Friday, March 21, 2008

Revamped OLPC Project Roadmap

My OLPC wiki project is not dead. Far from it. I know that it seems otherwise since I have not been writing about it for a long while now, but let me tell you, the project is back on the ball. Wednesday afternoon I made my way up to mouse to discuss what we were going to do from here on out. I have not visited the offices for quite some time due to all of my prep classes, so it was nice to go back. The fact that I got to see everyone again was, alone, well worth the time. And as a little bonus, I got to pig out on these wonderful triangular cookies that I've now forgotten the name of.

Anyways the overall plan looks a little something like this:
We hope to get all/most of the text based sections of the wiki done by the middle of next week. I presume that I will have to go back and update the existing pages so that they coincide with the later updated that the XOs have received and come shipped with.

April will see the creation and uploading of the video section. In fact, this will be the main focus for that month. I'm not too keen on it though, seeing has how I don't really use a video camera much, but I may be able to get a few of my friends to help out if they are so inclined. In addition to this, though it was not said, I would not mind driving people to the wiki around mid April when we should have a fair amount of videos up. I want to do this to gain respective on the usability of this thing. Plus, if we were able to get a certain group of people I have in mind for the task, I would love to have them start writing little things of their own - it is a wiki after all. And of course anyone else, especially my readers, is free to go to the wiki and sound off on it either here or their.

Moving on past April, I'm hoping to see my startup of the site come to an end. I'm wishing that around May or June I'll see people going there of their own accord, editing and adding pages. I do still plan to over look things to make sure everything is going well, but eventually I want to step back and let the wiki stand on its own two feet.

So yea. Heres to the hope for a very successful birth of a wiki. Shouldn't be too difficult. But for anyone reading this who has one of the computers in their possession: Is there anything you would like to see done?

2 comments:

  1. The cookies are Hamentashen:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamentashen

    My only .02 is that I think visuals are really helpful--whether they're a sequence of still pictures or a video. Showing is often better than telling.

    I think you might get some useful feedback from the students using the OLPC here in NYC:

    http://olpcnyc.wordpress.com/

    They're eager for you to ask for their ideas.

    I also wonder what would happen if you posted about the project on OLPC News?

    http://www.olpcnews.com/

    There's been a lot of change in leadership at OLPC these days, but the community of folks interested in the project is massive. You might be able to get even more done if you enlist the help of others--which might be as simple as bringing the conversation you've started to these other forums.

    http://www.olpcnews.com/

    I remain very excited about and interested in the project--keep on posting!

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  2. I'm definitely going to enlist the help of the students. I'm hoping for them to be the test pilots for the wiki. However I'm a bit more shy when it comes to the OLPC widespread community. For some reason they seem a bit too daunting. Last but not least, while the change in leadership is interesting I find myself a bit frightened by it. Makes me wonder about the stability of the project en masse.

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