User:Sridhar/2011 SLOB platform
The easiest way to find out about me is to visit my Web site [1].
Amongst a variety of Free and Open Source Software contributions [2], I have previously been a board member of Linux Australia and President of the Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG). I have given presentations at various events including linux.conf.au, OSDC, SLUG, Software Freedom Day and Document Freedom Day.
For nearly two years I have served full-time as OLPC Australia's Engineering Manager, liaising between developers and educators to ensure that we are able to satisfy requirements on the ground. My team at OLPC Australia take this very seriously, to the point of extending OLPC's core principles with two of our own [3]:
- Empowering Teachers
- Community Engagement
In my day-to-day work, I am in constant contact with schools, communities, governments and other relevant bodies. I have developed an appreciation for Sugar as much more than software - it is a platform that supports education, community and culture. Everything we build is done so in consultation with educators and other stakeholders, in consideration of the whole picture. For instance, the operating system that we carry on our XOs [4] was developed in tandem with our certification system [5].
I am proud to say that our approach has shown tremendous success [6]. You can read our Policy Document [7] to gain a full appreciation of our programme.
As a Sugar Labs Oversight Board member, I aim to bring this same kind of holistic approach to guiding Sugar. My strength is in using my extensive Free Software experience to meet real needs on the ground. I strongly believe that for Sugar to grow, it needs to have strong representation from all stakeholders, including deployments.
Our contributions to Sugar have been numerous. We have extended the OLPC XS Schoolserver with our XS-AU [8], creating a far more flexible collaboration solution. We have partnered with Activity Central to develop many improvements for the platform. These are currently being tested in Activity Central's Dextrose developer builds, and will be upstreamed in the near future.
It's all well and good to speak about past achievements, but it's important as a Board member to have a vision for the future. We need to broaden the developer and user base. We need to make it simpler to access Sugar.
On the developer side, we should embrace [9] Web [10] standards and allow activities to be created in HTML5. We are working [11] on that.
On the user side, I'd like Sugar to be made available on more devices. I am encouraged by the work being made to port Sugar to GTK+ 3. This will lay the groundwork for Sugar on tablets, such as the XO-3.