Underway at Valley Settlement House ...

Newly installed birdfeeder with two surveillance video

 cameras at Valley Settlement House in West Orange, NJ.

A. The first Coding & Content workshop was held on Sunday, July 20th from 2 to 4 PM. We had two student participants and 2 mentors (Luis Grados and myself.)  One student -- from Essex County College and the Essex-Stevens Model Program -- will be working with Luis on updating the VSH website while learning html, CSS, Javascript, & Java. (Actually creating a new website.) The other student out of the VSH community and an 18-year-old West Orange high school student and drama major will be working with me in creating video content for the internet. (I will start using names if and when the students give me persmission to do so.)

B. Two bird feeders with three surveillance video cameras as part of a Zmodo wire-linked system were installed on Monday, July 21st. I did the installation with the high school student I am mentoring in the workshop. He is at VSH on weekdays. We will install one more bird feed this coming Monday, July 28th, and complete the installation of a total of eight surveillance video cameras next week. I plan to explore a communication connection to the Cornell University Ornithology Lab beginning tomorrow, Friday, July 25th.

C. In collaboration with Professor David A. Robinson, Department of Geography, Rutgers University -- and the NJ State Climatologist -- we will be instituting an Earth Systems framework for the science programs at VSH with two immediate initiatives:
1. Introduce the use of Skype to connect the classrooms of VSH with the global Earth Systems community beginning with Dave's climate science presentation in the VSH Summer Science Program from 1-3 PM Monday, August 4th. This Friday, July 25th, and next, August 1st, we will be debugging the connection to provide 2-way visual communication combined with projected PowerPoint graphics in the classroom.
2. Begin a precipitation measurement program  as part of the national  CoCoRaHS program, again, in collaboration with Dave's  role as NJ State Climatologist.

That is the beginning of what we hope will become a STEM Center for the community VSH serves. This is educational outreach to underrepresented populations in the STEM fields at its core. And yes we are doing it without a major grant BECAUSE it demonstrates what can be accomplished by a community that sets its mind to pursuing this goal.

Announcing the first series of workshops at the Geeks FSO Campus at Valleyh Settlement House

"Coding and Content Workshop 101a"

The first 2 hour coding and content workshop mini-series, "Coding and Content Workshop 101a," of the Geeks FSO Campus at Valley Settlement House for young adults ages 18 to 25+ is scheduled to begin on Sunday, July 20th at Valley Settlement House, 33-41 Tompkins Street, West Orange, NJ 07052  (973) 678-2550.

This initial mini-series will run for 6 weeks from 2 to 4 PM on Sundays through August 24th.

We will explore the use of online resources such as Jon Chan's Bento website as a guide for independent study for coding mobile apps and creating content for the internet within a workshop-based student-with-mentor learning environment.

Initially we will be looking at HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Objective-C, and Java.

The end goal of Geeks FSO Campus program is to develop marketable skills in our students for employment in rewarding careers, or even simply to enrich their lives with a deeper understanding of and heightened ability to interact with the exponentially expanding technology of the modern world.

Contact Hilding "Gus" Lindquist, hilding.lindquist@gmail.com to apply as either a mentor or a student. But while you may apply as one or the other as your main "function" in the program, you will be both within the context of the workshop.


There are a limited number of openings depending on the number of volunteer mentors available, but no more than ten students will be accepted into this workshop series as members in five two-person teams, and only ten more student applications will be accepted for the waiting list. As yet we have not put a limit on the number of mentors accepted into the program or put onto the waiting list.

This means that for this workshop series there will be a maximum of five two-person mentor teams working with up to five two-person student teams in order to be reasonably certain of at least one mentor and one student for each team's participation in the workshop.

Teams will be matched by their laptop's operating systems. For this initial series of workshops, students are expected to bring a wifi compatible laptop suitable for the workshop and will be assigned on a first come, first served basis to an available mentor team with a matching operating system. (Mac, Windows 7, Windows 8, etc.)

Prospective students without suitable laptops should still apply if they want to be put on the waiting list.

To the prospective student: If you are concerned as to whether or not your specific laptop is suitable then contact Gus for a determination while we are accepting applications, and no matter what, you will have put yourself in line to get a student slot in the program at some point ... and we know that extensive delay is denial, so we will be working as hard as we can to get you into the program as quickly as possible.

Our raison d'être ...

Go to YouTube direct: http://youtu.be/KEeBPSvcNZQ

Access to Practice

How do you unleash the pent up demand for opportunity in our young people who are trapped in circumstances of limited opportunity? How do you build a path to opportunity?

Think baseball. If we want our youth to learn how to play baseball, we build a baseball field. Think basketball. If we want our youth to learn how to play basketball, we build a gym ... well, a flat surface with a hoop or two ...

Isn't it amazing how little it takes to give a young person the opportunity to learn if they can practice on their own? Like Magic Johnson shooting hoops in the middle of the night at college ... or advice I attribute to Willie Mays, if you don't get out on the field and drop the ball a thousand times, you'll never be a good ball player.

There are huge opportunities in the STEM fields -- science, technology, engineering, math. For example, skills in coding apps or producing content are gateways to opportunity, and what is more, an individual can gain those skills on their own if they know how to get started AND they have access to practice

... and that is what the Geeks FSO Campus project is all about ... providing "access to practice."

We are creating a learning and training environment so an individual can acquire the skills to create apps and content based on their own motivation to hone their talent and little else ... because we are targeting the youth who don't have much else in the way of help ... young people who want a chance to shot hoops or play catch until they get it right ... because they want the opportunity to do something that pays off ... for them ... personally ... that they want to do ...

So no, it's not for everyone, but it is for anyone who wants it enough to be out there "shooting hoops" whenever they can.

Why we are hitting the bullseye ...

 "For the Tech-Savvy With a Need for Speed, a Limited Choice of Towns With Fiber" by Kate Murphy, The New York Times, April 2, 2014

"Tech Rivals Lay Down Arms for Youth Coding" By Nick Wingfield, The New  York Times, October 15, 2013, 5:38 pm

We're going up at Valley Settlement House In West Orange, New Jersey!

The first Geeks FSO Campus is "officially" in the works. We're setting up at Valley Settlement House (VSH) in West Orange, New Jersey, where members of the core team have been involved with VSH's successful summer science program for several years. Hilding "Gus" Lindquist was the "founding" coordinator and passed the baton to Luis Grados who has filled the coordinator's role since 2011.

Jackie Fox, VSH's Executive Director, has given the green light to the Geeks' "proof of concept" testbed project. Dr. Barnet Schmidt, PhD  SM IEEE, managing partner in Kaplan/Schmidt Associates, LLC, West Orange, NJ, consulting communications engineers, is the project engineer and will do a site survey in the next few days.  He prepared the presentation for the proof of concept testbed for the Springfield Avenue Business District in Maplewood. (See http://geeksfso.blogspot.com/2013/12/introducing-geeks-fso-proof-of-concept.html) It will essentially remain the same except for a couple of pluses. VSH already has a computer lab and the buildings are all together in one area, so the logistics required will be that much more manageable for a testbed.

Here's the concept and team members behind the project:

The core team is dedicated to developing another significant program for educational outreach to target populations who are defined by (1.)being underrepresented in the STEM fields; and (2.)disadvantaged relative to customary access to modern educational resources. This program is significant because it fits President Barack Obama’s recently announced $200 million initiative, “My Brother’s Keeper,” that targets disadvantaged black and Latino young men[i].

We propose developing a “Geeks FSO Campus” (Free Space Optics) as a self-sustaining entrepreneurial incubator at Valley Settlement House[ii] (VSH) in West Orange, NJ, to provide the education, training, and mentoring for youth from the target populations in creating apps (applications) for smart phones, tablets, and other mobile computing devices plus content for the internet. The FSO component is to give the participants access to a high speed, high bandwidth development system without the high cost of fiber optics. In addition, the surrounding neighborhood is part of the Valley Arts District[iii] into which we could in all likelihood extend our FSO-based Campus Area Network

If you are at all familiar with the rapidly expanding market for apps for smart phones and tablets and the revenue generated by that market, you will need no explanation of our claim to becoming financially self-sustaining over the course of a three year startup program as well as become a replicable model for communities with similar demographics that includes the target populations .  Part of the proposal is to partner with a “for profit” business to market the apps and content and provide funding for the program.

We have assembled a superior team of key participants for creating the Proof of Concept testbed at VSH using a FSO communications link and are now taking the initial step of preparing a proposal to seek funding. We have the commitment of the team members and are going ahead with the project at VSH recognizing that the funding requirements are minimal to develop the proof of concept test bed there. We anticipate that the “return on investment” will be significant both in financial returns through the entrepreneurial component and the broader recognition relative to conforming to President Obama’s  “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative.

The team includes:

Site Management
Marcina “Jackie” Fox

Executive Director

Valley Settlement House

West Orange, NJ

Please note: Jackie has been involved with worked with core team members in the educational outreach program at VHS since 2007. She is an experienced program manager/administrator and is committed to the project. VSH has the facilities and computer lab to jump start the program on Saturdays and evenings at minimum cost.

Education and training (including intern mentoring program)
Nadia Lvov
Assistant Professor/ECC LSAMP Project Director
Division of Mathematics and Physics
Essex County College
Newark, NJ
Please note: Nadia has been a the lead person from Essex County College in the Essex Stevens Model program since 2007. It has expanded under her leadership to several other area universities with research labs and provides a base for recruiting interns for mentoring the program participants.

Luis Grados

BS, Computer  Science, NJIT

Please note: Luis started in the Essex County College research experience program with Stevens in 2009 when he also began assisting Hilding Lindquist with the Summer Science Program at VHS , becoming the coordinator for the program in 2011. He is young Latino who connects well with the target populations and is expected to take a leadership role in developing the entrepreneurial aspects of the program that will make it self-sustaining.

Technical oversight:

Dr. Barnet Schmidt, PhD, SM IEEE
Managing Partner
Kaplan/Schmidt Associates, LLC
Consulting Communication Engineers
West Orange, NJ,
Please note: Barnet doctorate defense was on FSO at PEP (Stevens) on November 19, 2013. He is an experienced communication engineer and prepared the presentation for theMaplewood proof of concept testbed which transfers directly to the VSH site with modifications for placement of the initial FSO link.

Participating Observers, Maplewood, NJ:  

Clarence Williams, III and Dione Williams, M.D.
Small business and professional services
Springfield Avenue Business District
Maplewood, NJ
Interested in replicating the program in the Springfield Avenue Business District of Maplewood, NJ.
Please note: Their proposed site is used in Barnet’s presentation re: Campus Area Network Project, 12/18/2013, included below. Clarence and Dione and have helped to guide the development of the program from its initial discussions over the past two years regarding educational outreach to local residents underrepresented in STEM.

 Participating Observers, Plainfield, NJ:  

Deborah Joyce Dowe
Community Activist
Plainfield, NJ
Interested in replicating the program in Plainfield, NJ
Please note: Ms. Dowe has been and advisor through Hilding Lindquist to LLLab’s educational  outreach program since it’s its earliest beginning in 2000 at Plainfield High School and brings with her the knowledge and experience to help replicate this program in Plainfield, whose residents are predominately underrepresented in STEM.

---

[i] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304071004579407992832670628

President Wields 'Soft Power' to Help Minority Youth

Program Would Give Economic, Educational Opportunities to Disadvantaged Young Black, Latino Men

[ii] http://www.valleysettlementhouse.org/

[iii] http://www.valleyartsnj.com/

 

You don't have to have a $100,000,000 ...

     After reading through this, if you like the concept, we'll help you get started in your own community.  Of course, our direct involvement is fee-based, but as we explain below, we are dedicated to being an open source collaborative venture. We are primarily interested in working with other small-scale communities containing a small business retail district in  close proximity to a surrounding residential neighborhood.
     The greater the socioeconomic diversity of the residential neighborhood, the more we are interested because of the underrepresented populations groups in the STEM fields that reside in many of them. We theorize that a Geeks FSO campus can be a self-sustaining enterprise for conducting STEM educational outreach. Much as people throughout history have learned whatever new technology has come along to better the economic foundation of their lives, given the opportunity they will learn how to produce apps and content for the internet. It pays well.
     Small rural communities even if relatively homogeneous should work if they are of a scale that can obtain "critical mass" and be self-supporting. (Note: Having been raised on a small dairy farm in a rural community in Northern Minnesota, we know the need for local job opportunities for young people. -HL)
     Just remember, we are a small venture just getting started, so we can't help everyone at the same time or immediately. But we will get back to you.
Contact us at: info@geeksfso.com  

Let's connect some dots ...

First dot: there is an ongoing demand among people who are not earning a good living for the opportunity to do so.

Over time, lacking that opportunity, the pent-up demand builds and then ignites in a burst of energy when the appropriate opportunity presents itself. Look at immigration patterns throughout our history, especially the gold rushes of the 1800's here and from the southern states to the factories of the north for WWII and the automobile production following, or simply the huge numbers that would show up to apply for a limited number of jobs today.

The conclusion? Provide people with a fair opportunity to earn a good living when they are now living in poverty and they will show up to take advantage of it. And of course not all of them will. That goes without saying. Showing up is the first test of motivation.

Second dot: Producing apps or content for the internet are currently the best ways to jump start earning a good living in today's economic world, and most likely will be for the foreseeable future. Check out the story of "How homeless man Leo Grand learned to code and launched an app in 109 days." It is the discovery of the New World; the gold mine of the gold rush; the steel mills, shipyards and airplane factories of WWII; the "Big Three" of the golden age of American automobiles ... apps and content production are the wealth creating "factories" of today.

The conclusion? The communities that create CANs ("campus" area networks) in support of the production of apps and content will provide their residents with an opportunity based on motivation, ability, and their work ethic to earn a good living and generate wealth for the community as new inventions have done throughout our history of market economies: "Build a better mousetrap."

Third dot: Take a community with a retail business district surrounded by a diverse residential neighborhood with mixed socioeconomic groups and a not enough good paying jobs. Put in a high speed, high bandwidth linked "campus" -- Campus Area Network or CAN -- like what Google is doing in Kansas City, MO; Austin, TX; and Provo, UT -- to support the collaborative production of apps and content with technical, financial, marketing, accounting, and legal resources and -- just like with Google -- the geeks will come out of the surrounding area and go to work.

What is more, by using Free Space Optics it doesn't cost what it is costing Google to test the idea. But it does take vision, the ability to connect the dots, and the willingness to take a risk ... in this case a very small risk. We're talking $10,000 to $15,000 for the testbed. And all the equipment is moveable, in other words, it won't be poured in concrete.

And we theorize that the opportunity to work with a high speed, high bandwidth communications link will set us apart from other incubators and attract the best and the brightest talent from the target populations who are defined by (1.)being underrepresented in the STEM fields; and (2.) disadvantaged relative to customary access to modern educational resources.

The outcomes are threefold:

1. Production of apps and content as revenue generators bringing wealth into the community.
2. Data analytics for the business district section of the Geeks FSO campus bringing state of the art global marketing to the small retail businesses of the district as well as other database functions allowing the voluntary synergistic sharing of information both internally and globally.
3. STEM educational outreach to the residential sections of the community.

Geeks FSO is the "organizing" name of the startup venture connecting these dots and being formed at the Valley Settlement House complex in West Orange, New Jersey, to set up a "proof of concept" testbed using Free Space Optics.

Dr. Barnet Schmidt, PhD  SM IEEE, managing partner in Kaplan/Schmidt Associates, LLC, West Orange, NJ, consulting communications engineers, is the project engineer for developing the Proof of Concept testbed.  He prepared the presentation for the Proof of Concept testbed found at: (See http://geeksfso.blogspot.com/2013/12/introducing-geeks-fso-proof-of-concept.html)

Hilding Lindquist, system design consultant, developed the concept in over a year-long consultation with community members, and currently coordinates the planning with Jackie Fox, Executive Driector, Valley Seettlement House, to bring the Geeks FSO campus testbed on line as a "proof of concept" demonstration .

Following Lindquist's lead, this will be an open source collaborative effort. This is what that means:

From wikipedia.com: In production and development, open source as a development model promotes a) universal access via free license to a product's design or blueprint, and b) universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone.^[1] Before the phrase open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of terms for the concept; open source gained hold with the rise of the Internet, and the attendant need for massive retooling of the computing source code.^[2] Opening the source code enabled a self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.^[3] The open-source software movement arose to clarify the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues created.^{[citation needed]}
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design. Open-source code is typically created as a collaborative effort in which programmers improve upon the code and share the changes within the community. Open source sprouted in the technological community as a response to proprietary software owned by corporations.
The open-source model includes the concept of concurrent yet different agendas and differing approaches in production, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial software companies.^{[4][page needed]} A main principle and practice of open-source software development is peer production by bartering and collaboration, with the end-product, source-material, "blueprints", and documentation available at no cost to the public. This model is also used for the development of open-source-appropriate technologies,^[5] solar photovoltaic technology ^[6] and open-source drug discovery.^[7][8]

 Contact us at: info@geeksfso.com