Locations/Cape Town/Canal Walk

From FTWiki

The Freedom Toaster at Canal Walk is situated at the MTNSciencentre

Some history

This is where the project started. In September 2003 I started talking to the MTNSciencentre people about setting up and open source display. This was tougher than it sounds, how do you put together an interactive open source software display that kids can get to grips with?

In the end, we put down a mini thin-client lab, an open source timeline, some computer hardware for the kids to bash around, and a digital media vending facility that you could feed blank disks and it would spit out free software. This DMVF later became known as the MTNSciencentre Kiosk. When we asked Mark if we could go ahead with this DMVF, he said no! Needless to say, in the interest of social innovation we went ahead anyway :)

After a few weeks we noticed that there was a huge interest in this DMVF, particularly on the CLUG-Chat lists. After a few months I canned the rest of the display and focused on getting the Kiosk established as it's own project, with the aim of going national. At that time, Francois Roux stepped forward and offered "Freedom Toaster" as the new name, here's why. Francois was also key in the development of the Freedom Toaster philosophy

Recent Developments

We will be manufacturing 30 new Toaster's this year!