status: matching funds

MATCHING FUNDS
 READERS RESPOND (north shore)
 READERS RESPOND (software)
 TATTOOS
 BUSINESS PLAN
 
 MATCHING FUNDS
 
 Please donate here:
 
 	http://thecsl.org/go/donate
 
 We've (almost certainly) got matching funds from the career 
 center to pay half of Mike's wage for the year.
 
 We have $600 in pledges and $19.20 in cash.
 
 We have $3600 of the $5800 we need.
 
 We need $2200 more by the end of September.
 
 Mike is smart and hard working. He proves authority wrong.
 
 He can take a shot.
 
 At 15 years old, Mike is not likely to find better work than us 
 for some time.
 
 Many problems are complicated and require messy compromise to
 fix.  Maybe the head of the red cross needed $565,000 to to do 
 her job this year:
 
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/08/AR2008040801553.html
 
 ...maybe not.
 
 Raising this money for Mike is neither complicated nor messy. 
 Here there is no overhead, no exaggeration, no omission, no 
 compromise.
 
 In the past 5 years, we've taken advantage of a few guys in
 Mike's situation.
 
 One guy works  at market rate in Silicon Valley. Another guy
 did a tour in Afghanistan and is in the middle of a second tour
 in Iraq. Another guy went to cs.UML.edu for a semester and
 dropped out to work installing burgler alarms.
 
 As an organization we train people up, build some momentum and
 then run out of money or exhaust people's willingness to work for 
 free. Then we start again.
 
 Some of us are to the manor born. Some of us are born with fewer 
 opportunities. Worse, there is a shortage of talent and a surplus 
 of potential talent.
 
 We are not called to success but to faith. I've got the faith,
 this is one of the times I'd like some success.
 
 Please donate here:
 
 	http://thecsl.org/go/donate
 
 
 READERS RESPOND (north shore)
 
 Based on last week's status report Chris S, connected us to the
 Northshore WIB. (Work Force Investment Board) Apparently our 
 friends at http://nscap.org are not the only ones wanting 
 something like http://mvhub. It is looking really good, 
 especially on the limiting nepotism front.
 
 Laura's boss doesn't favor inept employees. The leading Peabody 
 peace and justice committee independently endorsed our efforts. 
 However the fact remains that I'm married to the deputy director 
 of NSCAP.  This 3rd connection to the north shore is a great 
 reduction in nepotism guilt all around.
 
 Thanks (yet again) to Chris S.

  
 READERS RESPOND (software)
 
 An alert reader noted that SVK is pretty nice. He particularly 
 likes the ability to work offine and push changes to the 
 repository later. He's not alone in his like:
 
 http://blog.brautaset.org/2005/05/15/ditching-gnu-arch-aka-embracing-svk/ 
 
 
 I'm still inclined to see how bzr works out. The rest of 
 https://launchpad.net/+tour/index is pretty nice and bzr 
 integrates with launchpad.
 
 I'm still struggling to decide if my lack of grok:
 
 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok
 
 ...for the the whole distributed, 3rd generation version control 
 thing is because it is mostly hype or if it is because it is a 
 concept you can't understand without experiencing it.
 
 When I was at habitat, I had a long conversation with a quite 
 smart senior manager about why we wanted to setup email. He 
 couldn't understand how email was different from hard copy 
 memorandums via inter-office snail mail.
 
 Some years ago, when I was at LTC, I struggled to persuade 
 various now gone management types that "intra-net" wasn't "magic" 
 and that installing microsoft intra-net software wasn't going to 
 magically build a database or make people like each other.
 
 I'm betting 3rd generation, distributed version control software 
 is probably closer to email than intra-nets as a plug and play 
 useful thing.
 
 TATTOOS
 While we (the royal we):
 
 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we
 
 ... are thanking Chris S, I should mention
 the tattoos.
 
 It is a goal of ours to get http://mvhub.com used by more than 
 social workers.
 
 Thanks to Chris, we have about 9,500 temporary tattoos and about 
 9,900 remaining refrigerator magnets.
 
 Genius, sheer genius.
 
 At the folk festival. we (Mike F, David S & I) had people lined
 up 3 deep at times to get themselves made into human advertising
 
 We're going to be doing more tattooing at the Lawrence Library 
 and at a Lowell middle school parent's night.
 
 Of all the tabling / leafleting I've done in my life, this has 
 been the easiest, the most pleasant and perhaps the most effective.
 
 BUSINESS PLAN
 
 The core assumptions of the current plan is that trying works 
 better than not trying.
 
 We plan:
 	1) Formal partnerships with local partners.
 	2) We plan to ask businesses for money
 
 This money will buy a a living wage for CSL programmers and the 
 cover marketing and networking expenses of our local partners.
 
 The latest scrap of a plan is at:
 
 http://lists.thecsl.org/pipermail/divinerightofkings/2008-August/000673.html
 
 Coming soon is a meeting with Jericho Road and a potential free 
 consultant.
 
 Obviously, it would be useful to know if businesses are willing 
 to sponsor mvhub. The most important part of the planning process 
 will be testing this assumption of generosity on a small scale.