OLPC Learning Club First Business Meeting Handout (with post-meeting notes)

OLPC Learning Club DC First Business Meeting Friday, March 20, 2009 Taste of India Restaurant Washington, D.C. Notes added post meeting.

Attendees
Kevin Cole
Jeff Elkner And Roxanna.
Mike Lee
Luke Faraone
Rich Canning
Frank Linton
Wayan Vota with Amy and Hanalei Vota.
Sarah Elkins
Adam Holt, OLPC arrived 8:30pm via bus
Mark Beckford, NComputing 6pm-7:30pm with Wayan.

Agenda
Forming Sugar Labs DC – All agree on idea of forming a 501(c)3 umbrella organization. Kevin suggested talking to Nick Farr at HacDC to find out how he formed.
Supporting OLPC's new contributor's program (& XO Lending Library) – All agree. Adam pitched this on Saturday at club meeting.
Expanding Focus of Monthly Meetings --All agree.

Burning Questions?
Why isn't there an XO deployment in the DC area? Opportunities still there. Reach out the deployment north of Philadelphia.
How dependent should we be on the future health of the OLPC Association and Sugar Labs? Support them, but be independent organization. Remain adaptable to changing approaches to learning and new technologies.
What is our vision for five years into the future? Organization is vibrant on local scale; tied to network of community nodes around the world. Need to do more thinking about future scenarios.

What We’re About
Learning & Education
Open source
Networked collaboration
Child focused, but in adult and family context
Hardware agnostic
Diverse
Inclusive
Accessible (variation on inclusive)
Active locally, sharing globally.
Fun
What else?

Learning Club Assets
30 active members
160 members on mailing list
Blog
Discussion forum
Wiki Set up wiki page on Sugar Labs site.
Jabber server
Monthly meetings
Arlington Career Center
Gallaudet University
Nortel Networks
Grassroots Repair Center
Relationship with, and support from OLPC News
Scratch classes by Richard Bullington-McGuire
Direct relationship with OLPC Association
Direct relationship with Sugar Labs
Relationship with MIT Media Lab
Human-Computer Interface Laboratory
DC Cares
NASA
Connections to local Linux/Ubuntu, HacDC and Web 2.0 communities

Local Sugar Labs (Excerpted from Sugar Labs’ Wiki)
A distributed project—we chose to name Sugar Labs, plural deliberately—where there is a local sense of ownership and associated entrepreneurship feels like the right course for us as an organization. Sugar Labs "central" is the community itself, which would be responsible for setting clear goals and maintaining any necessary infrastructure needed by the project as a whole, while the regional labs would use the own means to make Sugar relevant to their local communities.

A local Sugar Lab would:
Adapt the technology and pedagogy to an area's culture and resources (e.g, developing activities and content specific to a region)
Help translate Sugar to the local language(s)
Support Sugar deployments in area schools
Create a local community devoted to the Sugar Labs principles, making Sugar more open and sustainable
Provide for communication,between the local communities and the global Sugar Labs community
Develop Local content and software that can be used not only for local purposes but also for the overall community
Host, co-host or partner in the organization of conferences, workshops, talks and meetings related to the use or development of Sugar,
We can do all these things in the DC area. Jeff wants to take lead on this.

Some possible necessary conditions for success:
A university connection as a local human resource Yes.
A local pilot user group from which to learn Yes.
A local passion or sub-goal that provides a rational for the work Yes.
Bi-directional communication with the global Sugar community and other Sugar Labs Yes. Need more.
A sustainable and well-defined entrepreneurship model Maybe. Need ideas.
A program to reach out to local free-software community and local industry Yes.

Draft Sugar Labs MOU
DRAFT: for discussion purposes only
MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN SUGAR LABS AND XYZ
This memorandum of understanding (MOU) is made by and between Sugar Labs and XYZ. Sugar Labs is a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy, a New York nonprofit public benefit corporation located in New York, New York, which has received recognition of exemption from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) and classification as a public charity under IRC Sections 509(a)(1) and 170(b)(1)(A)(vi). XYZ is an entity local to region ABC.
WHEREAS:
A. The mission of Sugar Labs is to produce, distribute, and support the use of the Sugar learning platform, a free software project.
B. The mission of XYZ is to provide tools for learning to the children of ABC, with the goal to increase the use of computers and the Internet in order to provide the best opportunities for learning and supporting them to participate in a knowledge-based economy.
THEREFORE, THE PARTIES HEREBY AGREE AS FOLLOWS:
1.Sugar Labs and XYZ agree to establish Sugar Labs ABC, a local-to-ABC entity to do software development, deployment, and support, including providing local and regional technical and pedagogical support; creating new learning activities and pedagogical practice; providing localization and internationalization of software, content, and documentation; and providing integration and customization services.
2.Sugar Labs ABC:
a. will be co-branded entity established in ABC;
b. will have Sugar Labs and XYZ representation on their board of directors;
c. will have web presence at abc.sugarlabs.org;
d. will appoint a representative to Sugar Labs and to XYZ;
e. will not act as an agent for Sugar Labs nor to take any action inconsistent with the status of Sugar Labs as a public charity;
f. agrees to abide by the principles of Free Software, open communication, and community participation;
g. agrees to operate within the scope of the joint learning missions of Sugar Labs.
3.Sugar Labs:
a. will help identify resources to be utilized by Sugar Labs ABC on technical and pedagogical issues;
b. will appoint a Sugar Labs member to the Sugar Labs ABC board of directors;
c. will include Sugar Labs ABC as part of the global Sugar Labs community;
d. will not charge any license fee for the use of the Sugar Labs brand;
e. will collect no fees from Sugar Labs ABC.
4.XYZ:
a. will take ultimate responsibility for Sugar Labs ABC: all community programs, public information work, fund-raising events, processing and acknowledgment of cash and non-cash revenue items, accounts payable and receivable, negotiation of leases and contracts, disbursement of Sugar Labs ABC's funds (including grants), and other activities planned shall be the ultimate responsibility of XYZ and shall be conducted in the name of XYZ;
b. agrees to pay all reasonable costs incurred by Sugar Labs to support Sugar Labs ABC; Sugar Labs shall notify the authorized representative prior to incurring any significant expenditures and shall provide a periodic report of any such expenses to to the authorized representative.
c. agrees to establish a research fund to disperse to university and industry applicants within ABC to further advance the Sugar learning platform or its deployment within ABC.
5.Termination. Sugar Labs or XYZ may terminate this Agreement at any time subject to a reasonable effort by both parties to reach an accord regarding any disagreements.

OLPC Contributor’s Program (Excerpted from OLPC Wiki)
OLPC's Contributors Program cultivates grassroots efforts enhancing the XO Laptop as an exceptional learning platform through engineering, environmental and education Projects —that open new opportunities to children the world over. Everyone is encouraged to contribute: students, technologists, educators, social workers, environmentalists, research scientists and doctors—all the way to NGO's, companies, churches and governments. Like a Science Fair, great ideas can come from anyone, limited only by your imagination.
We encourage you to borrow free XO laptops if you or your group demonstrate committed volunteerism and ongoing support of our mission and principles .

OLPC Contributor’s Program (Excerpted from OLPC Wiki)
Examples of good projects
Help our OLPC/Sugar community help others:
developing speech-to-text applications for deaf children
using the XO as a highly portable disaster response solution
using the XO as a low cost sensor to detect pathogens and contaminants in food, water and soil
coding for the XO to be an Internet-enabled, real-time citizen journalism tool used in the developing world to help earn a livelihood
improving, porting, and developing math and science activities for students and teachers
I.E. an incredible spectrum of ideas. In other words, the possibilities are limited only by Your Creativity!
See the evolving list of projects as inspiration for your creative ideas.
No idea is too small, or too big to make a difference: share your thoughts, apply to the Contributors Program, let's explore the options together, refine project details, and support efforts to change the world!

Notes (Action items added.)
Big opportunity for showing at National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) which is in D.C. June 28 – July 1, 2009. http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/
Reach our to Nick Farr on his experiences forming 501(c)3 in DC. Define organization’s mission, name, structure, bylaws, officers, strategies, operating plan, budget, etc. Develop project plan.
Inventory and support submission of projects to the OLPC Contributor’s Program.
Strengthen programmatic connection to Gallaudet and Nortel LearnIT now that Jeff has gone into high gear in Arlington.

OLPC Learning Club First Business Meeting Handout (with post-meeting notes)

by Mike Lee on Mar 23, 2009

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OLPC Learning Club First Business Meeting Handout (with post-meeting notes) Presentation Transcript