[oe-sync] Progress on cloudlet-based class projects

[Mahadev Satyanarayanan]

Hi everyone,
 As I mentioned at the meeting today, our class projects are off to a good start.
There are 25 students in class.  More than half of them (7 x 2-person groups) are doing
cloudlet-based projects.   You can see the project descriptions at this
web site:       http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15-821/project-descriptions.html
(Projects #1 to #8 are the cloudlet-based ones)

 The mentors for each project are members of my research team and Babu Pillai
from Intel.  They came up with the high-level sketches of the projects to make sure
that they would highlight the value of cloudlets.   The students
will refine these high-level project sketches under the guidance of their
mentors, and then implement them.   Demo and poster day is December 1, 2015
from 3-6pm.    You are all welcome to attend this open event and to see
what the students have built!

 The cloudlet hardware from Intel arrived yesterday.  My team is working
hard to get everything installed into the racks, tested, etc.   Kiryong has
been successful in getting his software installed on one of the machines.
Lot of hard work ahead in the next few days in getting everything set up.
This was just-in-time delivery for this class.  Even a few days later would
have made things very difficult for the class.  Even now it is touch and go!
Kiryong and Jan are working very hard to get everything up and running.

Many thanks to Valerie Young and JoZell Johnson of Intel for getting the
machines delivered to us in time.  And, of course, to Intel for this substantial
donation of resources (including Babu Pillai's time as a mentor for two projects).
Thanks also to Google for donation of Glass devices that will be used
in some of these projects. 

 We are off to a good start!

               -- Satya