Archives/Current Events/2017-10-10

Sugar Digest

It has been a long time since I last wrote a Sugar Labs community new blog. I got tied up with my day jobs: starting a new design college from scratch and launching a new research center at MIT. (And, frankly, I was a bit depressed following the deaths of Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert.) I have a breather on both fronts and given all of the Sugar activity of late, I am inspired to do some writing.

1. A footnote from Google Code-in 2015. Ezequiel Pereira, one of the grand-prize recipients from Sugar Labs was recently acknowledged by Google for discovering a security bug. He got some nice press, e.g., [1][2]. In one article [3], he was quoted as saying: "Homework is boring. Looking for bugs is fun.” Ezequiel is one of a generation of children in Uruguay who grew up with Sugar. It is nice to hear the occasional word about their accomplishments.

2. We just wrapped up Google Code-in and Outreachy 2017. We had 9 interns supported by Google and 1 Outreachy intern. You can read about their accomplishments in their blogs and in the meeting logs [4] (every Monday from May through August). Highlights from the summer include a new, easy-to-maintain activity portal and a new www.sugarlabs.org, both going live soon. Also of note: a new Sugar image for Raspberry Pi, some new apps, GTK3 ports, a Sugarizer dashboard, and a major overhaul of Music Blocks.

Tip of the hat to our mentors: Abhijit Patel, Cristina Del Puerto, Devin Ulibarri, Hrishi Patel, Ignacio Rodriguez, José Argüello, Lionel Laské, Matias Baez, Michaël Ohayon, Samson Goddy, Samuel Cantero, and Tony Anderson. Lionel help me administer the program again this year. It is nice to note that many of the mentors are former GCI participants.

Cristina, Michaël, and Samson will be representing Sugar Labs at the annual mentor summit at Google in October. (For those of you who have been following the saga of Samson's visa, I am happy to say that he was approved!)

3. I was invited to represent Sugar Labs at the Plan Ceibal 10th anniversary in Montevideo a few months ago. It was great to see children still using Sugar 10 years after the first deployment in a small school in the Florida Department. It was also an opportunity to catch up with many old friends and Sugar contributors, including Ignacio, Andres, Alan, Jose Miguel, Guzman, etc. I am not sure if my talk is on line, but I wrote a paper based on the talk which is available for download.

4. Lionel just announced a new release of Sugarizer (v0.9). See [5] for all of the details.

5. James Cameron is working towards the release of Sugar 0.111, our first new release in nearly one year. It is mostly planned as a maintenance release.

6. There are only a few more days left (15 Sept.) to register as a candidate for the Sugar Labs oversight board. Please consider joining the board as we need some fresh voices and perspectives. See Oversight_Board/2017-2019-candidates for details. You also have until 27 Sept. to register as a member in order to be given a vote in the election. See Sugar_Labs/Members for details.

7. One of the first decisions the new board will be making is whether or not Sugar Labs should apply for GCI 2017. I am hopeful that the board will see the merits of the program and give a green light to apply again this year. If we do apply, I will be looking for mentors, project ideas, and a co-administrator. Please contact me if you are interested.