Thursday, June 18, 2009

Show Time

:: os bridge, 2009 ::

I'm in David Mandel's Open Source on the Farm, feeling somewhat guilty for missing the teaching seminar just after mine. This will be about agriculture. I'd listed it as one of my top three, though ended up missing the one on Parrot (Allison not doing it).

Instead, I took my time this morning, driving my props over in Razz (polyhedra, posters, map, beans, various battle-scarred artifacts, even extra speakers), then going home again, uploading some pictures, and returning by Max.

David is the new executive director of Linux Fund, a job JC was doing when I first met the man. Yeah, I told my police story again: Saturday Academy (me 'n Jerritt) helped HPD try to do what the schools should have been doing e.g. teaching about responsible exercise of one's freedoms -- one of my favorite stories.

I'm relieved to be finished with Python for Teachers (slides -- 6meg), believe I've mapped out an actionable strategy and communicated it clearly enough, even if in a somewhat scrambled order (I wander sometimes, have lots on my mind).

In the Q&A, Josh asked "what's next?" and I emphasized teachers and students both seem eager for these changes, are chomping at the bit in many cases, especially if there's merit pay involved. So what's the hold up? Not Portland I don't think.

Maybe we're unstoppable? "World domination achieved, so now what?" might be our bumper sticker du jour. There's a lot of hubris in that maybe, wishful thinking, but it's good for morale building, plus we can point to quite a blit of collateral (Applewhite's term for corroborating evidence (blit is a term from animation)).

Insufficient agreement on "the lore" might be a temporary bottleneck? The USA math teaching establishment may not have a sufficiently sharp focus on "the Bucky stuff" (e.g. Mites, Sytes and Kites), other focal points, even as we do our best to make this curriculum less esoteric (e.g. it's not all Britney Spears).

Our world domination schemes can't really afford to wait for USAers to embrace their own heritage, but it'd certainly help if we did (this wallowing in idiocracy only benefits a small minority).

I talked up ISEPP and Linus Pauling House quite a bit, with our Hawthorne District the "birthplace of the silicon forest". Having a think tank in the picture helps provide ballast, suggests inertia, an establishment (gravitas).

I also introduced this model of casino customers "investing losings" e.g. after some traditional gambling, customers might commit bonus packets to tribe-defined goals, such as OMSI, improving ecosystems, youth programs etc. (whatever house priorities). Could this help with our teacher training camps?

"Let's not pick battles we can't win" was another theme of my talk this time. For example, let's embrace being "pirates", as we'll be seen that way anyway. This doesn't mean we illegally board vessels and steal their goods. "Pirate" doesn't mean "Robin Hood" in Fuller's namespace (e.g. see Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth).

Yes we "objectify" (that's just how we're trained, at least in Python) -- doesn't mean we're without empathy. Let's remember about namespaces i.e. "to objectify" and "to disrespect" need not be linked. We're subjects too ("self" not a keyword, yet an MVP in Python). It's not either/or.

I'll upload a buncha slides, showing off all the props 'n stuff. I tried to be entertaining, grateful for another chance to put it out there (a competing vision of the future, not necessarily mainstream).

David, a semi-retired farmer, with training as a mathematician, is naturally predisposed to open source. Unless you can see how it works, why would you trust it? FOSS culture is about a lot more than just software: hardware, data, books, ideas, algorithms, techniques, procedures, genetic material.

Farmers naturally work together, spontaneously form collaborative relationships (teams), so the collaborative nature of FOSS development is consistent with farming. GIS is a focus with this group, not surprisingly.

Some FOSS tools farmer David uses: OpenOffice, emacs, gimp, xv, inkscape, qcad, grass or qgis, R, web development frameworks (e.g. Plone), Postgres, MySQL etc. Special purpose distros are popular, but why isn't there one for farming. Too diverse?