The XO in the classroom - initial hurdles

It's been a while since my first post on our idea of writing software for the OLPC's XO as a project for our Python programming elective.

In the meantime, things have been moving forward... at least some things. I showed the class part of Ivan Krstic's talk on the XO and they all were interested in the project, so selling the project was not an issue.

We managed to get orders in for a couple of the Give 1 Get 1 units on the first day, which means they should actually show up some time in the next 3 weeks or so. Since I had money in the budget for the G1G1 program, I decided not to try for developer units of the XO at this time, since we have yet to contribute any code, and my understanding from the mailing lists is that consideration of requests for those units is handled somewhat sporadically.

In any case, I felt the first step was to get a feel for the community, so I joined some of the mailing lists - sugar, devel, and games for a start. Traffic on the last is rather light, mostly announcements of game jams, and the second has a lot of automated build announcements, so the main sugar list is probably the best one for someone new to the project. Traffic on the sugar list seems to be a good view of the project - everything from discussions of possible new features and show stopping bugs to Walter Bender's more formal OLPC News posts. On the other hand, the devel list had a wonderful sense of urgency as they approached the deadline for the first round of devices hitting manufacturing.

So far, so good... kids on board? Check. Actual XO's on the way? Check. Joining mailing lists to learn about the community? Check.