coffee.geek.nz

Yes, it's a meme.

15 things.. FIFTEEN.... this will be difficult.

1. I'm from Whakamaru, which is a small village in the South Waikato - the locals who cannot pronounce maori call it "wockamarro". (near Mangakino and Tokoroa)
2. I contribute to many open source projects, as and when i have time - usually when i find a bug i'll fix it.
3. I went back to work 5 weeks after having a baby. My husband has taken a year off to look after her.
4. I don't drive.
5. I play flute, cello, piano, and a bunch of wind instruments (in that order)
6. I read many social justice and human rights blogs regularly.
7. I like Fairs and Markets.
8. I take LOTS of photos - see my flickr http://flickr.com/photos/taniwha
9. I spend my Saturday at One Laptop per Child test fest.
10. I also write most of the tweets on the @OLPC twitter account.
11. I was once a finalist for a NZ Open Source Award.
12. I am missing a big chunk out of one of my fingers.
13. I garden - mostly veges. Plants should serve a purpose.
14. I have been married for 12 years.
15. I like malty beers and scotch.

Recent pictures - these are what Apture finds of me:

In the link below is a video of Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairperson of One Laptop per Child, talking on the successes and lessons of the project.

these include:
* Truancy dropping to zero - from something like 30%.
* The idea that children drop out becuase they're needed elsewhere is debunked. They drop out because school is boring or not relevant.
* Children with OLPCs to take home are commonly teaching parents to read and write.
* Rote learning destroys passion for learning.
* Children are the agents of change, for the whole village.
* You really can give a laptop to a child, walk away, and they'll work it out for themselves.
http://www.5min.com/Video/The-Success-of-the-One-Laptop-Per-Child-Organi...

Photo of Child and grandmother at home in Peru - by Jeff Salter, creative commons Attribution/Share-alike

Woke up this morning, to find that OLPC and a UN Agency have sealed the deal to deploy to half a million refugee children in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.
http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=662

One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organisation whose mission is to help provide every child in the world access to a modern education, is partnering with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to bring new learning opportunities to nearly half a million Palestine refugee children by 2012. The distribution of XO laptops in UNRWA schools is fundamental to OLPC’s mission to give connected, power-efficient and robust laptops to children around the world, especially those who have been displaced by conflict and those living in extreme poverty.

Also, check this. The designer of the shape etc of the OLPC has gone on to make glasses, which are being distributed for free to the 11% of mexican children who need them
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2010/04/28/fuseproject-colleccion...

A group of students from University of Auckland have a very innovative project underway using some OLPC XO laptops.

They have talked about this project on National Radio:

At 1:35pm we're chatting to some local inventors who've come up with a neat way to distribute information wirelessly using existing FM and AM radio networks. With over a million One Laptop Per Child machines out there it could be a cheap, quick and easy way to distribute text and images without using the internet.

program: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/thiswayup/20100327
mp3 http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/twu/twu-20100327-1340-Wireless_access-048.mp3
ogg: http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/twu/twu-20100327-1340-Wireless_access.ogg

The students have been working with the OLPC volunteer group in Auckland - that groups meets every second week. Further details on http://laptop.org.nz (subscribe to the mailing list to get info on auckland meetings).

Screw Removal XO-1.5 Display Teardown, originally uploaded by Wayan Vota.

There's a new revision of hardware for the One Laptop Per Child project -- the XO 1.5.

Found on flickr: some photos of disassembling the new latops, showing all the innads.

More Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcmetroblogger/sets/72157594232448993/

OLPC foundation are sending FIVE XO 1.5s to us in Wellington :-D

The following things are making me happy:

Finding I'm volunteering for One Laptop Per Child nearly every day and changing the world, and really enjoying it.

How the OLPC effort in Aotearoa is growing growing growing.

How many people came out to talk about how stupid Mark Shuttleworth's comment was (you know which one). "Girls" are among those that made open source what it is today, whether shuttleworth realises it or not.

Statusnet project going from strength to strength (and starting on the journey to world domination)

How Drupal is no longer this unheard of strange CMS that Brenda keeps pitching -- it's being used everywhere, for years now, in place in NZ that i've never been near. Clients turn up already wanting Drupal.

Public sector remix project gaining steam for being awesome.

How many amazing people are coming to Wellington for LCA2010 - including open source ninjas i've "known" for years and never met.

oh, and the thought that in about 2 months I will be able to see my own feet again.

Wellington OLPC "Friends in Testing" group need USB memory sticks to test One Laptop Per Child (Sugar/XO).

If you have some (1GByte+) and are generous and wonderful and would like to donate these, please see this webpage:

http://laptop.org.nz/micro-sponsors

Who are OLPC?

MISSION STATEMENT: To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.

Miniconf are mini 1 day conferences (or sometimes 2 days). They happen on the Monday and Tuesday of LCA Linux conferences. The 2010 conference is in Wellington, and the call for miniconf proposals is open now.

By proposing a miniconf you're agreeing to host it: you find the speakers (usually you do your own call for papers after you announce your miniconf) and you find volunteers to do the MC announcement of the next speaker etc. The Main conference will find you a room, and AV gear etc.

They mini confs provide great variety to the conferences - the topics are diverse

Here's a list i've compiled of miniconfs from the past.

2009:

Open Source Databases
Linux Kernel
System administration
MythTV
LinuxChix
Mobile Devices
Business of Open Source
Linux Security
Multimedia
Virtualisation
GAming
Freedom

2008:

Community Wireless
Debian
Education
Embedded
Fedora
Multimedia
Security
Virtualisation
Distro Summit
Gaming
Gentoo
Gnome
kernel
LinuxChix
MySQL
System Administration

2007

Debian
Gnome
Education
Embedded
Virtualisation
MySQL
Research
Gaming
Kernel
Postgres
OpenOffice
LinuxChix

Here are some things I know the NZ opensource community is into, and I'd like to see proposed by somebody for Wellington 2010:
Linux/opensource Automobiles
Opensource in Governments
Opensource in Mobile and/or Telecommunications.
One Laptop Per Child / Sugar.

Tabitha Roder is a heroine - she does awesome things in her day job i'm sure, but it her weekend volunteer "job" that is inspirational.

Tabitha is the force behind Wellington's Friends in Testing - This is a group that meets *every* weekend, has breakfast, and then proceeds to test the latest build of Sugar OS on the One Laptop Per Child XO laptops.

She pays for data (over cdma cellular) from her own pocket, she feeds the poorer students coffee and fries while testing, and she send a report back to the project at the end of the day.

The true awesome thing she does is cheerlead and muster the group of students, coderhackers, parents, and others to turn up every weekend - She's done a mighty thing that has a positive effect on far reaching parts of this work.

Wellingtonian Martin Langhoff talks on OLPC.

“One Laptop per Child has already distributed nearly a million laptops in 31 countries”

These are the same laptops that "Wellington Friends in Testing" have been testing every week, over brunch.

“One Laptop per Child has already distributed nearly a million laptops in 31 countries”Source: www.uoc.eduThe “One Laptop per Child” computers are designed for working, as the people responsible for them say, “under a tree”. That is, networked and forming a learning community. For this to happen, the best ...    hey!! it's the hoff!    

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to be held this year on Saturday 20th September, 2008. This year SFD is to be held at the Wellington Convention Centre in Wellington from 12pm - 6pm. There will be free wifi, coffee all day at the venue, and pizza and beer as things wrap up at 6pm.

From Pia Waugh's blog:
http://pipka.org/blog/2008/08/16/olpc-in-niue/

The ASUS eeepc was the first to make sub-notebook computing really happen. Some credit the OLPC (one laptop per child) as the first, but they are a very niche target (education in equator climates) and they fail to ship to remote places like New Zealand (or even to Australia). I like the the Stephen Fry quote that i'll proceed to misquote as "eeepc: i'll always remember you as the first of what was to come".