Hi Folks, I have another obligation at 2 p.m. Friday (11 a.m. here), so I will have to miss the Contributor's meeting...which I would really like to attend. I thought I might share my musings with the SG in this email since I can't do it at the meeting.
First of all, after reading all your messages, I do see a glimmer of HOPE in all this. Perhaps it will turn out to be a good thing after all....if we use some of the great ideas put forth by some of the Support-Gang, such as: Dan Bennett's idea to take the work load off the OLPC organization and allow deployments to be pre screened and approved by the OLPC community then processed for sale by OLPC. SJ's comment that modifying the concept of saturation "so that it does not imply large scale" could mean small rural schools all over the world (including Montana) could participate with their own "saturated" projects...even if it involved only 20 laptops for the 20 students in a one-room school. SJ also asked: You mean in some way similar to G* - with minimal warranty and support, at whatever cost is necessary? ...Yes to this! Yama's insistence on a "bottom up" approach where all stakeholders are involved in the planning of local deployments and his urging that OLPC sell XOs to qualified buyers who have done this sort of planning. BTW: Kudos for starting the wiki page...now if it can just be recognized as valid it could be a useful tool for OLPC and all of us who have special places we would like to see deployments happen...saturated yes, large scale, not necessarily. The prospect of a revised Contributor's Program that would allow people wanting to do deployments to obtain XOs to explore, with their teachers and students, ways to integrate the laptops into their school's curriculum to meet the specific needs of their students, school, and community. Sharing freely of their ideas and plans with the rest of the OLPC community could be valuable, both to others making plans, and to those who already have deployments but would like new and different ways to use their laptops. Adam's teaser about letting us get involved with helping the contributor's program along via RT...something we have wanted to do and tried to do for a long time...it would be great if we could really get involved in this. Like many others, I have donated a lot of hours of my time to OLPC (1000+ hours in the past year). I have seen every kind of Spam in many different languages, helped a lot of folks, written 2 "Grannie's Guides," helped write the FLOSS manuals, done a little translating, tested software, devised a way to fix ripped keyboards and so many other interesting things. It has been educational, fun and worthwhile. My hope is that it will continue to be. Like some of you, I wonder. But I do see that glimmer of HOPE. I hope it isn't an illusion. Caryl/Carolina
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