[IAEP] Questions to SLOB candidates
Dear SLOB candidates, I've read your announcements with interest. They all explain well where you're coming from and who you are. What I'm missing, however, is what you want to *do* during your election period. I'm aware that the SLOB isn't supposed to do much (and agree on this philosophy), but even within that framework there are possible nuances that could guide me as to who to vote. Right now I only see a set of long-term, active contributors, *each* of which I trust to have the best interests of Sugar Labs at heart. What do you see as current issues of Sugar Labs and what are you going to do to solve them? (For some issues, staying out of the way might be a valid answer). What else would you consider a good reason for me to vote you? Sascha -- http://sascha.silbe.org/ http://www.infra-silbe.de/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Candidacy for Sugar Labs Oversight Board elections
I'd like to announce my candidacy for the Sugar Labs Oversight Board elections. The main announcement is at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Sridhar/2011_SLOB_platform The easiest way to find out about me is to visit my Web site [1]. Amongst a variety of Free and Open Source Software contributions since the 1990s [2], I have previously been a board member of Linux Australia and President of the Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG). I have given presentations at various events including linux.conf.au, OSDC, SLUG, Software Freedom Day and Document Freedom Day. For nearly two years I have served full-time as OLPC Australia's Engineering Manager, liaising between developers and educators to ensure that we are able to satisfy requirements on the ground. My team at OLPC Australia take this very seriously, to the point of extending OLPC's core principles with two of our own [3]: * Empowering Teachers * Community Engagement In my day-to-day work, I am in constant contact with schools, communities, governments and other relevant bodies. I have developed an appreciation for Sugar as much more than software - it is a platform that supports education, community and culture. Everything we build is done so in consultation with educators and other stakeholders, in consideration of the whole picture. For instance, the operating system that we carry on our XOs [4] was developed in tandem with our certification system [5]. I am proud to say that our approach has shown tremendous success [6]. You can read our Policy Document [7] to gain a full appreciation of our programme. As a Sugar Labs Oversight Board member, I aim to bring this same kind of holistic approach to guiding Sugar. My strength is in using my extensive Free Software experience to meet real needs on the ground. I strongly believe that for Sugar to grow, it needs to have strong representation from all stakeholders, including deployments. Our contributions to Sugar have been numerous. We have extended the OLPC XS Schoolserver with our XS-AU [8], creating a far more flexible collaboration solution. We have partnered with Activity Central to develop many improvements for the platform. These are currently being tested in Dextrose developer builds, and will be upstreamed in the near future. While it's all well and good to speak about past achievements, it's important as a Board member to have a vision for the future. We need to broaden the developer and user base. We need to make it simpler to access Sugar. On the developer side, we should embrace [9] Web [10] standards and allow activities to be created in HTML5. We are working [11] on that. On the user side, I'd like Sugar to be made available on more devices. I am encouraged by the work being made to port Sugar to GTK+ 3. This will lay the groundwork for Sugar on tablets, such as the XO-3. We need to think ahead to ensure longevity of the Sugar platform and mission. [1] http://www.dhanapalan.com/blog/about/ [2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SridharDhanapalan [3] http://www.laptop.org.au/vision/core-principles [4] https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au/wiki/List_of_improvements_in_XO-AU_builds_2010-2011 [5] http://edu.laptop.org.au/laptop/xo-cert-course [6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO-VNhgZLDw [7] http://edu.laptop.org.au/laptop/policy-document [8] https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xs-au/wiki [9] http://www.dhanapalan.com/blog/2011/06/20/why-free-and-open-matters/ [10] http://www.dhanapalan.com/blog/2011/06/23/html5-in-sugar/ [11] https://dev.laptop.org.au/issues/742 Sridhar Dhanapalan Engineering Manager One Laptop per Child Australia M: +61 425 239 701 E: srid...@laptop.org.au A: G.P.O. Box 731 Sydney, NSW 2001 W: www.laptop.org.au ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Questions to SLOB candidates
On 07.11.2011, at 14:04, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: Hi all, Sascha, you make an excellent point here, I was thinking along the same lines when I re-read the various candidate statements this morning. Personally I'd also be interested in taking this one step further and creating a lively debate. Two ideas I've been thinking about are: (a) An IRC discussion with all the candidates next Tuesday or Wednesday before the election starts. This would give all Sugar Labs members a chance to directly interact with the candidates by asking questions. Additionally it could lead to some interesting discussions among the candidates whereas I fear that discussions here on the list will be more unidirectional (e.g. with the candidates simply answering the questions Sascha mentions below but not commenting on each other's answers and ideas). (b) Organizing a Skype, Gtalk, or Google+ Hangout session with the same purpose. While text-based communication has some advantages (e.g. it's easy to search, reference, etc.) I personally really like hearing people's voices and real-time reactions to discussions and arguments. For all these things we could use a wiki page or even something like Google Moderator (http://moderator.appspot.com/) to collect questions from the community in advance. Thoughts anyone? Well, I for one am much more inclined to vote for those who earned my trust previously, rather than for the winner of an election discussion. I'm glad people are willing to serve on the board at all, since there generally is little reward, only more work and blame. Thanks to everyone who stepped up so far! Also, the mailing list has the widest reach in the community. So if you think a debate is important, do it on the list. Mail is better than chat is better than voice for general discussions. Chat and especially voice reach only a small fraction of the community, which is good for some tasks, but hardly for this. - Bert - Cheers, Christoph Am 07.11.2011 12:21, schrieb Sascha Silbe: Dear SLOB candidates, I've read your announcements with interest. They all explain well where you're coming from and who you are. What I'm missing, however, is what you want to *do* during your election period. I'm aware that the SLOB isn't supposed to do much (and agree on this philosophy), but even within that framework there are possible nuances that could guide me as to who to vote. Right now I only see a set of long-term, active contributors, *each* of which I trust to have the best interests of Sugar Labs at heart. What do you see as current issues of Sugar Labs and what are you going to do to solve them? (For some issues, staying out of the way might be a valid answer). What else would you consider a good reason for me to vote you? Sascha -- Christoph Derndorfer editor, OLPC News [www.olpcnews.com] volunteer, OLPC (Austria) [www.olpc.at] ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Questions to SLOB candidates
Am 07.11.2011 19:42, schrieb Bert Freudenberg: On 07.11.2011, at 14:04, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: Hi all, Sascha, you make an excellent point here, I was thinking along the same lines when I re-read the various candidate statements this morning. Personally I'd also be interested in taking this one step further and creating a lively debate. Two ideas I've been thinking about are: (a) An IRC discussion with all the candidates next Tuesday or Wednesday before the election starts. This would give all Sugar Labs members a chance to directly interact with the candidates by asking questions. Additionally it could lead to some interesting discussions among the candidates whereas I fear that discussions here on the list will be more unidirectional (e.g. with the candidates simply answering the questions Sascha mentions below but not commenting on each other's answers and ideas). (b) Organizing a Skype, Gtalk, or Google+ Hangout session with the same purpose. While text-based communication has some advantages (e.g. it's easy to search, reference, etc.) I personally really like hearing people's voices and real-time reactions to discussions and arguments. For all these things we could use a wiki page or even something like Google Moderator (http://moderator.appspot.com/) to collect questions from the community in advance. Thoughts anyone? Well, I for one am much more inclined to vote for those who earned my trust previously, rather than for the winner of an election discussion. I'm glad people are willing to serve on the board at all, since there generally is little reward, only more work and blame. Thanks to everyone who stepped up so far! Also, the mailing list has the widest reach in the community. So if you think a debate is important, do it on the list. Mail is better than chat is better than voice for general discussions. Chat and especially voice reach only a small fraction of the community, which is good for some tasks, but hardly for this. Hi Bert, thanks a lot for your comments. I don't see the election discussion as being about any one candidate winning but as an opportunity for the community to get to know the candidates in more depth. Similarly to Sascha I trust all the candidates to have Sugar Labs' best interest at heart. Yet I've had significantly more opportunities to interact with some of them online or even in-person than with others. This somewhat naturally gives them an edge (at least for me) even though from an operational or visionary point of view other candidates might really be more to my liking for filling the seats - if I only knew them well enough that is. Also, IMHO discussions on IRC or via voice are easy enough to record and subsequently share with the community on this list and elsewhere. As such they're just as accessible for anyone who is interested as conversations directly happening here on the list (which incidentally is the same process we already use for logs from SLOBs-, design-, or tech-meetings happening on IRC). Cheers, Christoph - Bert - Cheers, Christoph Am 07.11.2011 12:21, schrieb Sascha Silbe: Dear SLOB candidates, I've read your announcements with interest. They all explain well where you're coming from and who you are. What I'm missing, however, is what you want to *do* during your election period. I'm aware that the SLOB isn't supposed to do much (and agree on this philosophy), but even within that framework there are possible nuances that could guide me as to who to vote. Right now I only see a set of long-term, active contributors, *each* of which I trust to have the best interests of Sugar Labs at heart. What do you see as current issues of Sugar Labs and what are you going to do to solve them? (For some issues, staying out of the way might be a valid answer). What else would you consider a good reason for me to vote you? Sascha -- Christoph Derndorfer editor, OLPC News [www.olpcnews.com] volunteer, OLPC (Austria) [www.olpc.at] ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer editor, OLPC News [www.olpcnews.com] volunteer, OLPC (Austria) [www.olpc.at] e-mail: christ...@derndorfer.eu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] Updates of Sugar Labs' finances?
On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Am 02.11.2011 18:50, schrieb Walter Bender: On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 10:34 PM, Mel Chuam...@melchua.com wrote: As a member of the Sugar Labs community I find it quite frustrating that such basic information doesn't seem to be readily available (at least not on http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Finance where one would expect to find it). Yes, it is encouraging that Rubén's and Aleksey's recent funding requests for Sugar Camp Lima were quickly acted and decided upon. However I would assume that such decisions involve a quick look at the current account balance which makes it all the less understandable why the corresponding wiki page doesn't contain that information. Actually, the reason I *didn't* vote on that funding request was because I (as a member of SLOBs) could not find that information either, and didn't feel comfortable approving funding without knowing what our budget picture actually was. So Christoph, I do agree with you. Mel, I believe that as a SLOBs member you get the same reports from the SFC as the rest of us. # On 31 July 2011, Total assets restricted for Sugar $ /usr/bin/ledger -f /tmp/5mKPnnXTFW/sugar.ledger -e 2011/08/01 bal '^Assets' $ 21,141.78 Assets We don't have a more recent figure, but we also haven't incurred any major expenses in the interim. This approximate number was mentioned in a recent SLOBs meeting when the question of funds as raised. Christoph, would you like to volunteer to maintain a public version of our finances? We are shorthanded in this department and it seems to be an area of interest. Hi Walter, thanks a lot for the update and apologies for the slow reply. I just updated http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Finance#Current_finances with the balance mentioned above and the information from Bernie's update (http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2011-November/014354.html). Looking through these messages I was wondering what is the status of those Gould Grant efforts was? Searching through the wiki shows that the grant was awarded in June of 2009 for the SoaS project in Boston (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Archive/Current_Events/2009-06-15). Then the next, and last, mention of it is from January 2010 where you considered asking them to see whether it can be used for infrastructure related expenses (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/2010/Meeting_Log-2010-01-29). The project has morphed into a new phase. Carolyn is working with a Haitian diaspora community. She could I am sure give you an update. Her principal focus has been working with Etoys. And you're certainly right, this is indeed an area of interest (though admittedly only really since I've been forced to start dealing with finances at OLPC Austria;-). If one of the SLOBs could simply keep me posted of relevant information and updates by forwarding the relevant updates from SFC I'd be happy to keep http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Finance up to date. (However I of course don't want to step on Bernie's toes since he's taking care of finances as well.) I may have unearthed someone with experience in finance who will take this one for us. -walter Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer editor, OLPC News [www.olpcnews.com] volunteer, OLPC (Austria) [www.olpc.at] e-mail: christ...@derndorfer.eu -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] Updates of Sugar Labs' finances?
Am 08.11.2011 02:37, schrieb Walter Bender: On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Am 02.11.2011 18:50, schrieb Walter Bender: On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 10:34 PM, Mel Chuam...@melchua.comwrote: As a member of the Sugar Labs community I find it quite frustrating that such basic information doesn't seem to be readily available (at least not on http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Finance where one would expect to find it). Yes, it is encouraging that Rubén's and Aleksey's recent funding requests for Sugar Camp Lima were quickly acted and decided upon. However I would assume that such decisions involve a quick look at the current account balance which makes it all the less understandable why the corresponding wiki page doesn't contain that information. Actually, the reason I *didn't* vote on that funding request was because I (as a member of SLOBs) could not find that information either, and didn't feel comfortable approving funding without knowing what our budget picture actually was. So Christoph, I do agree with you. Mel, I believe that as a SLOBs member you get the same reports from the SFC as the rest of us. # On 31 July 2011, Total assets restricted for Sugar $ /usr/bin/ledger -f /tmp/5mKPnnXTFW/sugar.ledger -e 2011/08/01 bal '^Assets' $ 21,141.78 Assets We don't have a more recent figure, but we also haven't incurred any major expenses in the interim. This approximate number was mentioned in a recent SLOBs meeting when the question of funds as raised. Christoph, would you like to volunteer to maintain a public version of our finances? We are shorthanded in this department and it seems to be an area of interest. Hi Walter, thanks a lot for the update and apologies for the slow reply. I just updated http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Finance#Current_finances with the balance mentioned above and the information from Bernie's update (http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2011-November/014354.html). Looking through these messages I was wondering what is the status of those Gould Grant efforts was? Searching through the wiki shows that the grant was awarded in June of 2009 for the SoaS project in Boston (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Archive/Current_Events/2009-06-15). Then the next, and last, mention of it is from January 2010 where you considered asking them to see whether it can be used for infrastructure related expenses (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/2010/Meeting_Log-2010-01-29). The project has morphed into a new phase. Carolyn is working with a Haitian diaspora community. She could I am sure give you an update. Her principal focus has been working with Etoys. Interesting, can't wait to hear more details! :-) And you're certainly right, this is indeed an area of interest (though admittedly only really since I've been forced to start dealing with finances at OLPC Austria;-). If one of the SLOBs could simply keep me posted of relevant information and updates by forwarding the relevant updates from SFC I'd be happy to keep http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Finance up to date. (However I of course don't want to step on Bernie's toes since he's taking care of finances as well.) I may have unearthed someone with experience in finance who will take this one for us. Okay, keep us in the loop about what's happening on this front. Thanks, Christoph -walter Cheers, Christoph -- Christoph Derndorfer editor, OLPC News [www.olpcnews.com] volunteer, OLPC (Austria) [www.olpc.at] e-mail: christ...@derndorfer.eu -- Christoph Derndorfer editor, OLPC News [www.olpcnews.com] volunteer, OLPC (Austria) [www.olpc.at] e-mail: christ...@derndorfer.eu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Questions to SLOB candidates
On 8 November 2011 00:04, Christoph Derndorfer e0425...@student.tuwien.ac.at wrote: Hi all, Sascha, you make an excellent point here, I was thinking along the same lines when I re-read the various candidate statements this morning. Personally I'd also be interested in taking this one step further and creating a lively debate. Two ideas I've been thinking about are: (a) An IRC discussion with all the candidates next Tuesday or Wednesday before the election starts. This would give all Sugar Labs members a chance to directly interact with the candidates by asking questions. Additionally it could lead to some interesting discussions among the candidates whereas I fear that discussions here on the list will be more unidirectional (e.g. with the candidates simply answering the questions Sascha mentions below but not commenting on each other's answers and ideas). (b) Organizing a Skype, Gtalk, or Google+ Hangout session with the same purpose. While text-based communication has some advantages (e.g. it's easy to search, reference, etc.) I personally really like hearing people's voices and real-time reactions to discussions and arguments. For all these things we could use a wiki page or even something like Google Moderator (http://moderator.appspot.com/) to collect questions from the community in advance. Thoughts anyone? Cheers, Christoph Considering that I'm a candidate, I don't want to interfere in the process. However, I think this is a good idea in principle. I won't be available next week (I'll be at the OSDC conference in Canberra [1]), but I'm happy to participate otherwise. Sridhar [1] http://osdc.com.au/schedule/#australiastoughes ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
