off with a school server (XS) installation walkthrough led by Ankur Verma, Dan Drake, and Chris Carrick. Disassembly, repair centers and repair kits, how to write funding proposals, and more were covered in side conversations throughout the afternoon...

Unfortunately, we don't yet have documentation for these, since most attendees had to leave Thursday afternoon or evening, but we're working on it and will post them on the wiki page - that's http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_bootcamp/Results - when they're done. (There is a minimal transcript of the start of the XS installation session up there right now.)

A recap of the entire bootcamp will be coming in just a moment.