[IAEP] Fwd: XOCamp fundraising guest post for OLPCNews - help please.

[Jameson Quinn]

I sent the following general fundraising request as an unsolicited guest
post to OLPCNews on Dec. 23. They haven't put it up or gotten back to me,
and I don't have the connectivity right now to follow up on this. Can
somebody - preferably somebody who has already done guest posts there -
please take this off my hands? I do not care whose name appears as the post
author, or whether you or they see the need to edit my post; all I want is
for there to be a link to the fundraising page, and some kind
of accompanying explanation, from OLPCnews, before the year ends (since I
believe that many people are more likely to make tax-deductible
contributions then). I am in an internet cafe now, and will probably not be
able to reply to messages, so instead of replying "should I do it?", just
take the task.


This message bounced with image attachments, so I uploaded the images I'd
selected at http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:Xocampattendees.png and
http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:Sugarcamp_cool.JPG

Thanks,
Jameson Quinn

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 9:51 PM
Subject: Guest post: Give for XOCamp, help Sugar development and XO
deployment
To: editors at olpcnews.com



XOCamp 2 is coming up, January 12th to 16th. It's a meeting for the people
who are doing the hard work developing Sugar and deploying the XO in
countries like Uruguay, Colombia, Nigeria, and Nepal. It's an important
chance for people to get to know each other, and for synergy to happen
between different projects. And... we need your (or your company's)
US-tax-deductible help for travel
scholarships<http://sugarlabs.org/go/XOCamp_2#Pledges>
.

Why? Let's start with deployments. Exciting things are happening with the XO
in Uruguay <http://olpc-ceibal.blogspot.com/>,
Nigeria<http://schoolkey.net/blog/2008/10/22/earth-treasury-africa-project-considering-a-sugar-on-a-stick-approach>
, <http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0704/07/i_if.01.html>
Colombia<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/nicholas_negroponte_takes_olpc_to_colombia.html>,
and Guatemala <http://www.guatemala.gob.gt/noticia.php?codigo=1561&tipo=1>,
and the volunteers and workers on the ground who are helping those things
happen right would love to meet each other. But our salaries in these
far-off places do not stretch very well to pay the full cost of tickets to
Boston. We are taking the bus and train to make our plane tickets as cheap
(and low-carbon) as possible; your tax-deductible contribution would help.

Then there's development. Sugar, as you know, is the free software that
makes the XO run for kids. And the dirty secret is that free software is not
actually a lot easier than the other kind. People who say "with enough eyes,
all bugs are shallow" mostly aren't the people attached to the eyes which
hurt from staring at the screen looking for those bugs. Experience
suggests<http://mako.cc/writing/funding_volunteers/funding_volunteers.html#id2447268>that
in-kind support, like travel scholarships, are one of the best ways to
encourage open source development, safer even than directly paying for work
because it doesn't create a division between volunteers and staff.

And finally, there's the synergy between the two. At the last experience
like this - Sugarcamp <http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugarcamp> - developers and
deployers met and the sparks that were struck are bearing fruit. Developers
need to know what deployers need; deployers need to know what features and
workarounds are available. Hanging out on IRC or email lists is never going
to result in the kind of concentrated knowledge transfer that happens at a
real-world meeting. The cool photo on the left is a hacked up XO projector
that was shown off at the sugarcamp.

So please make your tax-deductible year end donation today. Here's how to
send money via Google Checkout, Paypal, or
check<http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Donate>;
please remember to note your donation on the
wiki<http://sugarlabs.org/go/XOCamp_2#Pledges>,
or we won't know to apply it to travel scholarships. All money raised will
be divided between qualifying applicants: half divided equally, half
proportional to any remaining direct travel expenses. Though there probably
will not be enough to give full scholarships, if there is, then any leftover
money will be used for other Sugarlabs purposes, possibly including future
travel scholarships. If you can get your company to match your gift - or
even to give on its own; this kind of direct donation is a highly effective
use for a couple of thousand dollars - that would of course be much
appreciated.
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