[Edu-sig] News from the K-corner

[kirby urner]

Contract renewed with SA: to teach Python; they liked
my Lithuania slides, clear even to non-geeks.

Making new agreement with LEP High, also to teach
Python, but more as a special case example of what
open source entrepreneurship is all about.

LEP pix:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/sets/72157602156242583/

My focus will be:  how open standards, open specs,
don't keep us from competing or compensating, in
games to offer better products.  The difference: a
more level playing field, as there's no unfair protection
against the competition having access to the same
powerful and effective development tools, as these
are by now already paid for in full and handed off to
our children, their children at large, per GNU, GPL,
OLPC etc.

On another day job front, I completed a so-called
BarCamp Alpha in Centralia, a really picturesque slice
of North America and its many intersecting traditions:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/sets/72157602124435584/

The purpose of this BarCamp was to look at open source
in the area of clinical research (both outcomes and quality
assurance).  Centralia is approximately half way between
Seattle and Portland, and so is good neutral ground in
which to bury hatchets and form new collaborations (relations
between these two metropolitan regions have been rivalrous
at times, including these days, what with Portland, not
Seattle, being "an open source capital" and all:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p03s02-ussc.html

More in my blog re BarCamp Alpha:
http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2007/09/barcamp-alpha.html

On the Fuller School front (a thread in this archive,
especially when Arthur and I were arguing (i.e. approximately
all the time ( http://pygeo.sourceforge.net/ ))), there's some
fresh propaganda in Good Magazine, which I appreciate:

http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Guide/good_guide_r_buckminster_fuller

(You might still find some hard copies on the stands -- bright
orange with AK-47 x-rayed on the cover).

Kirby
4D Solutions
Portland, Oregon