OLPC is holding a small gathering in Jordan this week, and preparing to donate 5,000 XOs to the United Nations Relief and Workers Agency (UNRWA) to give to refugee children in the Gaza strip. UNWRA operates over 800 schools for Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Labanon, Gaza and the West Bank.
I have been looking forward to our progress with refugee camps for a long time. I hope this is only the first.
Activity and collection designers have gotten a lot of attention in recent days. Some of the heated discussions at FUDCon targeted the rpm v. xo debate — concluding among other things that content bundles and installation for non-technical users are regularly neglected by packaging systems (as root access is required for a lot of package work).
Numerous related projects were mentioned [CPAN, Ruby Gems, autopkg, Firefox extensions], and Michael Stone and C. Scott Ananian both got their licks in. At the same time, a recent discussion about “making activity designers happy” brought up other ways to simplify making and publishing activity bundles.
What are your own bundle stories? Have you plumbed the depths of Activities/All and come up wanting? Does the Software Updater do it for you?
… Justin.tv, that is. See us at http://justin.tv/xocamp . You can also call in to our conference line: 866-213-2185 (code 1671650#)
We’re currently wrapping up the first day, talking about the latest sweet changes to Turtle Art and a Portfolio. Earlier we had a lot of discussions about requirements from deployments, future roadmaps; and reports from the weekend’s FUDCon and Sugar Labs and Codex Mag meetings.
Update: We’ve started with Day 2; check the wiki schedule for timing updates.
Read more details, and find slides, images, and transcribed Q&A on the OLPC conference wiki page.
XO enthusiasts from around the world (including canada, new zealand, italy, lithuania, denmark and texas) gathering in Cambridge for the second XOCamp this week.
Contribute or just listen in. We will be setting up streaming and a conference line for those interested.
Ed Cherlin is a volunteer and community member.
There is a fairly long and rambling thread on Slashdot starting from the recent announcement from OLPC. That discussion contains a lot of uninformed naysaying, but there are also some good posts. I just spent some time there answering questions and correcting misinformation. Since most of the naysaying on Slashdot (the polite parts, anyway) is pretty much the same as what you read in the respectable business press, I thought it worthwhile to review some of these opinions, correct confusions, and highlight the good parts.
Now you may wonder why we aren’t hearing any comments on the layoffs. Well, that’s Slashdot. I have to take the comments as they come. This is what people are talking about. OLPC is dead, according to the naysayers, killed by some combination of Intel, Microsoft, Asus, Arrogance & elitism, scale, or not selling to the first world.
Greatly exaggerated, as Mark Twain put it. Curiously, none of the commentators said, “All of the above.” Each has a favorite theory, and is sticking to it. This smacks of The Blind Men and The Elephant, except in this case without the elephant.
OLPC the organization has its share of problems. OLPC “It’s an education project” is in great shape, from my point of view, and OLPC XO the product has had a fantastic launch year, in spite of hardware and software issues, high expectations, and so on. How many new computer models get a million orders in the first year? How many non-profits have ever received a million orders for a computer? But let’s take these one at a time.
A lot of other blogs are linking here, and a lot of articles are linking to the wiki or recent post. A selection: ipodindia, dualiko, the-informer.info, ajun.org, inteeer gadgets, freegadgetnews, spotgadgets, gps-navigation, wiredpen, ontorebd.
Internationally : e-day.it and pasteris.it, and a few German-language posts
Yama posted one of his inimitable essays, pony and all, on the blog that everyone can edit. John Paczkowski wins the prize for the catchiest post.
Comment here if you want your own thoughts added to this list. I’ve also seen a few good threads for pulling out more ‘best of OLPC commentary’ quotes… some of them with helpful reflections. Those are worth listing, as well.
It pains me to post this, and we have striven to avoid this over the past few months, but it is unavoidable. We are streamlining our operations this month, cutting staff and contractors by roughly 50% (from every team) and laying out broad targets for the coming year.
This will certainly be much discussed at FUDCon this weekend and XOCamp next week; you are all invited to join those talks, near or far (Brian J is helping to stream the sessions).
Here is Nicholas’s announcement on the upcoming changes:
Like many other nonprofits that are facing tough economic times, One Laptop per Child must downsize in order to keep costs in line with fewer financial resources. Today we are reducing our team by approximately 50% and there will be salary reductions for the remaining 32 people. While we are saddened by this development, we remain firmly committed to our mission of getting laptops to children in developing countries. We thank team members who are departing for their contributions to this important mission.
This restructuring is also the result of an exciting new direction for OLPC. Our technology initiatives will focus on:
1. Development of Generation 2.0
2. A no-cost connectivity program
3. A million digital books
4. Passing on the development of the Sugar Operating System to the community.With regard to deployments:
1. Latin America will be spun off into a separate support unit
2. Sub-Saharan Africa will become a major learning hub
3. [In addition to Sub-Saharan Africa] The Middle East, Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan will become a major focusSeparately, OLPC will be dedicated to bringing the cost of the laptop down to zero for the Least Developed Countries — the $0 Laptop.
Restructuring brings with it pain for friends and colleagues who are being let go. These are people who have dedicated themselves to the advancement of a noble cause, and to say that we are exceeding grateful for the time, the ideas, the energy and the commitment they have given OLPC does not — cannot — adequately express our admiration or our gratitude. The fact that there are 500,000 children around the world who have laptops is testament to their extraordinary work and is already a key part of OLPC’s legacy.
The future brings with it some uncertainty and difficulty, but also the excitement that comes with the rededication to a cause, and a new path that will allow us to realize the moral purpose of OLPC. I hope that each one of you will remain supportive of OLPC, and its mission of opening up a universe of knowledge to the world’s poorest children living in the most remote parts of the Earth.
— Nicholas Negroponte
Please stay tuned – more updates will follow on the points above. For now, your comments and feedback are welcome, as always.
You can add one more OS family to the growing list can be conveniently emulated on your favorite green machine: Richard Raucci got Mac OS 9 running nicely on his XO, and shows it off online.
Now if only can fix a Mac II emulator so that it runs full-screen, I could hack together a nice More activity for Dave Winer…
… on other blogs. There are a wealth of blogs and news stories out about OLPC and the Lennon spot, and many of them are high-traffic sites reaching an audience that has never thought about the idea and reasons for “one laptop per child” before. Visit a few and help answer the most frequently asked questions (‘why education and not food and water?‘, ‘why a laptop?‘, ‘shouldn’t you start with children in the US?’‘); or help an insightful commenter find our real forums.
Blogs:
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