Congratulations to all people who were involved on this release.
On September 15th the government of Peru, Microsoft and the OLPC Project announced the first official pilot of XO laptops running Microsoft Windows was starting soon. With this news I think there are several positives and negatives that the project can take away from it. The news definitly not unexpected since they have been working on this for a while but this will unfortunatly polorize and confuse the matter even more.
Positive takeoffs
There are many positive things this announcement brings chief among them is we are getting more XO’s out to children based on this deployment. And there are several countries that are waiting on this before they join the effort. So I think this announcement brings us one step closer to getting XO’s to even more kids. Another benefit that people probably don’t even notice is that this shows the XO is a real laptop that can run multiple things and is a good utility. Being able to use the laptops for multiple things just gives more value to the project and gives us more avenues to go down.
Negative takeoffs
Unfortunatley for us I think the negatives outway the positives this time. While I personally feel sugar is a better platform to go with I think anyway we can get these laptops to the children is a good thing. I just don’t feel they will get the real benefits of the XO with Windows (post coming later on this). So in reality this is a negative for these countries since they will not get the real educational benefits of the XO and be stuck with bascially a office worker type learning environment which isn’t really what they need.
Most of the volunteers and developers on the project come from the opensource movement and will probably see this as a negative so this announcement can have some negative effect on the moral of the frontline troops of the project which isn’t good.
The last negative is this creates alot of confusion about the upcoming Give 1 Get one program which already had alot of the people from the first one confused. There are alot of questions not answered particialarly well during the initial announcement including: price, date, dual-boot or not, countries, … I am scared this may scare developers away from the project and further slow the project. But we will just have to hope for the best.
Conclusions
While I think the negatives outway the positives in the OLPC movement I am still a big fan and will continue developing stuff on the XO for the time being. I think overall we should see this as a benefit to the OLPC project at least as its goals stand now which is to get laptops into the hands of the worlds children. The addition of windows will certianly help us get the laptops to more kids. So lets be happy for this small win for the project today and fight the educational battles tommorrow.
Rounding out the month we have some big social media events coming up in Birmingham for September.
1. Tomorrow we have the Social Media Meetup/tweetup hosted by The Terminal.
What is it: A relaxed gathering of local social media mavens.
Why you should be there: It’s going to be a veritable who’s who of local social media addicts, and a great place to make contacts and find out whats going on in the area.
Details:
Birmingham Social Media Meetup
6–9 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18
Speakeasy 1920
1920 3rd Ave. N., Birmingham
http://www.speakeasy1920.com/
2. WordCamp Birmingham, September 27-28
What is it: A conference for users and developers of the wordpress platform.
Why you should be there: Lots of good presentations ranging from blogging to developing, and a chance to meet a bunch of cool people
Details:
September 27 & 28
Location: Martha Moore Sykes @ the Virginia Samford Theatre
Registration is $25 and available online.
Today is a day of mourning across the world. But particualarly in the US where it happened. The Event was 9/11.
Lets spend today remembering where we were and how we felt during that day, and spend a breif time to mourn for the innocents lost that day. But remember to not dwell on it to long, we must look the future and try to make it a better place were this kind of event won’t happen again. That is all.
Well its finally here. The relaunch of the Give one Get 2 program from OLPC has been anounced and will be starting November 17th. There is still speculation as to whether they will offer a windows version of the system as well as a linux version but that has not been finalized yet. Either way this is a good chance to get others involved in the program and to show people the benefits of the sugar UI.
The big news is that this time the orders will be handled through amazon. The details emerged in an announcement posted to wiki.laptop.org by OLPC’s Product Manager Kim Quirk:
“As it has been reported, One Laptop per Child will sell its XO Laptop on Amazon.com in late 2008 as part of a global ‘Give One, Get One’ (G1,G1) program. Although the first iteration of the ‘G1,G1′ program was extremely successful and sold more then 185,000 laptops, the delivery of the laptops in the USA did not run as smoothly as we anticipated. Selling the laptops on Amazon.com will provide us with the resources to process and ship the laptops globally in a timely fashion.
In addition, contrary to some media reports, it will be a Linux-based XO Laptop that will be offered as part of the global initiative and not a dual-boot machine running both Windows and Linux.”
While so far they have only announced a linux version of the XO for this time period there is a possibility of a windows version as well but only time will tell.
Overall I can only hope that this opportunity isn’t wasted. We need developer buy in to make this project grow so please help get the word out and help the support the project. I am debating setting up a program in the ham where I setup school servers throughout birmingham so that developers have places they can test and collaborate in the surrounding areas and not just there house. I would hope that it would bring more collaboration, but I will have to wait to see the interest before I go forward. Needless to say this is a great opportunity if you are developer wanting a development/test box, or are a kid interested in getting one to use. Hopefully it goes well this time.
Well it seems september is a big month this year for events in Birmingham yet again. Here is a quick list for those interested.
Tech Events:
Birmingham Area Linux Users (BALU) - Social meeting Tuesday September 2nd at Dave’s Pizza as Usual.
Internet Professionals Society of Alabama (IPSA) - Experience is the Product by Bill Abel
Thursday, September 4, 2008 11:30am – 1pm
McWane Science Center, Special Events Room
Free To Attend
WordCamp Birmingham - September 27 & 28th, 2008 at TBA, Registration
Take some passionate WordPress users and folks interested in blogging from throughout Alabama and the Southeastern United States. Add an incredible weekend of activities here in The Magic City and of course, barbecue! That’s WordCamp Birmingham! Join WordPress users from all over as we come together as enthusiasts, bloggers, developers, podcasters and designers to learn more about where we are and where it’s possibly going.
Other Events:
Artwalk 2008 - September 5th & 6th @ Downtown Birmingham
Birmingham’s 7th Annual Juried Art show.
Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival - September 27th & 28th @ Downtown Birmingham
An independant film festival that is celebrating 10 years of showcasing Alabama Filmmakers.
Taste of 4th Avenue Jazz Festival - September 27th @ Birmingham’s Historic 4th Avenue North District
Vulcan After Tunes - September 28th @ Vulcan Park and Museum
A few days ago we announced that the first WordCamp in the Southeastern United States is officially on! The conference will take place on September 27 & 28 in Birmingham, Alabama. It will consist of 2 days and 2 tracks. One track is a set schedule of presenters and the other track will be a barcamp type track in which you get to pick what you want to talk about. For more information go to WordCamp Birmingham
Also check out the release on the bhamterminal also check out andre’s take.
Last saturday I attended the birmingham XO eXpO. It focused on the Birmingham XO laptop implementation, but also included information on how technology will have an inpact on the future leaders of the area. The turnout seemed to be mainly educators and community leaders as well as a few parents and there children. The first half of the event was mainly speakers from the city and school systems highlighing the progress of the Glen Iris implementation and they showed a very nice video that showed some of what had been done over the summer. Chuck Kane the President of One laptop per child then spoke on the state of the OLPC around the world and the significance of the birmingham implementation. Then the final presention was Dr. Jeff Gray who spoke on the state of Computer Science and techology in Alabama.
The second session was kicked off by Magic Seth, a renowned computer scientist and magician. for the rest of the session everyone was invited to an exposition featuring students summer projects using the XO Laptop, UAB’s preliminary research on the impact of the project, the XO Hospital, and other activities. For me the second session gave me a chance to talk to some of the people involved who I hadn’t met before and see exactly how students were using the XO. I was suprised by some of what they have done and I am really impressed by just how fast they picked it up. I hope they have more events like this so we can keep uptodate on how things are going.
A few weeks ago I attended the first ever TechMixer University. I have been involved in the planning of all the TechMixers preceding this event so I had high hopes for this one even though I was unable to participate in the planning. For a first time event I think it went very well. Here are a few of the thoughts I took away from the conference
Breakfast keynote: Gary York - Adaptive Change in Technology
This was a fascinating presentation that used slides taken by Gary in the galapagos islands that really added to the presintation. He covered subjects such as “keys to launching a company”, “technologies that will rapidly change the future”, “key trends”, “how companies adapt”, and “key habits that he follows. As always gary did a great job and added humor to his presentation. I will post more about this presentation later but one of the key peices for me was the habits he used.
Some of these are the same habits I try to work by and it is great hearing what other people out there do to keep them ahead of the game.
After the keynote we devided into tracks: Sharepoint, .Net, Opensource, database, and project management.
I spent most of my time in the Opensource track but went to listen to the other tracks to get an idea of what was going on. By far the most popular track was the PM track which had alot of people and several good presentations. The Opensource track also drew alot of people and is were I spent most of my time. The .Net track was the next largest track but was fairly empty towards the end of the day. The database track was next but they had really high numbers in the early morning though. The sharepoint was probably the least popular track.
After the conference I went away having a fun time. But I think the way things were setup maybe it pigion wholed to much stuff. Here are my suggestions for next year.
I think the mix of the Database and Project Management tracks were very good but I would like to see some of the above things done next year to make it more interesting. Otherwise I think it was a fun conference I would like to thank all those who planned it. Can’t wait to see what happens next year!
Well its again been a while since I last posted, mainly due to being busy with the baby. But things are getting into a groove now and we have lots of events coming I will try to blog what I can at each event. Here is what we have coming up.
I will try to blog about all the events and post some pictures. I also have a post about using KIWI I will post later as a follow up to my last post. It is now much easier to set it up and is a valuable resource.
