OSEL Blog

Eclipse Foundation members Bjorn Freeman-Benson and Ward Cunningham came to OSU to give a presentation in Professor Budd’s Open Source Development class. The title of the talk was “Software Creativity the Wiki Way.” Ward Cunningham is, of course, the inventor of the wiki-web concept, as well as being coinventor (with Kent Beck) of CRC cards, and part developer of the ideas of extreme programming. After the talk Bjorn blogged some nice comments on the experience, which you can read here .

Update: a video of the presentation can be found here.

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 current issue of Red Herring names Scott Kveton, CEO of Portland startup JanRain, one of the magazine’s “Tech Tots: 25 Young Rebels Who Will Rock the World.” Formerly director of OSU’s Open Source Lab, and a member of the team that developed the concept of the Open Source Educational Lab, Scott left osu in June of 2006 to take the helm at JanRain. Way to go, Scott!

Open google maps, and take a look at 45°7′26″N 123°6′48″W. This otherwise undistinguished farm just outside Amity Oregon seems to have something interesting going on. In fact, it is the famous Firefox crop circle. Now known worldwide courtesy of google maps. In fact, if you scroll just a little bit south of the crop circle itself, you can see a number of people, including our Alex Polvi. Truly, he is out standing in his field.

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 Oregon State Linux Users Group and Open Source Education Lab took down the house at the recent EECS Open House. The open house was oriented towards Freshman, who are often unsure about their career. We inundated them with the joys of free/open source software, hopefully showing them something new and interesting.

Our evangelists are at it again, this time meeting with IBM Linux Technology Center leaders Dan Frye, Hal Porter, and Patricia Gaughen. Mr. Frye was particularly interested in how OSU was integrating free software into education. We answered, check out our ClassesUsingOpenSource.

Tux met some new friends (in this case, the women of Kappa Kappa Gamma), while representing LUG and the OSEL at the Beaver Community Fair, September 29, 2006. The folks manning the LUG table (which included representation from OSEL) also talked with many interested students. You can see more pictures on the LUG web site. Looks like the start of a good year.

Alex Polvi and Brandon Philips met with state Senators Frank Morse and Sentor Nelson to discuss the OSEL and Open Software in the university.