Talk:LinuxFest Northwest 2008

no jam

I vote no Jam during the event. Jams are best held in (more) isolation - they're very absorbing events and we don't want Jam participants distracted by other things going on, or to suck attendees away from LFNW for the whole time! A pre-LFNW Jam in the 1-3 days prior to the conference is an option, as is a post-LFNW jam... but I'd really prefer not to have dates overlap. Mchua 01:48, 14 February 2008 (EST)

track goal - local grassroots

Seth: The Stone Soup presentation is a good start, and possibly a theme for the entire track.

I think some building of local momentum would be awesome - the hard part about multidisciplinary grassroots groups is that they're tough to nucleate, to get people to figure out what they can collaborate on and the very disparate sources of information and help (from fields you don't normally interact with) you can draw from. In this case, there's a whole global community and tons of resources on OLPC, but they're (still) pretty hard to navigate, when you're new. There are some active XO user groups in the Seattle area - will any of them be coming out to LFNW? Mchua 22:37, 20 February 2008 (EST)

Hardware

Seth: Does one of us want to talk about hardware/software?

I could totally do this, unless a more experienced XO hacker is around (in that case, I'll watch and learn from them, or partner). Might as well use my electrical engineering education, right? ;) Mchua 22:37, 20 February 2008 (EST)

Iain: some attendees would love to see the inside of a machine.

This is Not A Problem. I've taken every component of my XO apart multiple times (with the exception of separating the metal bits of the hinge) and I believe Seth has at least stripped his down once. I'll bring a small screwdriver and can have this baby stripped apart and reassembled in <10min, and want to get older local kids to do the same. Like I said, should put my EE education to good use at least once in my life... Mchua 22:37, 20 February 2008 (EST)

Content

Seth: I want to talk about OLPC Health at some point for sure... I think that there is enough material for a stand alone OLPC/Open Content talk, but OLPC Health could be part of it.

We should do follow-up on http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Health_Jam Mchua 22:37, 20 February 2008 (EST)

Overview?

Seth: [do we want to] talk about the history or a basic introduction to the XO?

I think it should be done... I'm not sure when. I think it's something that's important for lots of people to see to understand what the project is trying to do - much of it is counterintuitive to perspectives I've often run across in the US ("you're in business to put yourself out of business?" "you're an education project? not a laptop project?" "...open source? wait, you /want/ kids to hack?"). And different audiences will want to learn about different parts of the backstory, and I'd rather not make people sit through 45 minutes of slides... Proposal: if poster-making materials can be had (anything from butcher paper + markers on the morning of, up to big-lovely-poster-printer), I (or others) can make a small, minimalistic poster gallery explaining some of the Big Points, someone can give the Big Overview Talk Thing at the start, and folks can tack a 5min intro spiel on the start of their OLPC sessions in case people have missed the Big Spiel. Mchua 22:37, 20 February 2008 (EST)

Questions for LFNW Organizers

• Audience - how many folks coming out to LFNW do you reckon might have heard of OLPC before? (from last year's LFNW, or otherwise.) Volunteered for OLPC before? Done development (hardware and/or software mainly)? Teachers? Parents? Kids? Other general demographics? Rough and wild guesses totally okay, and we'll play it by ear anyhow, but it's nice to know.
• Any chance of drawing XO users from Seattle? (Or are they already coming?) Has someone *coughIainSethcough* spread the word about this to the XO groups in Seattle? (The audience there may not overlap as much with the LUGs in Seattle, and LFNW is a fantastic chance for the not-yet-technical folks to get an introduction to the happy friendly fun that is the Open Source community.)
• How can the OLPC track best interact with and benefit the other segments of LFNW? We can totally be an "ooh, shiny machine" draw factor, and a "hey, bring your kids here!" factor - but what else?

people who should present

• steve stroh
• iain davidson
• seth woodworth
• mel chua