[Olpc-open] [IAEP] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))

Sun Oct 5 14:58:33 EDT 2008

Effective marketing is targeted. Last year's typical G1G1 donor was
probably a generous IT type with a positive viewpoint concerning Free
software, curious about Sugar and perhaps even willing to be an
ambassador of the OLPC project. This market doesn't need a marketing
message; they are ready to donate and merely eager for practical
information (cost, available by Christmas or not, available outside
the USA, if so with localized keyboards or not, at same price or not,
...). All that market needs is a press release today answering those
questions, and a press conference on November 17th, both of which
would probably get very complete media coverage. A three-minute film
demonstrating the laptop, showing OLPC people working on it,
mentioning and showing places around the world it is in use,
enumerating challenges, and finally asking for a donation in time for
the holidays, could be posted to YouTube during the press conference
(and an MPEG-2 broadcast version offered to the media for download).
Even a homey home video would be fine, perhaps even preferable.
Imagine G1G1 donors posting video responses.... The challenge this
time is fulfillment, but that seems well in hand with the Amazon
partnership. The most effective merchandising could be what Apple has
done for decades: a few decals/stickers slipped in the box before
shipment -- easily designed and printed with negligeable
picking/packing and shipment cost. Massive buzz could be generated by
another technique Apple has used for years: the education discount.
Offer the pair at $375 for educators and university students, and $425
for others. Imagine thousands of educators holding an XO in their
hands, the community feedback potential.

Seen from the outside, the far more important target market that may
need work is governments and education ministers. That group doesn't
need merchandising, they need reassurance that they will be
accompanied, that risks can be foreseen and contained, that there is
indeed a correlation between learning via an interface optimized for
children and later aptitude with office productivity software. IT
vendors invest fortunes in such "decision-maker" marketing, and
perhaps the best approach there is to find a small (or not), talented
ad agency willing to work pro bono for the exposure, experience, and
good citizen credentials.

I would venture that the less said about the XO-2 at this time, the
better. I believe the priority should be to combat the perception that
OLPC has fallen short and discussing the future version might merely
confuse everyone, in particular leading to speculation that something
is not right with the XO-1. What G1G1 can do is remind everyone that
hundreds of thousands of OLPC XO-1s have shipped and are shipping, and
are serving children from Birmingham to Kigali.

I am not sure I can offer any useful assistance, but I do have
expertise in transcoding video formats, it seems there was a DVD
produced last year which may just need to be transcoded to web
formats?

Sean.

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 1:09 AM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Update: Some of the computer press has picked up the story.
>>
>> But we could be all over the Mainstream Media, including having
>> Nicholas, Walter, Alan and others on all the talk shows. If they are
>> willing. Are any of you? This is the one time of year when ordering
>> something you can't get is a positive. We should aim for something
>> ridiculous, like a million units. (Although we shouldn't say that to
>> the media in so many words.) And then we should provide daily tracking
>> of order numbers and of production lead times, to encourage yet more
>> people to order as early as possible.
>>
>> We should be playing up the connection with the 40th anniversary of
>> the Dynabook idea, and of Doug Engelbart's Mother of All Demos. I have
>> been in contact with him and his people, and I know that they are keen
>> on that. We should be doing T-shirts, mugs, stickers, replica mice,
>> and all the rest of the merchandising, and getting several books
>> published. Why anybody at OLPC would want to waste the best marketing
>> time in the year is utterly beyond me.
>>
>> If you don't think my opinion counts, ask Amazon.
>>
>
> I agree with Ed Cherlin in that if G1G1v2 begins in 5 weeks, now is
> the time to get the campaign going. Five weeks isn't a lot of time.
> What I'd look for in the efforts this year is something a bit more
> orchestrated. Materials (posters, cards, stickers, shirts, etc) all
> coming across with a consistency in branding, image, look-n-feel, etc.
> If we do merchandise from somebody like Cafepress, we don't have to
> get into the business of printing, cutting etc.
>
> I cannot setup shop at Cafepress because the logos involved aren't my
> copyright, but if someone from OLPC initiates, I'd be glad to help.
>
> Sameer
> --
> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Information Systems
> San Francisco State University
> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>
>
>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 4:50 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> This is the first time I have heard that G1G1 will start up again on
>>> Nov 17. As far as I can tell, nobody in the outside world has picked
>>> up on this yet.
>>>
>>> Is this a leak? Is it true? Has there been any outside announcement?
>>> Since it doesn't show up in Internet news searches, I am certain that
>>> there was no press release. Should I Slashdot this?
>>>
>>> This is a Hell of a way to run a global non-profit. We have one of the
>>> world's biggest brands, and we do nothing with it. We could be The
>>> Must-Have Gift for this Holiday season without any advertising
>>> expense, if we would just let the media have the story. Even with the
>>> manufacturing delays that we can predict. That's one of the draws for
>>> the Must-Have Gift of the year. Cabbage Patch died the moment you
>>> could get one off the shelf.
>>>
>>> There is a great deal more I could say about this and other management
>>> issues, but this is not the place for it. If you want to hear any of
>>> it, you know where to find me.
>>>
>>> But!! I have a better idea. Who wants to fork the PR program, and help
>>> write an Open Source press release? We'll have to reverse engineer
>>> most of the content, but I have confidence in our community's
>>> abilities.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org> wrote:
>>>> Community News
>>>> A weekly update of One Laptop per Child September 29, 2008
>>>
>>>> Our appearance outside the Marriott attracted a lot of people to out
>>>> tables; some of them were as far as from Finland; many of them knew
>>>> about "those laptops for children" and were asking about the ways to
>>>> acquire the laptops (we even got questions: are you selling the
>>>> machines?). So, in addition to conducting our scheduled testing, we also
>>>> served as "unofficial" OLPC marketing representatives, steering people
>>>
>>>> to the Nov 17 opening of the G1G1 event through amazon.com. The time we
>>>
>>>> were outside wasn't even the peak lunch time for people to fill that
>>>> square; just imagine the level of attention, if we were there at the
>>>> lunch time!
>>>
>>> --
>>> Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
>>> fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC!
>>> http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us!
>>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams
>> fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC!
>> http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us!
>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children
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