Sep 20 2024
Recent news for September 20, 2024
Welcome to the very first issue of the “Sweet Spot”, a newsletter for Sugar Labs-related news in development, student and teacher work, events, how to get involved, and other news and information. This newsletter will be published semi-regularly for now, but the plan is to publish it on a bi-monthly, perhaps even monthly, basis in the future. Our aim with this newsletter is to help keep the growing body of Sugar Labs contributors on the same page, all while documenting our growth for our own and others’ reference.
This first issue is meant to set a precedent of communication and documentation, as well as to help inform the community of our current status, recent progress, and future plans. Its predecessor is the “Sugar Digest”, which still serves as an important catalog of our activities. Like Sugar Digest, this newsletter is intended to keep community members in the loop about everything going on within Sugar Labs. It will highlight any recent publications from us. It will occasionally include links to third-party news and updates that our community finds relevant.
This first issue has links and “news” from a few months back. Future installments will focus on a more acute timeframe than this inaugural issue, which aims to cover our news since the beginning of this year.
We hope that you enjoy this first issue. And, if you have something you’d like to share, please feel free to email info@sugarlabs.org. And for those who would like to volunteer in other ways, this edition has a list of volunteer help that we need with Sugar Labs overall.
This year’s GSoC and DMP students have completed their work for Sugar Labs. Students were asked to document their progress through blogs and participate in online events showcasing their work at regular intervals throughout the summer. You can find links to their blog posts on our bi-weekly summary posts on Medium and watch videos of their presentations on YouTube.
Bi-weekly GSoC and DMP summaries:
YouTube updates:
For the first time ever, Sugar Labs will be participating in DMP. Sugar Labs will be participating this year in DMP.
Note: DMP has concluded for this year. To read about the work contributors did this summer, you are encouraged to read our blog on Medium.
We are proud to share with you that Sugar Labs has been accepted once again as an org for this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC), receiving eleven project slots.
May 15, 2024
The sixteenth anniversary of Sugar Labs’s founding was on Monday, May 15, 2024. Please consider marking your calendars for next year’s birthday.
May 8, 2024
In the spring of 2021, Sugar Labs Inc. was granted nonprofit status from the IRS. In January of this year, Sugar Labs hired its first employee since becoming a nonprofit. Sugar Labs community member and Music Blocks co-creator Devin Ulibarri was hired by the Sugar Labs board of directors to fill the role of full-time executive director. The members of board of directors for Sugar Labs Inc. currently are Samson Goddy, Lionel Laské, Claudia Urrea, Walter Bender, and Alex Perez.
Sugar Labs is seeking volunteer assistance in the following ways. Sustained, committed help in any of the following areas will help us grow as an organization. If you are passionate or curious to learn more about any of these roles, and are able to commit the time necessary, then we encourage you to apply. Send a notification of your interest to info@sugarlabs.org, including some information about yourself, what interests you about the volunteer role, and what experience/qualities make you a good candidate for the position.
Sugar Labs is a growing organization. We don’t currently have the resources to hire people to fulfill these roles. Our hope is that we one day will be able to, but, for now, we are looking for volunteers who can work with the executive director and the board to work diligently to improve our operations. What we can provide, in return, for your help, is assistance in conducting your role and mentorship (especially in the case of technical roles). Plus, you’ll gain the experience and satisfaction of working with an organization that aims to do good in society.
Please see:
Editorial note: Events will be listed in this section in upcoming issues of Sweet Spot.
Sugar Labs® is a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a global mission to create educational opportunities in technology to youth around the world. Volunteer mentors and contributors work together to develop activity-focused software for children. All software is developed with learning as the primary goal, necessitating the need for source code to be published publicly for study, licensed under a Free/Libre license for explicit permission to share and remix, and openly worked upon within a community where students are invited to make contributions, under guidance of experienced mentors. Donations to support the work of Sugar Labs can be made at https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Donate.