XOCamp 2

The XOcamp 2 miniconference in Has location city::Cambridge Has location country::USA, is scheduled for January 12, 2008 to January 16, 2008

FUDcon will be Jan 9-11 See: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConF11. XOCamp will be the week following, Jan 12-14 and it will have tracks for technical and community events. Thursday and Friday that week (Jan 15 and 16) will be reserved for other meetings and wrap-up sessions for the organizers.

The purpose of the XOCamp is to help frame our long-term software development effort. In addition, we will work on prioritizing requirements, features and goals for the next major feature release called XO Software Release 9.1.0 and the Sugar 0.84 release. It will probably be similar to XOcamp 1 in nature.

Subject Matter

Please submit proposals for topics to cover. These may include, but are not limited to:

• Top concerns and requirements of users and countries including reviews of available feedback
• Learning priorities and tools needed to support them
• Technologies, applications and software design proposals
• Process and infrastructure proposals
• Current and needed research

Agenda

This is a proposed agenda : please feel free to edit and improve it!

Monday January 12, 2009 : Technical meetings (See proposals below)

Tuesday January 13, 2009 : Technical meetings (See proposals below)

Wednesday January 14, 2009  : Technical meetings (See proposals below)

Thursday January 15, 2009 : Open for meetings and wrap-up sessions for the organizers.

Friday January 16, 2009  : Open for meetings and wrap-up sessions for the organizers.

Proposals

Propose talks below and list your name below talks you'd like to see. Other talks are being proposed by email to devel@lists.laptop.org, so feel free to propose there instead (or as well).

To add a proposal, please use the following format:

: '''TITLE''' - description - presenter [if you have one in mind]
:: more description, if needed

Title - please make this as short as possible while being precise.

Description - this should be 20-100 words long. Please leave longer descriptions on a separate page dedicated to the subject.

How much time is needed

Who can lead the discussion

What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other). Post them here.

User Requirements - 4 hours

Who is the user and what do they want?

Summary: Overview of top concerns from deployment leads, students and teachers. An aggregated look at the top items requested. An in depth look at the motivation of a few specific requests. Time permitting, can include a discussion of how to turn user feedback in to actionable requirements. Can include a detailed "use case" explaining the technical environment and social context of a target school.

The Medium Is The Message, using the XO in Teacher Training to achieve Total Buy-In, 30-45 minutes _Yamaplos

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes, Follow up owner - Greg
• How much time is needed? 2 - 3 hours
• Who can lead the discussion? Greg, Yama (Kim, Ed and Reuben also possible, others?)
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)? Presentation planned.

Status - On track to include. Next steps, ToC for presentation.

Uruguay Observations

Summary: Chris and I are going to spend a bit over a week in Uruguay immediately prior to the conference. I expect that we will speak about our adventures (assuming that we return capable of speaking!). --Michael Stone 17:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

• How much time is needed? 1 hour
• Who can lead the discussion? Chris and Michael
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Status - On track to include. Next steps, ToC for presentation. Detailed information wont be ready until after the trip in mid November.

Deployment is Hard! Notes from Nepal's Deployments

Summary: Bryan Berry will talk about Nepal's deployments with help from Tony Anderson. Will talk about tough stuff like teacher training, developing local support infrastructure, managing volunteers, and particular technical needs.

Time

• 90 minutes + 30 minutes of discussion
• Bryan Berry and Tony Anderson will lead the discussion
• Powerpoint presentation will accompany the talk

Software Engineering - 4 hours

Distributing OLPC

Summary: Open discussion to address the following questions.

1. How can OLPC encourage worldwide decentralized community development models for pedagogy and the content and software to support it?
   1. And then let the whole worldwide community benefit? _{Yamaplos 19:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)}
2. How can communication between/among OLPC-the-organization and grassroots pedagogical, content, and software developers be improved?
   1. Define, clarify channels. Who do you contact for a small deployment? How do you distribute not just green bricks but knowledge and training? Who should you contact in 1CC for what kind of issue? _{Yamaplos 19:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)}
3. Whether and how we want the volunteer community to help us with 9.1
   1. If OLPC-the-organizations says that we support the open-source mentality and that we encourage volunteers, we should articulate exactly what kind of volunteer support we want and need, the kind of relationship the organization would like to have with the community, and the kind of support (including support and resources that are conditional) we can provide them with. Mchua 16:54, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
   2. I personally think that it is especially important to articulate the kind of volunteer projects we won't support and do not have resources for, so that community members know what they have to do completely independently of OLPC. Knowing the answer is a no is better, for planning and getting-things-done purposes, than remaining in a nebulous "maybe?" state. Mchua 16:54, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

• How much time is needed - 1 hour
• Who can lead the discussion - Rafael, (Mel available for backup)
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Status - On track to include. Next steps, ToC for presentation.

Why is this under "software engineering"? No doubt there are software-related issues we need to address, but this is primarily a wetware issue. The tools are there, agreed they are not perfect, yet the fact they are not being used has to do with how we reach (or miss reaching) people, not with hardware or software. Yamaplos 17:57, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Forgotten or Missing Tools

Summary: I've worked on a variety of tools or tool-like communication aids which I frequently wish were better known. Therefore, I'd like to advertise, give some demos, show off some tricks, and request some criticism, suggestions, and patches! --Michael Stone 17:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

• How much time is needed? 1 hour
• Who can lead the discussion? Michael
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Automated testing tools

--User:Mchua and/or the QA team (Kim, Joe, Frances) - what tools are being used now and where to find howtos on using them, what tools would you like to see made/improved, how should test automation fit within our develop/test/release workflow, what testing tools can be developed and/or run by the community.

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes, Follow up owner - Mel
• Time: 60-90 minutes should be sufficient for both demos and discussion combined.
• Who: Mchua and the QA group can demo what the QA group is using right now, send a call for/invite/ authors and users of existing testing tools to give mini-stand-ups during this time, and moderate discussion.
• Prep: Call for (and choose/schedule) mini test-tool demos, prep demo spiels for existing QA tools (I'll have to do this anyway regardless of an XOCamp presentation, for community test)... some code customization to make tools work (better) for OLPC will likely be needed. Mchua

Working with Upstream Projects

Keeping Up with Fedora

-- entered by Gregorio 16:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC) Not sure who can present. Main topic is what will it take to get to Fedora 10, what are the benefits and costs.

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?
• Reviewed Nov 12. Status - Yes, owner Chris.

Replacing Sugar Totally - whether and how to climb out of the dead-end without further investment - gnu

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion? Gnu
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Fixing & featuring activities - process and progress about activity updates; from maintainer pinging (newsreader, paint) to regular activity-review (gcompris sets, simcity). Similarly, publicizing partly-finished activities (shikhar's email, b-logo).

School Server - 2 hours

Summary - Status and plans.

• Quick overview of the status of the XS
• Areas where can relieve pressure from the XO
  • Narrative and content publishing/ sharing
  • Upgrade and other mgmt tools
• Focus areas to improve XO-XS interaction for 9.1 release cycle
  • Service announcement (DNS? mDNS? Zeroconf? DNS masking?)
  • "XS within sight" flag on XO
  • Lease management protocol - (to be continued in theft deterrence)
  • Browse.xo automagic auth
  • ejabberd, presence service / roster mgmt
  • "Thicker" wikislices
• Interesting goals for 9.2 or later
  • Backup as extension of Journal (a la Time Machine)
  • "Universal" book reader
  • Alternative mesh strategies - Cerebro
  • Sneakernet - wwwoffle
  • MikMik and the XS

• How much time is needed? 2 hours
• Who can lead the discussion? Martin
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Languages - 2 hours

i18n and l10n: 9.1 and beyond

The areas I would like to cover include:

• Input methods: Out current input system (XKB) is not enough for Chinese/Japanese/Korean, and even existing customers like Ethiopia have needs which are met with considerable difficulty with XKB. For 9.1, I propose that we switch to SCIM[1], which should take care of most (if not all) of our current requirements.
• Multiple, non English fallback languages: Many of our users will probably be multilingual. A Aymara speaker would like to see the UI strings falling back to Spanish translations in absence of Aymara instead of the normal, default English. We have the existing infrastructure in our core i18n infrastructure, implementing this is simply a matter of making changes in Sugar (and maybe Rainbow).
• Language packs: The current system of language packs is not very reliable (it overwrites the original translations in the system, installations cannot be easily undone, no versioning, etc). I want to switch to a RPM based language pack system for 9.1, which will be easier to deploy (especially if the customization key mechanism gets support for RPM). This will require support for multiple locale directories, and I'll talk about that as well (Ubuntu uses a similar approach - I plan to reuse their patches if possible).
• User modifiable translations: There has been a number of ideas on this - initially (during my last visit to 1CC), we were thinking of a "Translate Activity" which would let children add/modify translations, and optionally let them share the translations over the mesh. SJ and Scott have recently suggested a wiki-like editable UI, which would, definitely be much cooler ;-). I want to brainstorm on this, and try to figure out the amount of time we need to do this, the advantages, risks, tradeoffs involved etc.

Presenter: Sayamindu

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes, Follow up owner - Sayamindu and SJ
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Language learning on the XO

Tools for language learners.

Presenter: Cjb

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes, Follow up owner - Chris
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Sugar - 4 hours

Next-generation journal ideas

--User:CScott (I can give a talk)

--User:Walter (I"d like to talk about portfolios--possibly a closely related topic)

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Yes Follow up owner - Scott
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Libraries

Can libraries be more than static content? can they be merged with activity bundles?

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer Follow up owner - ?
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Files

--User:Erik Garrison (Can give a talk providing a concrete set of proposals)

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer Follow up owner - Erik
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Searching

There are various places where one searches for information in daily use of an XO. Improvements to search (in the journal, in sugar views, in browse) are discussed

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Mel and SJ
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Multiplayer wikipad

Sharing a namespace of versioned editable docs. MikMik update. - [Mako?]

--Sj talk

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Mel and SJ
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Customizing skins

Setting desktop themes and backgrounds is another quick rewarding way to feel ownership of one's system

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner ?
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

View source key everywhere

Thread from Tomeu at: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020576.html

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Scott and Tomeu (may only need a "flash" session.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Networking and Collaboration - 4 hours

Reviewed 11/5. This section should be re-worked in to two sessions Greg to synch up with Morgan, Scott and Michail

Underlying Technologies

Network principles -- how do we find others and collaborate with them?

--User:CScott (I can give a talk on this topic)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Time Delayed internet --- offline caching and browsing, library integration?

--User:CScott (I can make a brief proposal; I'd like to hear others present)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Link local presence/collaboration -- improving serverless presence and collaboration including integration of Cerebro

--User:Morgs (I can facilitate discussion - need Poly and Collabora's participation)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Server presence/collaboration improvements -- improving XMPP server based presence and collaboration including Gadget

--User:Morgs (I'd like to see Collabora talk about Gadget implementation and deployment)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Removing sugar-presence-service -- Collabora proposed a complexity reduction by moving PS into Sugar

--User:Morgs (I'd like to see Collabora's ideas presented)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Eliminating Mesh, keeping 802.11

Mesh barely works. We should expand our hardware choices and avoid locking our software into a failed effort, by moving our software and documentation to straight 802.11 ad-hoc and 802.11 access point configurations. We are almost there now, just need to clean up a few loose ends. - gnu

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Greg to contact Gnu and may fold in to a two hour Gnu's top issues block.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

GUI, Activities, Sharing, Synchronous/Asynchronous

File or Journal Object Sharing -- Ability to transfer information for distribution or asynchronous collaboration

--User:Morgs (This too needs a discussion with several participants. It might not make 9.1.0 but we need to plan for it.)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Collaboration

-- Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, definition and requirements.

An idea for achieving greater scale for synchronous collaboration by using centralized management and groups.

An explanation of how asynchornous collaboration can be used. A discussion of the lessons learned from the EduBlog and Amadis experiences and consideration of the applicability of Moodle.

Also submitting homework and student - teacher interaction. See thread started by Yama on Devel: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-October/009472.htmland thread started by Mikus: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020436.html

Gregorio 19:27, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Linux and XO OS - 4 Hours

Filesystems

Replacing jffs2

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion? Deepak
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

* Reviewed Nov 12. Status

Yes want to do it. Need owner (Deepak) to add more details.

Updates

Updating faster/better for 9.1

--User:CScott (I can give a talk)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Could review requirements definition here - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap#Faster_imaging

* Reviewed Nov 12. Status

defer until more details available. Greg to check with Scott.

Dealing with Low Memory conditions

Thread started by Deepak on low memory at: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020543.html

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion? Erik and Deepak
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Power management

Summary: Continuing to evolve software to wring all potential power savings out of the hardware. Timed wakeup, allowing screen blanking to recover power and allowing more aggressive suspending. Measuring power usage to avoid regressions. testing for power against real world usage, pushing the remaining suspend-related bugs to completion. Keeping a close eye on software and hardware needed to really reduce power in Gen2. Also includes - the power button is currently underutilized. It should allow either shutdown or suspend of the laptop, with the help of an on-screen dialog or menu. [1]

See also thread on power at: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020538.html - gnu

• How much time is needed? Maybe 2 hours?
• Who can lead the discussion? User:Cjb, User:Rsmith, gnu?, User:pgf
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Status - Status - On track to include. Next steps, ToC for presentation.

Performance

Summary - System-level performance tweaks for UI responsiveness.

• How much time is needed? 1 hour
• Who can lead the discussion? Erik
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Status - Yes spot reserved.

Security - 2 Hours

Theft-deterrence

Summary: what are we doing, what can we do better. Could review this requirement and any accompanying design: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap#Activation_lease_security

• How much time is needed? 1 hour?
• Who can lead the discussion? User:CScott
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Interested parties

Martin

Isolation and untrusted activities

--User:CScott (I hope that Michael will speak on this)

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Delegation of Signing Leases

Ed asked this be covered.

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Interested parties

Martin

Eliminating DRM in G1G1

Now that Fedora runs out of the box on the XO, it's become more obvious that shipping jailed laptops is bad policy. It's been done via a misguided "security = good" mindset and a lazy "fewer SKUs is easier" approach. - gnu

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - No, Follow up owner - Greg to contact Gnu and may fold in to a two hour Gnu's top issues block.
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Activities and Applications - 4 Hours

Interoperation with legacy apps

Summary: Activity compatibility. Making it easy to run Fedora Linux apps on the XO. See also this thread: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-October/020595.html

• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion? User:CScott
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Status - Likely but needs more confirmation.

eBook Reader

Three parts below need to be combined. Gregorio 21:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Martin is very keen on this topic. We need something really compelling, standard and compatible for OLPC and all/most other viable platforms to win. Currently, every content project creates their own viewer (often webbased). We want to be able to show the content from a thousand sources, through a single viewer. We need something so easy for content creators to embrace, and so obviously good that they embrace it.

What does an electronic textbook look like?

Since the 1960s there have been experiments in high-powered educational software, but not a lot of textbook development that integrates this software into the text, and very little classroom experience. This session will look at the available materials, the types of software and content available, and the implications for future curricula.

What do we know? What examples do we have and what do they show us?

What opportunities can we see? How do we make this happen? What questions should we ask next?

Examples:

• Edison Talking Typewriter to teach reading and writing to pre-school children
• Ken Iverson's textbooks, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Calculus
• Smalltalk and the Dynabook concept
• Matlab, Mathematica, and other powerful software
• Notebook and workspace formats and capabilities
• Teaching programming to children: Smalltalk, Logo, APL, others

Submitted by Ed Cherlin--Mokurai 02:13, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Annotation - storing general annotations for documents and other works. Formats, tools, Sugar/Journal integration. - ???

--Sj talk

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Mel and SJ
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Book reading - reading texts : interface[s] for reading, bookmarking, annotating; combining readers for different formats; models to follow. - [sayamindu?]

--Sj talk

• Reviewed 10/29 - tentative status - Defer, Follow up owner - Mel and SJ
• How much time is needed?
• Who can lead the discussion?
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)?

Theory of Activities

What's an "Activity"???

I've long wondered about the ambiguities and puzzles inherent in the notion of 'activity' rather than 'application'. Therefore, I'd like to talk about them! --Michael Stone 17:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Activities as Building Blocks

If one chooses to regard Activities as the "basic building blocks" of learning experiences, then it seems natural to wonder how these blocks can be glued together into larger learning structures. --Michael Stone 17:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Not sure who can present these. Michael, do you want to prepare the talk? GS.

Community

Why it matters

In my view it is the whole bottom line, la raison d'être of the whole project. No matter the XO and us are agents in developing scientists, artists, lawyers, whatever (who anyway are wont to migrate North ASAP), if there is not a process of community getting built among people who are not familiar with the culture and processes of collaboration, we are for naught, except maybe in making things worse. And of course, it is not at all just about sharing an activity, which is a software/hardware issue, it's the whole concept of building things together, sharing, being open to give and take, losing the "no te metás" (don't get involved) mentality. Yamaplos 17:33, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

• Discuss specific strategies so that all the rest of the software / hardware effort is not wasted
• Specific fixes to software and hardware

• How much time is needed? a couple lifetimes? OK, gimme an hour at least, maybe in such a way that it can overflow into dinner or lunch
• Who can lead the discussion? Yama, depending on funding, with Sur list people if we can bring any
• What preparation and materials should be created (e.g. presentations, code samples, other)? I have volunteered EquipoSur_XOCamp2 to help