[Ambassadors] Boston trip Follow up

[Karlie Robinson]

Lately, I've been working with the Rochester Institute of Technology on 
a project that is a mix of Fedora, OLPC, Sugar Labs and Teaching Open 
Source projects.

As a capstone to the Open Source Development class held in the Spring 
'09 quarter at RIT [1] I was able to take a field trip to Boston with 
Dave Farning of Sugar Labs, Wes Dillingham, Tyler Bragdon & Eric Mallon 
RIT Co-Op students, and their Co-op Adviser, Fred Grose.

Here's a brief breakdown of the days and what was accomplished.

Monday - 10Aug - Travel and Dinner at John Harvard's with Mel Chua and 
Adam Holt of OLPC.

Tuesday - 11Aug - MIT Museum - Toured Exhibits in the morning and used 
work space to Test Sugar's Jabber Server Features in the afternoon.  
Minus a few hours for lunch and missed rendezvous we were at the Museum 
from open until close.  Caroline Meeks of Solution Grove joined us for 
the afternoon work session.  At dinner that evening we were joined by 
Dogi of OLPC and Caroline Meeks.

Wednesday - 12Aug- Flagship Computer Clubhouse [2] at the Boston Museum 
of Science.  We initially met with Keith Simmons, who is the Technology 
Manager for the Computer Club House Network and also an RIT alum.  We 
met Keith through Steve Jacobs the RIT class Prof.  Keith was then able 
to introduce us to Marlon Orozco the Flagship Clubhouse coordinator and 
some clubhouse alums who continue to use the facilities for some 
outstanding work.

The space was great, and there was some more testing Sugar applications 
and filing bug reports.  For the record, I didn't actively participate 
in the code-it, test-it, file-a-report activities.  I'm more of a social 
engineer - if that's the right term.  I did try to fill my brain with 
everything I could about the folks in the clubhouse so that I can use it 
to make connections later.  I also got a very important email inviting 
our groups to present our educational outreach activities at Ontario 
Linux Fest this fall.  (So if you'd like to present something, there's 
still time to send in your ideas)

Thursday - 13Aug - We spent the afternoon back at the Computer Clubhouse 
- this time with Kids!  A group of children were in the clubhouse and we 
were able to set up all the machines with Sugar on a Stick and allow 
them to play.  The group was able to get some very important insight 
from the kids on how the software behaves and how the children use it.

Before I move on to Friday, I want to pass on Keith's desire to do more 
Open Source within the Computer Clubhouse network.  Following up and 
being a point of FOSS contact for the computer club house is on my list.

Friday - 14Aug - Red Hat Offices Westford, MA.  Our field trip group 
plus Adam and Dogi of OLPC took over a conference room at Red Hat 
Offices.  We need to thank Máirín Duffy for helping us get comfortable 
and Luke Macken for hosting and for joining in on some of our sessions.

The tasks for the day were to brain storm along the lines of Teaching 
Open Source.  We broke off into groups and discussed what we could have 
done better for the students and what we could have done better with the 
community.

Mel Chua helped the Co-ops get their thoughts out so that other students 
can benefit from what we were able to learn.

The consensus was that we overloaded both sides of the equation.  Too 
much info with the students (what's GIT?  Why IRC?  Who to ask? etc), 
and too many people to mentor for the community to absorb without notice.

While we didn't find a magic potion to deal with these issues, we did 
make progress.  Most of what we learned will end up in the wiki at 
http://TeachingOpenSource.org if it hasn't been added already.

Saturday - 15Aug - Free day.  Only One formal meeting was scheduled for 
Dave, Fred, Eric and Tyler to conference call with William Schaub on his 
Teotwawki Network [3].  Later that evening, Wes, Fred and I did meet up 
with Adam Holt for a small, informal, Beer SIG which is a LUG of 
Rochester tradition.

Sunday - 16Aug - Returning home.

I should formally thank Fred for putting the trip together and for 
allowing me to tag along.  I hope I can use the insight gained on the 
trip to better coordinate needs between the organizations I got to know 
while in Boston.  While I'm not a coder, I do hope I can play a role 
matching up people and solutions where they'll have the most impact for 
FOSS.

Comments and questions appreciated.

~Karlie Robinson

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Math4Team/RIT
[2] http://computerclubhouse.org
[3] http://teotwawki.steubentech.com/doku.php