Talk:Grassroots bootcamp

I need help in order to attend

Post what you need here and some info about your situation, and we'll start a conversation with you about what resources we can find to help.

• I need a place to crash from Friday evening (June 6) to at least Sunday (June 8) or possibly longer depending on whether I can get a day off work. ChristophD 18:23, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Christoph, if my housemates say it's okay, we may have a futon in the living room you can crash at. Mchua 21:56, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Thanks, that would be great! A futon, free wifi and the daily shower is all I really need anyway... ChristophD 23:43, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

People who should be invited

A suggestion list - add your thoughts here. Being on this list doesn't mean they will come to the event - we're not sure how much space we have yet... (Initial list by Christoph Derndorfer)

• Mike Lee who is running the OLPC Learning Club DC
• someone from the Dallas FortWorth Area XO users group to come to Boston.
• Maybe also one of the Nortel folks?
• Greg DeKonigsberg
• Benjamin Mako Hill
• support-gang members
• someone from OLPC Chicago - Sheila Miguez, someone from MVCC (Larry, Steve) or IMSA (Scott, Kevin, Jason, April-Hope)?
• maybe Ben Racher (the guy who wants to start OLPC Tennessee)

Ideas for June 2008

Have a relatively open and potentially larger session (open space session) on the preceding Saturday and/or Sunday to gather feedback from as many people as possible and then use the more private meeting from June 9 to 13 to draw upon that input in deciding on how to proceed with the community / grassroots / volunteer efforts.

• Mel
• Christoph
• --Sj talk

To invite

People who should be on the community@ mailing list.

• Existing groups
  • Team: contributors
  • Support-gang members
• People who actively want to come / have been suggested to invite individually
  • Grassroots leaders within the US
  • OLPC bloggers
• Contributors
  • People in the contributors program / with XOs
  • People in the community-group program

Proposed schedule

Example sessions/talks/presentations/discussions/tutorials listed below.

Everyone should come Monday through Thursday. People not involved in the weekend test jam, and interested in grassroots org more than jam prep, can leave then. Everyone else should stay through the weekend and come to NYC Friday night for the test jam.

Cost 

roughly $100/person for the week -- reimbursed for core team members & session leads

• June 2 - application review for core team, scholarship decisions
• June 7-8 (Sat-Sun) - Open space : see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology for how this will run
• June 9 - Grassroots day
  • How to start a grassroots group
  • Survey/directory of existing grassroots groups
  • How to run a local jam (list of examples)
    • Teasers for Jam prep day -- select ~3-person core team, assign tasks, send out save-the-date
  • Local organization : communication, meetups, events, partnerships
    • Teasers for laptop day. select ~4 session leads and notetakers, assign prepwork
• June 10 - Education day
  • Roleplay being kids in an XO pilot, like they did in Nepal
  • Presentation on current deployments, what they're doing in classrooms
  • Constructionism 101
  • How to start a pilot
• June 11 - Infrastructure day
  • Grassroots groups support program / developers program / community program from OLPC: what's needed? Let's make it.
  • Newsletter/communications (Seth)
  • Set up your group's webpage/wiki/mailing list/RT/trac/etc time
  • Practice setting pu the above for the test Jam
  • Joining global efforts : support-gang, open working groups
• June 12 - Laptop day
  • How to disassemble/repair an XO + how to run a repair center (X1 & Adam?)
  • Running a content project (X2 & SJ)
  • Running a translation/il8n project (X3 & SJ)
  • Running an Activity-making project (X4 & CJB?)
  • Getting involved in core development (X5 & mstone?)
• June 13 - Jam prep day
  • Review of how to run a jam
  • Presentation/timeline from core team (selected on Grassroots day)
• June 14-15 (Sat-Sun) - Final exam: Run a Jam in NYC

There will be sessions for hacking (and learning how to hack) on different areas of the XO's stack and supporting software/infrastructure, discussions of our satellite communities around volunteering, learning, and sugar -- globally and in countries, and much more. Stay tuned.

next steps

• Inviting people
  • We want 20-40. Can we make a list of people to invite?
  • Prerequisites list - see below
• Open space weekend
  • The site of Community Jam Boston was glorious... can someone from MIT book the space for us?
  • Need to find someone to run this, preferably someone who's facilitated open space before.
• Supplies
  • Tshirts?
  • Food?
  • Markers, giant post-it notes, nametags for the first day
  • Loaner XOs - Jam kit should be okay
• Jam
  • See what's needed, below

Jam

We're running a Jam in NYC for the "final exam" of the bootcamp. June 14-15 are the dates.

What we need from a host location

• space, chairs and tables (our crew can come on Friday afternoon to set up and so forth) - access to a microphone, projectors/large-screen monitor, etc. would help, but we can improvise equipment
• wireless internet access for attendees at the location
• a budget for supplies, t-shirt printing, and food (say $20/person and you can set how many people you'd like to have - 100?)
• permission to use your logo (if you want it on the publicity)
• permission to bug your developers, if you want your projects worked on - we can send somebody in NYC for a day or two this month to spend an hour or two with the team for each project you'd like people to work on
• access to development resources (your server/bug-tracking tools/repositories if you want people to contribute directly to those resources, or a request to set something like that up for your project on your servers, or a request to set something like that up for your project on our servers)

What we can provide

We can do the rest.

• publicity
• attendee recruitment
• registration
• designing and printing t-shirts
• running the space during the weekend itself
• making sure code repositories and tickets and etc. are hosted and ready to go
• setup and cleanup
• talking with your developers to get their projects ready for jammin'
• can talk about additional things as needed

Context

The context is that we're having an OLPC grassroots bootcamp in Boston from June 9-13, and want to have the attendees run a Jam as their "final exam" - and we'd love to do it for you folks (wanted to talk to SJ about that last sentence clause, which is why I said I'd email you about this later - this is that "later" email.)

I'd propose a focus on development/deployment of projects from the host organzation that involve software (or hardware) that could work on/with the XO, or projects/deployment that could involve the use of XOs.

Prerequisites

This is a draft list of prereqs - you can start doing them, but know that it's not final at all!

(Need to provide useful links to help people complete all these prerequisites)

Link to the following pages in a "Grassroots bootcamp exercises" portion of your wiki page.

• Create and release an .xo Activity bundle with a wikipage - with screenshots - documenting its installation and usage (programming, Activity-making, wiki usage)
• Translate at least 40 terms in pootle. If you don't know a foreign language, find a friend who does and sit down with them; they provide the translations, you put them in. (pootle)
• Find at least 2 bugs, create Trac tickets for them, and cc yourself on the tickets. (bugtracking, testing)
• Resolve 10 RT tickets (deletions of spam don't count). List the ticket numbers resolved and your username. If you don't have RT access, ask Adam. (RT, support)
• Using as few of your own words as possible (in other words, use phrases from other sources and cite them), write a 500-word minimum essay on how OLPC (you may define this term any way you want) does and does not exemplify the Constructionist theory of learning.