[Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2015-04-09

[Walter Bender]

== Sugar Digest ==

1. I just returned from India, where I had the pleasure of giving the
keynote at BITs Pilani (my theme was how Sugar can provide the means
for appropriate of knowledge) and then headed to Mumbai to give some
Turtle Art workshops. At Pilani, which draws upon students from across
all of India, I had a chance to spend time with students to discuss
Sugar in greater detail and met with several GSoC candidates. In
Mumbai, I was able to use the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education
as a base (thanks to G Nagarjuna). Turtle Art Day was split across two
venues: first, a workshop for educators, where we put the new
Javascript version through a workout, and then at a nearby school,
where we worked with a fourth grade classroom using some XO-1 laptops.
Both groups seemed to take to turtle -- "hard fun" had by all. While
in Mumbai, I also had a chance to visit with Tata Trusts, to discuss
possible venues for collaboration, including a possible Sugar pilot in
Assam. And I visited IIT Bombay, where I met with the IITB Tata
Centre, which pursues education and development projects across the
subcontinent. Many thanks to Harriet Vidyasagar, who both helped to
organize the Mumbai visits and to provide insights into local culture
and needs.

2. At Monday's Sugar Labs oversight board (SLOB) meeting, we voted to
add two new members to the Sugar Labs Membership committee: Sebastian
Silva and Caryl Bigenho. They have tasked themselves with getting the
members list refreshed. We are looking to recruit another committee
member (or two) to help with outreach. Someone connected to the
community of youths contributing patches to Sugar would be ideal.
Also, recruiting more educators who use Sugar in their classrooms
would help round out the committee.

3. 67 students have applied to work as interns for Sugar Labs as part
of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2015 [1]. I've read through the
applications and we have some very strong candidates. It will be a
difficult decision as to how assign the slots we recieve from Google
-- the number is still to be determined. I have already begun looking
for other means of support we might offer to some of the qualified
students who don't make the cut. The mentors are meeting this evening
to discuss the applications.

=== In the community ===

4. I'll be doing a Turtle Art Day in Kingston, Jamaica, on 23 April.
Details to follow. I'd love to reconnect with any Sugar users while I
am in the area.

=== Tech Talk ===

5. James Cameron has been running performance tests on the XO-1
hardware, comparing boot and activity launch times across a number of
builds [2]. It is great to have some data to look at. The good news is
that we have been making steady progress over the past few releases in
terms of reducing boot and launch times. Those of you running old
versions of Sugar/Fedora on XO-1 hardware should consider looking at
Sugar 104. Many bug fixes, improved stability, etc., and as James has
demonstrated, seemingly minimal impact on performace.

6. Peter Robinson announced the availability of Release Candidate 1 of
Sugar 104 on Fedora 22. Please help with testing. (The .iso files can
be found at [3]. Look for SoaS images for your preferred
architecture.)

7. We will be meeting on Saturday, 11 April, to continue discussing
plans the 106 release. Please join Martin Abente Lahaye and the
Developer team on irc.freenode.net (#sugar-meeting) at 21:00 UTC.

=== Sugar Labs ===

8. Please visit our planet [4].

---

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2015
[2] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2015-April/049916.html
[3] https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/22_Beta_RC1
[4] http://planet.sugarlab.org


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