Re: [OTS-Berlin] IT Student Labs: March for Kids :)

[Robert Lehmann]

[escalating to global, as this is a topic other chapters should join in for as well.]

Thanks for discussing this — I think we should definitely talk about this in more detail at the next Organizers Meetup.  I'd like to announce this as a specific next step at the IT Labs Berlin Kick Off next Thursday, though, and thus it'd be great if we could at least find a +0 consensus.

tl;dr why would we want to stop Rachel (or anybody) from doing something, just because we do not want to participate?

I'm not sure I understand the aggravated opinions on this issue, as I rather understood the original post as a call for participation.  We would not stop anyone from running a workshop, as well, so why argue here? :-)  If I recall correctly, one of our core values is, has always been, and should always be “the doers have the say.”

If Rachel wants to set her focus for March on kids education, why stop her?  We have never forced someone to do or refrain from doing something;  I don't think that's something we should start.  If Rachel wants to convince others to join her for focussing on kids education — all the better!  If you, personally, have other topics you want to focus on — be it Hackership, the Learners Meetup, OTS at large, or regular workshops — hey, go ahead.

I understand that we are a a community, and we have to act as one.  Especially when talking about IT Labs, we've had communication issues about the larger impact for OpenTechSchool.  I can understand how we — how you, some of the most active organizers of OTS Berlin — want to govern what the OTS brand entails, and what not.  I always understood such community votes as just that — regulating what is, and what is not, an OpenTechSchool activity.

My request is the following:  If you honestly think a "March for Education" campaign is an initiative we would not ever want to host under the OpenTechSchool umbrella, voice your disagreement.  If you just have other priorities, congratulate Rachel on her great idea and motivation, and let her move forward.  There's nothing forcing you to join her, but please don't stop active members of bringing some fresh air into OTS.

I think kids education is a topic well within our core mission;  and I cannot remember we ever ruled this out explicitly or implicitly.  Quite the contrary — I think we have always been speaking about bringing tech education to everyone, but simply started with adult education as this is way easier to set up.  I see IT Labs and this initiative to finally reach the goals we set out for at the last Global Review Meeting:  broadening our reach and bringing education to those who are not currently our comfort group.

By the way, when I talked to Rachel about this I did not stop thinking at learning material sprints (as we're currently in a state where writing new non-adult learning material is not our top priority, as you have accurately pointed out.)  I think we could use this initiative to revive IT Labs Zurich, set up experimental IT Labs batches in other cities, and much more.  Hackership, I fear, is not as much a focus point in other cities as it is in Berlin.

Excuse my verbosity but I hope this clears up some of my feelings about the current situation, the IT Labs merger, and where we should go and want to go with this.

Cheers,

Robert

On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 4:57 PM, Rachel Uwa <rac...@opentechschool.org> wrote:

ok. just fyi if you were disturbed about my saying i will do it anyway-- that is always an option for someone to do/organise something on their own. its nice when we support each other but sometimes we don't and thats just the way it goes. for example i asked to do some language thing for people in tech learning german and no one said anything so i started my own group for that-- it happens. not bad or good just another option:)

see you all thursday:)

On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 4:08 PM, Ellen Koenig <el...@opentechschool.org> wrote:

Rachel, I agree with Stefan that you are reading things into my words I did not intend to say (esp. regarding Hackerships role for OTS). I also find some things you wrote in your last mail addressed to me disturbing, but I assume you also don't mean them that way. Therefore I would also prefer to discuss this topic next Thursday. So please,  even though you seem in a hurry, please don't press this issue further before next Thursday :)

On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 4:03 PM, Stefan Hoth [OTS] <ste...@opentechschool.org> wrote:

Hey everyone, hi Rachel,

Rachel Uwa schrieb:

this line by Stefan: But I want to stay on the focus OTS was created for.

i find unsettling. i thought OTS is an accumulation of what OTS members want. 

what are you trying to say?

What I meant was that when OTS was created we agreed on doing free tech workshops for adults. It doesn't mean we never can do anything else (and we did a lot of other cool stuff) but that to me was the core of the idea.
I don't mean to dictate anything for OTS and I'm purely speaking for myself as a member and nothing else. But I feel if we take on the effort of education of children we might need to discuss this as a group since this is a major change in our focus, at least for me.

clearly there is chaos in the OTS streets. 

i hope everyone can make a special effort to try and attend the upcoming meeting

next Thursday.

I will stop posting here since I have the feeling my words sound harsher when you read them than I mean them.
 
I'll be there on Thursday and explain my words in person. Hope it's less unsettling then. :-)

Stefan

[Ellen Koenig]

Hi Robert,

Sigh, I really would have wished to discuss this further in person on our next team meeting, and not on the mailing list. Even less so on a global mailing list. We had enough misunderstandings in this thread already on the Team Berlin mailing list, and spreading the circle of discussions to global scale will not help this. And I am getting fairly irritated with the way you Robert and Rachel are handling this: I get the impression that you really, really want to do this the way you want it, and any disagreement will be pressured "to death" until you can go ahead. To me, this whole voting thing seems more and more like a farce and you really just want to be given a green light asap without caring about dissenting opinions.

I still disagree with a "dedication" of OTS for a full month to creating more education materials for kids. To me, it is out of our core scope, and just not a priority we need to focus on right now. And doing this dedication would exactly create the impression that education for kids is our main global priority right now. Whereas I think we should focus on other things, like keeping our main workshops running and sort out the other initiatives we have started in Berlin.

Obviously, Rachel is free to do whatever she pleases, but I see a  huge difference between "Rachel does something out of her own initiative" and "we collectively declare this is THE global OTS priority for the whole next month". The latter of which I fully disagree with.

Cheers, Ellen

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[Robert Lehmann]

Sorry if spreading this to a larger circle concerns you — I think it's for the greater good of OpenTechSchool if, in case we decide about this through email, all chapters can chime in.  There is no reason to get upset about this, and if any of this feels like a farce I'm deeply sorry.  It wasn't meant to be.

I didn't mean this to be a voting in the first place, rather a survey if any of you disagreed if we said "hey, it's March 2014, why don't we set up a campaign where we encourage all chapters to work on kids education?  We'll happily lead by example through organizing material sprints and kids workshops (some of which are already in the making for March) — if others join us, hooray!"  We're happily listening to other proposals how to advance kids education, and that's what this call was meant for in my opinion. :-)

The reason I'm personally pressing this is because it is an urgent matter;  we'd like to announce how we plan to continue with IT Labs Berlin at the Kick Off which is this Thursday.  This event has some of our partners (sponsors, universities, deciders) so that some concrete measures would be a good signal.  Discussing this matter at the next Team Berlin meeting won't help getting opinions from other chapters anyways.

[giorgia sambrotta]

Hi everybody,

in the spirit of OTS I think we should all breath and stop  to put our foot down.

Thank you Robert to bring this to a global discussion, as you said we are open to all our community in all our discussion.

Nobody decided for yes or no yet, we just ask to discuss about it more in details in order to have more information about the topic and than give a vote, as we always did in Ots.

I can understand that sometime there is time pressure, in these case, if really impossible to postponed the decision, I would suggest to go ahead alone and in case Ots is always in time to join.

I think what we try to do (and is what we had missing in these past months) is a bit of consistency in OTS project and the way how we would grow and help others, as we said in our review meeting.

That's doesn't mean we said no to your proposal(at least I talk for my self) but just that we feel the need to talk about that :) 

Looking forward to meet all of you on Thursday and heard about this new and fresh project :)

Best,

Gio

            Giorgia Sambrotta     

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[Rachel Uwa]

since this discussion is now on the global list and the original message was cut off-- just wanted to clarify--

dear global community

:)

sorry to bring you all in to the middle of a conversation

originally the idea was just to see if OTS would be onboard to help create workshop material for kids-- as OTS Berlin this Thursday will officially take over an ITStudent Labs project which provides one 4-hr. workshop for kids a month. 

OTS members have already been helping provide the Intro to Programming with Python (Turtle) class for this program, but we were thinking as OTS Berlin is about to officially take this project over on Thursday at a ceremony, we would also like to dedicate some time to creating new material-- in this case for kids, but it could also be transferred over to teaching adults-- we currently don't have written material on these topics. 

Courses we are thinking about are-- Scratch, Arduino, Processing-- or any other software which could be interesting and easily accessible to kids these days

if you or any of your team members might be interested in helping contribute to the learning material, let us know:)

cheers,rachel

[Rachel Uwa]

i mean, ya know, just gaging interest:)

[Martin Stadler]

Hi,

I think OTS, at least regarding core and Berlin-related, is at a critical point now. Recently little issues appeared as a sign of that. We've come very far with a "just do it" approach, saw many opportunities and took them on which is great. It is amazing what we achieved but this can not just go on in the same way. Recently we've added initiatives and new directions with Hackership, IT Labs, Kids Hackathon, many new chapters... They all fit in to what I think OpenTechSchool can be. But our core is not healthy any more. No organizers meetings, few workshops, outdated website, review meeting was not going so well... Let's face it. You don't agree?

If we want to be sustainable we have to care for a strong fundament. This cannot be done by doers alone. You need thinkers, too. Some tasks need to be done frequently, are a lot of work and are not bringing much fame. Starting something new is easier than keeping it running.

I agree with Ellen. And thanks for bringing this up.

We had this issue with IT Labs a few days ago with it just being announced an official OTS thing on the blog. With the argument it would have happened anyway. Now, it's a least unfortunate to start a "voting" for dedicating all of OTS power towards this topic in an email. Asking for help is something else. And there's other things that should be done, too. This is not a yes or no thing.

We need to define where we are going and be aware of the (limited) resources we have. Just doing something and putting the OTS logo on it will not result in a sustainable community.