[Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2010-08-25

[Walter Bender]

==Sugar Digest==

1. I wrote about a discussion with John Gilmore in April
[http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Archive/Current_Events/2010-04-01]. When
John asked how many patches have been contributed by Sugar end-users,
I responded that community members have contributed patches but that I
was unaware of any patches contributed by children. I went on to argue
that it is not relevant whether or not patches are submitted or
accepted. The learning happens in creating the patch and in submitting
it or sharing it with a friend. Hopefully, Sugar has instilled in
children and their teachers the sense that they can be expressive with
computing.

That said, the children are being creative with Sugar in ways that I
had not anticipated. For example, Bernie shared
[http://codewiz.org/wiki/pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/scratcheros/00003.jpg]
from Caacupé of a surprising and wonderful use of the nickname field
in Sugar. It may not be a patch to the Python code, but it certainly
is a user contribution that extends and enhances Sugar, a great first
step for a sixth grader.

2. In the US, there is a mid-term election in November. At Sugar Labs,
we will be holding our mid-term election in October in order to fill
three oversight board positions. (You may recall that we agreed to
stagger the two-year terms of the board so that 3 or 4 positions are
up for reelection every year.)

We have several tasks associated with election:

(1) Updating our member list
[http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Members/List|, which is used
to generate ballots. If you are already a member of Sugar Labs, your
name will appear on the list and you will receive a ballot by email in
October. If you are not a member and would like to be, please contact
Luke Faraone, our membership administrator, who will add you to the
list. Recall that the requirement to be a member of Sugar Labs is to
engage with the project and the community. This can be as simple as
asking a question.

(2) Gathering together a list of nominees. If you are interested in
joining the Sugar oversight board, please contact me and I will add
your name to the ballot. Also, please prepare a position statement
about your candidacy on your "User" page in the wiki. There are no
restrictions in regard to whom can run, e.g., whether you were born in
Kenya or the United States, you are eligible.

===In the community===

3. There will be an OLPC/Sugar/Realness summit October 21 – 24 in San
Francisco. The summit is being hosted by the San Francisco Bay Area
OLPC community. More details are available at
[http://olpcsf.org/CommunitySummit2010/].

===Tech Talk ===

4. Last week, we entered Feature Freeze for Sugar Release 0.90. This
week we entered UI Freeze. Next week is String Freeze. Hard code
freeze starts on September 13. Simon Schampijer is once again pulling
together contributions from the community; the new release is looking
great.

===Sugar Labs===

Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on
the IAEP mailing list.

http://wiki/sugarlabs.org/go/File:2010-Aug-14-20-som.jpg (18 emails)

Visit our planet [http://planet.sugarlabs.org] for more updates about
Sugar and Sugar deployments.

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org