[IAEP] May MiniCamp

[David Farning]

I would like to recommend the we plan on holding the May MiniCamp in
Paris around the weekend of May 16.

The primary benefit of Paris is co-locating with a scheduled OLPC
France event being held that weekend.  The opportunity to meet with
OLPC France presents some great opportunities to work together; Going
to meet the community in their homes,  identifying lead users,
receiving vital feedback.

By going to work with OLPC France, we can communicate that while Sugar
Labs is an upstream part, it is not the central part of the 'iaep'
project.  The most important part is where the student and teacher
come together to learn.  Sugar Labs is focused on creating a great
learning platform to benefit the entire ecosystem.  In this role,
Sugar Labs serves as a hub for communication and collaboration.

Secondly, Sugar Labs needs to identify and engage _lead_users_.  Sugar
in not yet ready to be sold in retail stores nor is it ready for
_easy_ deployment around the world.  There is still a lot of work in
making sure the software works on your hardware, setting up a
collaboration server, and creating the learning content to match daily
lesson plans.  Lead users are people with passion or a particular
expertise who have the motivation and ability to help improve the
Sugar experience... for everyone.

Finally,  working for the weekend with OLPC France allow us both to
observe and receive feedback.  Sugar Labs can learn more about what
OLPC France is doing and what their needs are.  OLPC France can learn
that Sugar Labs is _just_ a group of volunteers with a working
knowledge of computer science, education theory, and a bit of
economics trying to help kids learn more effectively.  Sugar Labs
success is based on the premise of creating and fostering a ecosystem
to build on top of the learning platform.

There may be limited travel stipends available to people willing to
hold workshops.

david