[OLPC India] what are the next steps ?

[Satyanarayana Murthy Saladi]

Hi dear Satish,
Thank you for the prompt responses to the mailing list.
I am a keen follower of OLPC and my own  involvement has started with an
email to Walter in Jan 08 regarding deployment in Yanam. I am forwarding the
mail to give some back ground.  At that stage Walter said start a
translation effort in Telugu, which I have done. I am the language
coordinator for Telugu. Our efforts are at
https://dev.laptop.org/translate/te/
How ever I have not managed to find, how to procure. We lost our chance this
year as the minister is going ahead with 150 HCL MiLeap laptops this year
partially because I could not give him any more information. He is
concentrating on secondary schools as they are closer to higher education
and employment. My questions are how can I take this forward so that at
least we have a  chance  next year.
1) what are the minimum numbers required to get XO produced with
Telugu/English keyboard.
2) Is there any help/guidance to volunteers like me to get Curricula to
school servers (similar to OLPC Pootle).
3) What is deployment cost for say 150 laptops including school server.
I know the numbers I am talking are very very small.
But can I take this forward any more. Is there anything else I can do?
cheers,
Satya.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Satyanarayana Murthy Saladi <saladism at gmail.com>
Date: 2008/1/13
Subject: OLPC deployment In Yanam, India
To: arjun at laptop.org, walter at laptop.org


Hi dear Walter and Arjun,
I got your names from community mailing list.
I am doctor from Yanam, India currently working in UK.
I am very excited about OLPC project. I spoke to the Member of Legislative
Assembly for my place <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanam%252C_India>
Yanam<http://yanam.nic.in/>,
Mr Malladi Krishna rao, who is also  Minister for Tourism in Union territory
of Pondicherry <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pondicherry>, India. He is very
progressive and he is an extremely capable politician. He said he will be
able to get initially 300 to 400 laptops from a charity which he runs. He
initially wants to do this through a charity rather than through government
and wants to know if he can get Rs 6000 -Rs 7000 range( $150-180). But he
does not know about the project and constuctivism concept. Today is the
first time he heard of this project. I think once convinced he is capable of
providing the laptops to all 6000
children<http://yanam.nic.in/statsyanam.htm>in my place ( my hopes).
The laptop will be needed in Telugu. I spoke to Free Software Foundation of
India <http://www.swecha.org/node/25> and they said they will help in
localization.
I am not a technical person but I use Ubuntu and can troubleshoot my PC with
internet help.

My questions are

Is it also possible to start a pilot in my place?
Is it possible to do a demonstration with Telugu localised laptop?
In terms of educational content you put in the servers, is it available in
Telugu?
In terms of internet connection, I am sure Mr Malladi will be able to
arrange through Reliance as he managed to get things done for my place from
them before.
Who do I need to do to take this further?
Any advice is very much appreciated.
Thank you.
yours sincerely,
Satyanarayana Murthy Saladi
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