OLPC NYC

OLPC New York Local metro-area grassroots group

About

The New York Interest Group is a way for people in the New York metro area and surrounding locations to talk about and work together on OLPC. We aren't necessarily interested just in trying to bring OLPC into classrooms in New York (although we generally think it's a wonderful idea) we're also interested in volunteering/contributing to the project.

OLPC New York IS

1. a nucleation point for exchange between local groups, towards the OLPC Boston office and back, and with other groups worldwide
2. helping in organizing XOs for the local groups
3. supporting and cherishing the autonomy of local groups
4. focusing on rough consensus, grassroots involvement, and working projects

OLPC New York IS NOT

1. going to do a local pilot in your school (although we'll encourage and support you if you want to do one yourself)
2. going to tell you what you are and aren't allowed to do (although we're always up for idea-bouncing and brainstorms)

Contact and chapters

Mailing list

If there's enough demand, we'll set up a mailing list. If you'd like to have an NYC-OLPC mailing list, post a link to your contact info (wiki userpages work) below - the minimum number for starting a list is 10 recent requests.

1. Joanna Burgess
2. Nicholas Schaefer
3. Rob Lockhart
4. Mark Wilson
5. Tim Cooper
6. Jim Lombard

Chapters

If you know of any New-York area schools, organizations, or groups of interested people who have organized or want to organize a Grassroots group or an University chapter, please ask them to add a link below.

Existing projects

• Teaching Matters is running a pilot in the city - see their blog here.

Short URL set up for this wiki page

http://bit.ly/olpcny

Events

Future Activities

• Sunday Oct 18, 2009 - Join community visionaries from DC, NYC and Boston for an afternoon of strategizing around OLPC and Sugar's unheralded successes, local projects, and long-term forward path. Teachers, Technologists, and Twitterers -- join us for an afternoon of serious structured brainstorming. Poster, Location & Detail to be announced here very soon! (Learning innovators, Software carpenters, Marketing gurus, Usability experts, Local teachers all most welcome)

• Would you like to plan something? Add it here!

Past Activities

• Story Jam New York - March 28-30, 2008. At UNICEF.

Project ideas

If you're in New York and want to work on a project with someone local, post ideas here.

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I would love to set up a fundraiser event that brings awareness to this amazing initiative as well as collecting funds to buy and provide even more of these laptops to kids around the world. I'm relatively new to the NY area and to fundraising, so anyone else who's interested, please post here! (Post your ideas if you have them!)

Related groups

There is a NYCXO New York City XO Laptop Users Group that is focused less on developers and deployers, and more on G1G1 donors who are interested in learning to use their little green laptops, but over time, there is likely to be more overlap between this group and the OLPC New York group.