‘Til All Are One

We at OLPC Australia celebrated our first birthday with a massive bang — a black-tie gala event held at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Sydney Harbour. It was a wonderful night of celebrating Australian Indigenous art, music, culture and food. Corporate sponsors generously donated to the cause.

Of special note was our keynote speaker. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd voiced his support for our mission, extending deductible gift recipient status to all donations made to us. Also in attendance was the Assistant Treasurer and other representatives of state and federal government.

Myself and other members of the OLPC Australia team were fortunate enough to meet with Kevin before the official proceedings commenced. He took the time to converse individually with each of us. I related my experiences in Dhalinybuy, where every child has their own computer on the Internet. This ratio of 1:1 access is almost unheard of even in city schools. I was pleased to see one of our anecdotes make it into his address, not very long after our conversation.

It’s an indescribable feeling knowing that you’re on the radar of the highest political office in the land. We are a small team and have a long way to go, but I firmly believe that we are on track to empower remote communities across Australia.

I am writing this from Dhalinybuy School in remote Australia. What’s even more impressive is that I am typing this on a production-model OLPC XO-1.5!

For those who don’t know yet, in March I started full-time as the Technical Co-ordinator at One Laptop per Child Australia. This basically means that I manage the technology surrounding the XO laptops, XS server and so on.

We are in East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, this week for OLPC deployments, as well as training in Yirrkala School and the Yirrkala Homelands Learning Centres (HLCs).

There are eight HLCs in all, spread over a wide area. The closest one is close to two hour’s drive away from Yirrkala, almost entirely on dirt road. Yirrkala itself is quite remote - about 13 hours drive (again, almost entirely on dirt) from Darwin. It’s generally easier to fly to these locations (which takes at least four hops if you’re coming from Sydney), especially right now as a tropical cyclone (which barely missed us a month ago when we were out this way) destroyed many of the roads.

In collaboration with the University of Western Sydney (UWS), and with some assistance from the Northern Territory Department of Education and Training (NTDET), we have formed teams and spread out over the eight HLCs to work with children, teachers, schools and communities.

I’ll have to go into my work at Yirrkala School at a later time, but here at the HLCs we have managed some impressive feats, if I do say so myself! For instance:

• this is to the best of my knowledge the world’s first deployment of the new XO-1.5 devices, and we’re doing it across all eight HLCs at once
• children can write in their own language, as we installed Yolngu Matha fonts
• we have taught teachers and students to create their own e-books using Scratch, using pictures they take with the camera and content we loaded onto the XOs beforehand

In addition, I worked with Ian Cunningham from NTDET to produce an inexpensive and simple means to deploy wireless access points to these remote communities. These are Linksys WRT-54GL devices flashed with DD-WRT. We configured each such that they will just work when plugged in. The HLCs that have satellite Internet can have their access points managed from anywhere on the NT Schools network.

I left our setup to the UWS students (none of whom are technical) on my team, and they were able to successfully set up the access point and create a workable area for the XOs to be charged.

Most of the HLCs have their electricity supplied entirely by local generators, which are normally rationed to run at night. Dhalinybuy school has its own smaller generator. This is enough for the basics, but insufficient for the four desktop PCs that they have. Consequently, these computers are rarely used, and the teachers tell me that they are too difficult to manage anyway. Being battery powered and far more power efficient, XOs are far more suitable.

We have successfully deployed XOs to every school-age child in Dhalinybuy. I’m still out here, so I don’t yet know the status of the other HLCs. I am, however, confident that they are operational, given the ease at which we got things going here.

Through the access point, every XO (and hence every child) can collaborate and share their activities in Sugar. This also facilitates an Internet connection for all the XOs, through the NT Schools network. They are now open to a wider world of information and communication.

Apologies for pimping my employer, but I became the subject of the inaugural ‘Meet the Team’ portion of the BizCubed newsletter.

It’s a good feeling knowing that you work for a company that actually cares about open source and open standards. For example, we sponsored the Government 2.0 event in Canberra last week.

For the sake of posterity, I’ll reproduce the interview here:

Meet The Team — Sridhar Dhanapalan

We are more than a consulting company - we are a great team! In this section we will be introducing one member of our team in each newsletter.

What do you do at BizCubed?

I make sure that our Support subscribers are receiving legendary service. We like to be an open company, and so knowledge sharing is important to us. I write a lot of documentation on our wiki for the benefit of the Pentaho community.

Internally, I ensure that our team is properly enabled with any information or infrastructure that they need. I take care of our servers and deployments. I also do the occasional development of BI solutions. It’s a varied role — I never have a reason to be bored!

What attracts you to open source BI?

It seems incongruous that while we demand transparency from, for instance, our political systems and financial institutions, they rely on software that is opaque.

Processes and organisations cannot be thoroughly audited if the software that drives them is closed. I also believe that in using open source and open standards, you are showing respect for your users and customers. Your users can see what you see; touch what you touch. They can inspect and interrogate to their heart’s content, and even make their own modifications if they so wish. They may not opt to exercise those rights, but ultimately it’s their choice and not their vendor’s.

What were you doing before joining BizCubed?

I’ve been using computers since the early 1980s, and I discovered open source just over ten years ago. I’ve been fortunate enough to make a career out of it. I have a background in network engineering, satellite communications, systems administration and good ol’ fashioned tech support.

I completed university with a Science degree majoring in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, which I feel gave me an appreciation for the intersection of technology and society. I think there should be more attention paid to this in ICT, and it’s an area I often encounter in the field of BI.

Do you work with any projects other than Pentaho?

I’ve been very active in the open source community over the past ten years. For the first half of this decade, I was an administrator, editor and author at what was at the time the largest Mandrake (now Mandriva) Linux community Web site.

I’m currently the president of the Sydney Linux Users Group and also on the Linux Australia Council. Through those, I organise and co-ordinate meetings and events for the Australian Linux community. Other than that, I’m involved in the Ubuntu community, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the Grameen Foundation and a few other projects.

What do you do in your spare time?

My open source contributions take up the bulk of my non-work hours. I read a lot of news and current affairs, and I’ve been known to go on Wikipedia binges. Other than that, I spend time with family and friends.

The second Open CeBIT in Sydney ended last week. Forming a section of the much larger CeBIT expo, Open CeBIT focused on open source technologies and solutions. I was involved in three stands: BizCubed (my employer), Linux Australia and Open Source Industry Australia.

In the market, FOSS is clearly maturing and becoming more mainstream. At a CeBIT a couple of years ago, I’d be answering basic questions like, “what is open source?”, “what is Linux?” and “how do you make money?” This year, I didn’t get any questions like that at all. Most people knew something about Linux and FOSS, and just needed some direction to get started.

We had much interest in community and general usage at the Linux Australia stand. Our Fedora, Ubuntu and Edubuntu discs were popular. Of immense popularity were our OLPC XOs, thanks to OLPC Australia. Visitors were genuinely interested in the units, and I didn’t hear any negative feedback at all. I do believe that a lot of people did understand that this is an education project for children in the developing world and not just a laptop project.

At the Open Source Industry Australia stand, I spoke to many people who were interested in deploying FOSS solutions to solve specific problems. Many of these people would not have considered FOSS in the past, so clearly our message is resonating.

Coming up in a couple of weeks (June 14-15) is the Education Expo. We’ve always been successful there, and all signs point to us repeating that.

LotD: MacGyver is favourite disaster hero

Things have certainly been crazy as of late. Being elected onto the SLUG Committee (at the March AGM) has given me a greater appreciation of local community issues and of what it takes to co-ordinate a group. At the same time, managing the Linux Australia stand at Open CeBIT has also been a tremendous learning experience. My official report is here.

I’ve had a few requests to elaborate upon the ‘brush with death’ mentioned in that message. Driving home after the second day of CeBIT, I experienced a car accident. While travelling at at least 60km/h, I somehow lost consciousness, and woke up phoughed into the side of another car. Fortunately, the car was parked and unoccupied. Nobody was involved aside from myself. The car was a write-off, but the passenger cabin was fully intact and I experienced no injuries. The other car was part of a company fleet, and its custodian wasn’t bothered much at all. Insurance took care of the costs on both sides.

I was quite shaken after the crash, and I very nearly didn’t go to CeBIT the next day. After being cleared by a paramedic and two doctors (one on the night of the crash and another the following morning), I decided that I wasn’t going to let this get in my way. It was probably the best decision that I made, since it forced me to get back on my feet doing something that I love, rather than sitting at home in misery. I was unable to moderate the Linux Australia panel discussion that I had helped to organise, but I was there at the stand just like on the previous two days.

Otherwise, CeBIT was a resounding success. It proved to be a fantastic springboard for us to launch the inaugural SLUG Bootcamp. More on this later.

I can’t fully explain why I blacked out in the first place. When I was younger, I would occasionally black out under certain circumstances. Neurologists at the time couldn’t identify what it was, but told me not to worry about it. I was probably just exhausted, from the exhibiting all day, the planning in the lead-up to the event, my new job, TAFE, and various other things. The doctors that I spoke with agreed with me that it was probably just a microsleep.

I’m still recovering from the after-effects of the accident. I get stressed more easily when driving, but I can feel that slowly receding with time. Most of all, I feel exceptionally lucky that I didn’t hurt myself or anyone else.

LotD:  IBM PC Real Time Clock should run in UT

It’s New Year’s Day in the Tamil calendar, so happy new year! I didn’t know about this until only a few days ago, and coincidentally I concluded my job yesterday. Also coincidentally, yesterday was Friday the 13th. So it looks like I might be at the mercy of two superstitions, one good and one bad. I’m hoping that at worst they cancel each other out, leaving the commencement of my new employment next week to be a neutral affair.

LotD:  Nigerian students power up their laptops

The unholy combination of work and study have devoured me over the past month.

One point of mention is an interview I had with James Purser for Open Source On The Air. Having never been interviewed before, I was rather nervous. I was also waiting to be accepted or declined as an Ubuntu Member at the Community Council meeting, which only increased my anxiety. It also didn’t help that it was past 10pm, and I was suffering from a lack of sleep. If I sound dopey, please keep those points in mind. With that disclaimer announced, I think I conducted myself quite well.

In other news, I’m glad to hear that my nomination of Elkbuntu for the Linux Australia People’s Choice Community Member of the Year Award (wow, that’s a mouthful!) was heeded. Congratulations, Melissa! I am looking forward to drinking that beer!

Link of the day: Paris Hilton vomits while singing

For some reason, I’m reminded of the title of a 1980s sitcom. No, my name is not Charles, thank you for reminding me.

My manager arranged to go on leave over the fortnight school holiday period, and in his pre-holiday euphoria he decided to leave the responsibility of performing his duties with myself.

Almost immediately after his departure, things began to go beserk. A rash of strange and urgent issues cropped up, and that was on top of the unfinished business he had left us with (although to his credit, he did his best to minimise that). Things which were seemingly complete reared their ugly heads once more, and I was left to tidy the mess.

I took the role most seriously, to the point of putting in one or two extra hours of work per day. I was stressed to levels that I had not experienced in years. I’m so incredibly grateful that this leadership stint coincided with TAFE holidays, otherwise I don’t know what I would have done.

An important skill is an ability to juggle many tasks at once. I am not terrible in that respect, but you could not exactly call me adept, either. Had I had more experience (lower context switching latency, etc.), I might have completed tasks more quickly, but we were so overworked that I don’t think the difference would have been significant.

I was painfully aware that once my fortnight was over, I would have to revert to my previous status and once again work on an equal level with these people. I certainly did not wish to burn any bridges. This forced me to walk a tightrope when it came to weilding authority.

Communication is certainly the key to effective management. I would not have gotten anywhere without constant liaison with my co-workers and other managers in the company. On the whole (and despite a few stressful incidents), I was well supported by everyone else in the company. As a caretaker, I did not consider it to be my place to make any policy changes, but certain circumstances forced us to adapt. Under advisement from above, I implemented a few tweaks to our procedures, hopefully for the better.

My manager has been back for three days, and only today do I feel like I’m back doing my old job and not his. There were a few odds-and-ends to tie up even after his return, and it took him a little while to get back into the groove as well. I think we have both re-found our respective places, though. The feedback I have received has been very positive, and I have been asked to consider taking on certain duties on a permanent basis. I’ll have to take some time to reflect upon the past couple of weeks before I can give an appropriate answer.