Students from the OSL and OSEL giving a 30 minute presentation about open source opportunities at OSU. If you have or know of open source opportunities on campus or in Corvallis (preferably available to incoming OSU freshman), tell us!
E-mail things we should talk about, ideas, etc. to the OSEL mailing list or Sarah Cooley at cooleys at engr.orst.edu.
The Open Source Education Lab is hosting a BarCamp at OSU. Friday, February 29th at 6:30pm for introductions, reception and conversation, Saturday, March 1st at 9am for the real deal. You are welcome to come to one or both. The two day Beaver BarCamp conference is free to register for and is welcome to all community members!
What is a BarCamp? Unlike traditional (read: lame) conferences that do silly things like make schedules ahead of time, at BarCamp the schedule is created throughout the day by popular consensus. Anyone who wishes to lead a talk on any relavant topic can do so. We have enough rooms to host a bunch of different tracks going at the same time. Pick what is most interesting at the time, jump between sessions or just run one yourself!
Want to talk OLPC? Done. Learn more about Python web development with Django? Not a problem. PHP module development for Drupal? Cake. How about mirroring the success of our own Open Source Lab at other universities? Go for it! Anything that you want to talk about is fair game, just signup for one of the conference rooms in the lobby and whoever wants to partake in that discussion will join. Sound fun? It is! BarCamps in Seattle, Portland and throughout the world have had phenominal success with these “unconferences.” Their flexibility and fresh material makes for a fun, thought-provoking day. Come see what all the hype is all about: 9am at Kelley Engineering Center at OSU with a smile on your face.
Sponsors include: Software Association of Oregon Corvallis Chapter, MyStrands, Jive Software, Sanda Communications, WoodstocksPizza, OSU College of Engineering, Insights Now!, Microsoft, Mozilla
The November issue of the OSEL newsletter “Open Sources” has been released. This issue features articles on the OSU LUG helping an ECE class install Ubuntu, a look back at the first year of the OSEL at OSU, and an OSU student’s work on one of the media players for the OLPC.
Finally, here is the pdf for the issue.
Students Mike Burns and Justin Gallardo have been getting a lot of good press lately, with stories in the 
Eugene Weekly and the Corvallis Gazette Times. Mike and Justin helped forge the connection between the United Nations sponsored OLPC project and OSU. Mike made the initial connection, and Justin ported the word processor for the OLPC. That has led to many more connections to the project. Picture shown is from the Corvallis Gazette Times article.
The winter 2007 edition of the Oregon Stater, the OSU Alumni magazine, includes an article profiling Corey Shields and the Open Source Lab. The article also discusses the OSEL, our OSEL student evanglists Brandon Philips and Alex Polvi, as well as one of the students projects the OSEL is involved with, the Open Laptop per Child project and student Mike Burns.
Shown at left is Dennis Wolverton, photographer for the Oregon Stater, making friends with Tux at a LUG Hacking social during the preparation of the article.
You can find an on-line version of the article on the osu alumni web site.
The Open Source Lab is engaging the One Laptop Per Child community by donating the time of a student developer. Starting next week Justin Gallardo’s full-time job will be making OLPC even better. For those unfamiliar with the OLPC project it aims to create a low cost laptop for students in developing countries. A few weeks before this announcement Justin had spent a weekend to finish a port of Abiword, a word processor, to the laptop. In the future Justin will be working to finish up the OLPC development board cluster hosted at the OSL and working with Red Hat’s team to create new activities for the platform.
Beaver Open House is the opportunity for the university to highlight for prospective students all the exciting things taking place at OSU. And some of the most exciting activities involve OSEL/LUG. Pictured behind the table is Justin Gallardo, who recently ported the AbiWord word processor to the (United Nations Sponsored) One Laptop Per Child project. To the right is Mike Burns, who was showing off the OLPC motherboard. Working the crowd is Alex Polvi. The OSEL/LUG tables was one of the most popular tables at the open house, attracting the interests of a great many potential students. Tux even got to ride on a segway.
On November 2nd Alex Polvi, Mike Burns, Justin Gallardo, Donnie Berkholz, and Brandon Philips visited the Portland Linux Users Group. Alex gave a presentation on the state of free open source software at Oregon State University and the role the OSEL is playing. Then Mike and Justin demoed and discussed the One Laptop Per Child project. After the talks a number of interesting conversation started about helping with OLPC, pursuing a degree at OSU and working with the school of EECS. It will be interesting to see what comes out of the visit!
The weekly LUG hacking social, in Dearborn 401, heard from Mike Burns, undergraduate student in computer science. He talked about the One Laptop Per Child project initiated by Nicholas Negroponte and Kofi Annan of the United Nations. Mike demonstrated the motherboard for the proposed system, and some of the software that the system will run. Despite competition from the Senior Dinner, which was taking place at the same time, there was a good crowd. Audience included a writer and photographer from the Oregon Stater, the Alumni publication, so perhaps we will see an article in the near future. As every week, the free Pizza and drinks provided by Google were an added attraction.