OSEL Blog

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.

Are you passionate about open source?

The Open Source Education Lab is devoted to helping students become involved in contributing their time and talents to open source projects. At the heart of the organization are two or more paid student “open source evangelists”. These students plan meetings, design programs, give presentations, and help maintain the OSEL infrastructure. If you are an OSU student, have an outgoing personality, like to speak to groups, are well organized, and are passionate about the open source movement, then contact either Professor Budd (budd@eecs.oregonstate.edu) or send a message to osel@lists.oregonstate.edu.

The March/April issue of “Open Sources”, the OSEL newsletter, is now available as a pdf download. This issue features articles on students visiting Australia for Linux.conf.au, open source classes at Oregon State University, a profile on Darcs author David Roundy and more.

Would you like to be on the “Open Sources” mailing list? Email us at osel@lists.oregonstate.edu.

Google gave the Oregon State University Linux Users Group a visit on March 6th. The Googlers included Lori Welch, a Hardware Operations Recruiter from Mountain View, Ken Patchett, the Hardware Operations Manager from The Dalles, Josh Betts, The Dalles Facility Manager, and Trevor Sehrer, a hardware op. With them they brought a tech talk about managing large data centers, plenty of schwag, and pizza for all.

Thanks Google!

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!