[OLPC-Philippines] Fwd: OLPC-Philippines Digest, Vol 10, Issue 8

[Jerome Gotangco]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Charles Chen <ideasman88 at yahoo.com.au>
Date: Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 6:07 AM
Subject: Fw: OLPC-Philippines Digest, Vol 10, Issue 8
To: olpc-philippines-owner at lists.laptop.org
Cc: Willie Pertubal <wilfredo_pertubal at yahoo.com>


Hi Rowen,

I also would appreciate if you can also share the same deployment
information with Willie Pertubal (his email address is
wilfredo_pertubal at yahoo.com) who is managing the OLPC pilot with Don
Bosco. For the information of everybody, the pilot will focus on
running on deploying XO at the Don Bosco Technical College in
Mandaluyong, Metro Manila.

Charles

Hi Harold,

Thank you for joining OLPC Philippines, Jerome basically identified
how some of the ways you could help us. Another way you could help
OLPC from where you are in Moncada, Tarlac is to identify a local
public school in your area which can the suitable part of the first
schools which we can rollout OLPC once the pilot at Don Bosco has
developed a business model for this purpose. I also invite everybody
who is interested to similarly interested to do the same. Again,
please coordinate with Willie if you wish to do this.

Hi Jerome,

I know the OLPC Asia Pacific Liaison representative who is Dr Barry
Vercoe. He is based in MIT Boston. I am also working with OPLC
Australia to get the initial 150 XO for the pilot with Don Bosco.
However, I read the following article the other day and hope we do not
have any difficulties getting the needed resources for our own needs.

L. Aaron Kaplan is the founder and an active member of OLPC Austria,
where he has, among other projects, ported Sugar to both the original
Classmate PC and, as he discussed yesterday, also the Classmate 2
(Atom based).

4PC Deathmatch: XO vs. Classmate

Thanks to a "we don't sell small quantities" approach at OLPC , the
government of Chile was rejected when they wanted to buy 900 test XOs.
Bad mistake, OLPC! You don't reject customers like that. It is a
psychological mistake.

Meanwhile this happened which Wayan also discussed here:

On the 31st of July 2008, Intel and the Portuguese Government
announced the production of the "Magalhães" (a tribute to Portuguese
navigator Maggellan), a Classmate-based computer that will be produced
in Portugal and distributed to Portuguese children on primary
education for 50€ (free or at 20€ for students on social aid), as well
as exported to other countries.

Conclusion

Nicholas: in case you read this. Intel won. Big time. It will be hard
to compete against the Dells and Intels of this world. We all knew
that and you did not accept the fact. However where you could have
been unique, outstanding and special was - guess what - with education
software out of the labs of MIT and surrounding institutions and
projects such as sugarlabs.org, eToys, Squeak, alice.org, mindstorm
etc.

Nicholas - you are a visionary, yes! You captured the imagination of
many. But Intel actually carried the vision further and created a real
product. Creating a real product is so much harder than prototyping.
OLPC is still a prototype compared to the Classmate 2. A great
prototype, a well designed one, a lovable prototype, a visionary
masterpiece of the smartest brains in Cambridge but - a prototype.
OLPC went almost to the product level. But universities and small
dedicated teams can only go so far. They can't compete against the
corporate giants of this world. And a real product also needs a
support team, a repair team, a logistics team, a marketing team and a
complete sales team. Not just you and you alone doing the marketing
and sales. Only all of this together makes a real product. Face the
facts. You can't compete. Especially not when you disappoint one
developer after the other other.

And no, it does not help to to whine that Intel and the big giants are
against you. You tried to beat the giants at their own game. But when
you try to do that, then you actually have to be better than the big
boys. Your sales department was not. It was too small. It was only you
for a long time. Just the other day somebody from Holland called me
and asked how he could contact Walter de Brouwer (the supposedly OLPC
Europe manager, almost none of us in Europe ever saw him). Seems like
wdb is not answering emails anymore for potential customers. Face the
facts. In case OLPC fails then it is your own fault. Maybe you can
still make customers happy with another G1G1. But, you know... the
hardware industry is moving so immensely fast. Who will still want an
XO-1 apart from the design value and the geek factor?

Not enough to make Aaron smile...

Sure, the Classmate does not make me smile when I see it but - neither
does a plain tool like a screwdriver. Even though I am a super geek, I
do not have emotional relationships with hammers, screwdrivers or -
tools. Tools are not sexy. I just use them. And that is what counts.

After all - it is a tool for education, right? And as tool, it does
get the job done pretty well . No design prize, but it gets the job
done.

As a long term OLPC supporter and fierce fighter for "Open Sourcing"
education I must come to the conclusion that Walter Bender took the
right path and Nicholas Negroponte was fighting the wrong war against
the big boys. I do hope that Ministries of Education see the long term
educational benefit of open source - no matter which hardware they
choose to buy - the kids using open source today will have a thorough
understanding of IT when they grown ups. They will have learned to
teach themselves. Brazil already understood this.

Let's applaud to OLPC for being the first visionary step in the right
direction, but let's keep our eyes open for other good tools. Thanks
to open source, the ideas of OLPC can in fact be transferred to the
Classmate or the Eee PC or maybe even cheap PDAs in India!

So, and now I am off to work on some cool mesh projects. :)

Kudos to the wonderful folks at OLPC (Austria) for being who they are
and for being so enthusiastic about education and learning which I
still consider to be the real mission.

That's all folks.

Charles