Up In Lights: RIT STEM Hacakthon put on blast at Cooney Center Blog and Opensource.com!

Submitted by decause on Thu, 02/02/2012 - 5:24pm.
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This week for me has been all about outreach. I truly enjoy the role of storytelling, because I get to participate with the FOSS Community in a different way than committing patches to repos (not that I don't enjoy coding, I'm just not quite as good at expressing my thoughts in python as I am in HTML ;) In the land of FOSS, attribution is the coin of the realm. It is the oil between the gears and pistons. Giving credit where credit is due is the simplest default state of many open licenses and is required for fair use. At any rate, telling people about the good mojo we've got going is always a pleasure, and this hackathon has been one of our most well received thusfar.

The article I've written has been syndicated at our old standby, Opensource.com, but also at a NEW downstream: The Cooney Center Blog. Haven't heard of the Cooney Center you say? Well, then perhaps you've heard of a somewhat popular children's educational program called Sesame Street? Here's a blurb from the Cooney Center About Page:

"In 1966, Joan Ganz Cooney and her colleagues charted new territory by harnessing the power of television to educate underserved preschoolers. Their efforts led to the creation of Sesame Street, now the single largest informal educator in the world, reaching some 100 million children and families in more than 140 countries."

When I got my first email from the folks over there, and it was from an "@sesame.org" email address, my heart skipped a couple of beats! Sesame street was to me, like most folks who grew up in the last couple of decades, THE staple of my before/after school edutainment. What an opportunity to give back and get involved with such a pillar of Americana.

I'll be posting the results of our Hackathon in a couple of days/weeks (probably on both sites as follow-up posts :). For now, I've gotta bounce to make this place ship-shape for our soon to arrive hackfesters.

Awesometown,
--RemyD.