At this point, our group has been able to connect with one of the leads of the MAPLE project to make a more formal introduction and get a better feel for where we may be needed. There are a lot of exciting things happening for the project itself - for example, it has received more funding and achieved 501(c)(3) status. We explained our goals of helping out with frontend and backend and he said he would assign us some issues soon. In the meantime, he did give us a mini deliverable which unfortunately did not involve code but allowed us to show our willingness to help and demonstrate our capabilities design wise. We helped design a flyer with important information for donors and received pretty positive feedback. We’re just hoping to receive some more code related issues in the future.

As for the speaker this past week, I thought Jim Hall was a really personable and insightful speaker - I could tell he was passionate about his work, especially after he shared that his interest in computing started at such a young age. I learned a lot not only about FreeDOS but also some general computer history which often gets lost throughout the courses we take in school. It was funny how he pointed out that the command line was all that we had at the time - so it wasn’t as much of a choice to tackle Linux as it was the only way. Both Mek and Jim have shared a lot of knowledge and perspective and the guest speakers have become one of my favorite aspects of the course.