Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 3 November, 2009 - 14:01

My neighbors and friends on Bainbridge Island remember my active campaigning in December 2007 to get as many people as possible to order a One Laptop Per Child device for their children. Now it's being started up again at http://amazon.com/olpc but so far you can only buy them for other children in poor countries - not yet for our own children.

I hope this changes, but whatever happens am curious to see if folks in the Pacific Northwest are interested in connecting around the topic of OLPC. Is this something we could work together on here at Kabissa? Ping me if you have an XO and want to work together.

This week I also got an email from the current stewards of the Seattle XO group, also posted to their blog.. the first post there since November 2008. They are looking for new stewards:

Friends:
It's been many months since we communicated. We are writing now to see if anyone is interested in taking over the domains for the Seattle XO User Group along with the tools we've created to manage the group. They are coming up for renewal in the next month or so. We'd be happy to turn them over to someone else along with the membership list, such as it is, if someone would like to take this on.

It is a sweet little laptop, but we don't have the time or inclination to keep the domains registered.

Thanks,
Chris, Wayne, Tim

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Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 3 November, 2009 - 14:32.

Just after posting, I realized a few things that have been going through my mind that I should probably share in connection with this post. 

So what can we do together? There are many people on Bainbridge Island and in the Pacific Northwest who have acquired OLPC laptops for their children. In strength is numbers, and a heck of alot more fun too.

  • Given the nature of the laptops, they are alot more fun to learn about and play with in a community than in isolation. We could organize regular face to face play sessions. 
  • We could set up a safe closed network through the Internet so that our kids can do collaborative activities together.
  • As a community, we could help each other with upgrades, tech support, hardware issues, tips and tricks etc.   
  • We could work with our local schools to integrate OLPC activities into the computing curriculum
  • We could connect schools in our community with schools in Africa or elsewhere in the gobal south (Ometepe?) to do a project like this one I read about recently in which Canadian children helped a school in Kenya get connected with OLPC laptops, solar panels and the Internet: http://bit.ly/vCuqi

If you're feeling disconnected from OLPC and want news, check out the OLPCNEWS website at http://www.olpcnews.com which has some interesting stuff on the frontpage currently regarding plans for the next generations of OLPC gadgets.

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 16 November, 2009 - 13:20.

Since I posted this to the Connect PNW blog last week, a few things have happened:

  • The folks at olpcnews.com, the best 'unofficial' news site and forum for OLPC enthusiasts, were kind enough to crosspost this post over there as Re-Starting Pacific Northwest OLPC User Groups
  • There was one very interesting response there: "Tobias, glad to hear you are interested in continuing olpc in the Pac NW. Please keep me in the loop. My 3rd grade classroom in Seattle has 6 XO's (and a couple of solar panels). Our blog is at http://roomtwelve.com"
  • The current maintainers of the Seattle XO community have offered me the domains and logins to the Seattle XO blog at http://www.seaxo.org and membership database. We'll have to decide which of the 4 domains to keep and continue using. Looks like seaxo.org is the main one but seattlexo.org would also be useful. 

We'll see how this evolves! Keep in mind that I am actually not even in the Pacific Northwest myself but am eager to help keep the community going. I can help contribute to the online community building part and would actually like to try to set up a jabber server on the Internet so that my kids can connect with their friends on Bainbridge (and PNW) in a safe "walled garden" XO neighborhood.

I would like to find some volunteer collaborators on the ground to organize some face to face meetups. If anyone is interested, let us know here!

Cheers,

Tobias

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 19 November, 2009 - 15:45.

The SEAXO folks have now given me the domains for the Seattle XO user's group, and will also give me login details for the blog and registration database. This puts us in a good position to restart things. Let me know if you want to help!

I just came across the Bainbridge Island XO group I set up a few years back on Google Groups and promptly forgot about because nobody picked up on it: http://groups.google.com/group/xobi

Seems not much has changed since back then - but I thought it'd be worth saving the description I wrote up of the group back then, and to invite those folks to come and read this post and, if they like, join this group on Kabissa to get connected with us:

Welcome to the XOBI google group for Bainbridge Island for folks interested in the XO laptop project, otherwise known as One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). The purpose of this group can and probably will evolve, but here are a few initial ideas to get us going: 

  • Find out how many people on Bainbridge Island have acquired XO Laptops
  • Get together to play and learn together on the XO Laptops - XO playgroups for all ages 
  • Explore ways to get involved with the OLPC to connect poor children in developing countries with laptops 

For more information about OLPC, see: 

  • Official OLPC website with polished brochureware about the project: http://www.laptop.org 
  • OLPC Wiki with wealth of information about the project, the laptops, the software, the unique "sugar" operating system, downloadable XO Activities and more: http://wiki.laptop.org
  • OLPC News blog with "independent" third party news and information about the OLPC project, as well as a lively online community forum: http://www.olpcnews.com

  • There is a Seattle area XO group blog here: http://www.seaxo.com

The managers of this group currently are Tobias Eigen and Jill Allison. Let us know if you'd like to help out. 

Help us to spread the word! Tobias Eigen contacted the folks at seaxo.com, linked here from the OLPC wiki here and here, and posted an announcement on the oplcnews.com forums. Contacting the Bainbridge Review and other local outlets will also help to spread the word locally.

Submitted by Tobias Eigen on 19 November, 2009 - 16:00.

I just sent the following message to the members of the BIXO group - look forward to seeing who comes out of the woodwork.

Dear friends!

Hope you have been keeping well - it's been quite a while since we've seen a message here and I don't even know how many people will get this!

I wanted to share the news with you all that I have taking the lead in building up community again around One Laptop Per Child owners and enthusiasts in the Seattle area. Here's a link to a blog post at Kabissa with all the details: http://bit.ly/2Jci59

I am looking for some volunteer enthusiasts to help get things going locally (as I am in Berlin for the next two years I certainly won't be organizing any face to face meetings!) and also generally interested in recruiting folks to join us and brainstorm things we could do together and work on in our community and indeed around the world.

This goes beyond mere peer support on helping our children make the most of their devices to perhaps setting up a secure Internet-based "neighborhood" where our children can meet and do things together, and getting involved in OLPC projects around the world.

You can instantly join the Kabissa Connect Pacific Northwest group where we could do some brainstorming together by creating an account (free) at http://kabissa.org/user/register using the following registration key: pnwconnect

Let me know if you have any questions or feedback.

Cheers,

Tobias

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