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== Sugar Digest ==
== Sugar Digest ==
1. I promised to share the occasional Marvin Minsky story. I heard many that were new to me at his memorial service at MIT last week, one of which I'd like to share here. Cynthia Solomon, one of the co-inventors of Logo and co-author of the classic paper from 1971, [https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5836/AIM-248.pdf "Twenty Things to Do with a Computer"], was one of the speakers at the service. She recalled the many contributions Marvin made to Logo, the language, and to the pedagogy we associate with Seymour. What I didn't realize was the extent to which Marvin (and his students) were responsible for broadening the scope of computational thinking beyond the desktop. Cynthia shared some before and after slides of children using Logo in the late 1960s and early 1970s, after Marvin's influence had manifest itself. The excitement of using programming in the context of graphics, robotics, and music was palpable. We at Sugar Labs are very much standing on Minsky's shoulders.
1. One of my favorite Marvin Minsky stories took place in the mid 1990s. Marvin and I had to meet someone at the bar at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in downtown Boston. Marvin, as was his habit, was wearing a vest—one with large, useful pockets. As we started to walk into the bar, we were stopped and told that we needed neckties in order to enter. Marvin told the doorman that we had to go in for a meeting, but that we did not have neckties. The doorman very graciously offered to lend us neckties. He momentarily stepped into the cloakroom and returned with two ties; he offered one to each of us. Marvin took a tie, said "thank you", wrapped it around his waist, and walked into the bar.
2. The application period for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) has ended. We have 62 applications this year, exceeding our total from last year. Over the next week, community mentors will vet the applications and we will apply for slots from Google based on both the quality of the applications (quite high from my sampling) and the ability of the community to support the summer interns. If you are interested in being a mentor, it is not too late. Please contact me.
2. Help me in welcoming our six summer interns from the Google Summer of Code program: Yash Agarwal, Vikram Ahuja, Abhijit Patel, Hemant Kasat, Jeremie Amsellem, and Utkarsh Tiwari. Yash will be working on a Font Editor Activity under the mentorship of Dave Crossland and Eli Heuer. Vikram is working with Tymon Radzik and me on a GIT Backend for activities. Abhijit is working with Sam Parkinson on a "Journal Rethink". Hemant is working with Devin Ulibarri on adding some new widgets to Music Blocks. Jeremie is working with Lionel Laské and Michaël Ohayon on Sugarizer. Utkarsh is working with Tony Anderson and Sebastian Silva on "Sugar on the Ground", a series of enhancements to Sugar in support of small and off-line deployments.
We'll be meeting as a group on Fridays at 12:00 UTC beginning in late May on irc.freenode.net, #sugar-meeting. Feel free to join us.
We had many more quality proposals than slots. I'd like thank everyone who applied this year and hope that even if you were not among the selected projects, you will continue to contribute to the Sugar Labs community.
=== In the Community ===
3. We have a Sugar Labs oversight board meeting on Friday, 6 May, at 16:00 UTC.
The [[Oversight_Board/Minutes#Agenda_items|agenda]] includes:
* Motion to pay for laboratoriosazucar.org domain (See [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2016-May/018096.html]);
* Motions to create [https://docs.google.com/document/d/16jIFuZ9bX-Bv675BpA1KmcEcRcX4PRCOUEX0ICRUkOc/edit Treasurer position];
* Motion to do [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz5r4d6qh-WsZXRvZVdjTzRsUWNZN3YtWlQ3M3o5R2ZSQUl3/view?usp=sharing Yoruba i18n];
* Motion to [https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar/pull/685 update the Sugar License from GPLv2 to GPLv3];
* Proposal to make GSoC mentor payments to the mentors.
* Google [https://www.google.com/edu/resources/programs/google-rise-awards RISE] grant;
* Motion to adopt [[Vision proposal 2016]].
Please join us on irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting.
4. I was busy with Music Blocks workshops in April: at the Boston Coding Camp; the Boys and Girls Club of Dorchester (with Mariah Noelle Villarreal) and the Walsh Middle School in Framingham, MA (with Pascal Chesnais).
5. Dave Crossland has organized a WIKI gardening party for the weekend of May 14-15. Those who are in the Boston area will meet together at my office at MIT, W31-302. We'll see more of you on line as well as we attempt to prune deprecated pages and ensure the content is up to date. We'll also be migrating some content to www.sugarlabs.org.
=== Tech Talk ===
6. Sebastian Silva announced last week some progress on running Sugar Activities from the GNU/Linux desktop. He [https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar-toolkit-gtk3/pull/315 patched sugar-toolkit-gtk3] to enable activities to run using sugar-activity script (tested in Gnome, XFCE and Sugar itself).
Sebastian also created a notification-tray applet that allows one to start activities and even invoke journal items (See [https://github.com/icarito/sugar-launcher-applet]). More details are available at [[Features/FreeDesktop integration]].
=== Sugar Labs ===
=== Sugar Labs ===
7. Please visit our [http://planet.sugarlabs.org planet].
== Community News archive ==
== Community News archive ==