[Grants] Grant Application from Kylie Willison for Open Laptop Project

[Kathy Reid]

Thanks Jonathan, and thanks Kylie for putting together a well 
thought-out and costed Grant Application.


I see the strengths of this application as:

- Very experienced primary applicant in Kylie - who is well known to LA 
and the broader SA Maker community, and is eminently qualified to 
execute what is being proposed.

- Well costed, well structured and clearly thought through budget, which 
accounts for volunteer time, and shows the in-kind contribution that is 
being contributed to the overall project. The team has "skin in the game".

- The hardware that is sought has multiple applications - across repair 
cafes, Maker Space etc.

- Strong alignment with Linux Australia's stated Values.


Some of the weakness of this application (and suggestions to address them)

- It's not clear how the success of the initiative would be measured. 
I'm the first person to call bullshit on useless metrics (Goodhart's 
Law, cough), however I am curious what the signals of success would be 
here - some things that come to mind would be "how often are the laptops 
used?" or "person X used a laptop to do $THING which they otherwise 
would not have been able to do" (one speaks to broad impact, one speaks 
to narrow but deeper impact). I also want to flag this is 50% of the 
Grants budget for this year - that in itself shouldn't be a detractor - 
if something worthwhile takes more funding, then that might be a better 
investment than a smaller grant with a smaller impact. But this speaks 
to the signals of success - is this worthy of 50% of the Grants budget?

- What is the expected life-cycle of the laptops and how would they be 
disposed of at expected end of life (because I feel that LA has a 
responsibility to make sure a grant request does not generate landfill 
from a sustainability perspective)? This might be as simple as "at end 
of X years they will be gifted to members of the Maker Space who can 
make use of them or taken to e-recycling".

- Will the program material also be made open source for re-usability by 
e.g. other Maker Spaces or Linux User Groups? (as this increases the 
impact of the work done)


To be clear, as an LA member I am in favour of this Grant Application,

Kind regards,

Kathy Reid


On 1/12/24 14:32, Jonathan Woithe wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> On Sat, Nov 30, 2024 at 10:12:39AM +1030, Jonathan Woithe wrote:
>> I notice that the application refers to an attachment for the budget details
>> but I don't think it has come through to the list.  Could you please send it
>> to the Grants list as an attachment when convenient?  Be aware that the
>> email address you send from must be a subscriber to the LA Grants list for
>> your post to be accepted.
> Attached is a copy of the budget provided by Kylie in support of the grant
> application.
>
> Regards
>    jonathan
>
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