[Olpc-za] Expanding OLPC in South Africa

[Seth Woodworth]

Good evening.  I'm glad to see someone really interested in OLPC -ZA.  It's
a great location for OLPC deployment and I would love to help out if I can.
Comments in line:

*How you can help with olpc-za:*
> **
> *OLPC-ZA's Gmail Account:*
> I'm emailing from OLPC-ZA's new Gmail account.  ...
>

Google tools/docs are a pretty good tool.  They aren't quite as open (or as
easy to use on an XO) as a wiki.  Google Docs are great, but feel free to
use the OLPC wiki for organization, creating sub-pages of the
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_South_Africa page would be a great idea, and
important organizationally for things you would like to be public.  But use
whatever works best for you ultimately.



>
> *Outline of Project Proposal & Strategy Plan*
> Attached is an *outline *of a business plan fused with a project proposal
> outline.
>


I will take a look at this in a moment. But in the future could you not not
send documents as .docx?  There are extreme compatability problems with the
new docx format.  Basically no one that isn't running office 2007 has to go
through a lot of hassle to use the format, including other versions of MS
Word.   Preferrably used Google Docs for professional formatted documents.



>
> *OLPC-ZA PowerPoint Presentation*
> I'm currently sifting through the PPT Presentations ...
>


Please repost what you pull out for the sake of others.  I tend to stick to
the 10/20/30 rule by *Guy Kawasaki:

*blog.*guykawasaki*.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html


>
>
>
> *Descriptions of Existing Projects on the Wiki*
> The wiki page is an invaluable resource we're not using to its full
> potential.  I need 1 or 2 people to help me organizing and structuring the
> wiki page.  Ideally, we should post descriptions/reports of the existing SA
> projects with updates every month or two.  Once we finish the PP & Splan and
> PPT presentation, we'll post them on the wiki page.  We'll use this as our
> main resource, eventually.
>


There is a Wiki-gang that's organizing to, hopefully, help groups with
issues like this: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Wiki-gang  The mailing list
seems to be broken at the moment, I'm going to hopefully have it working
again by the morning.  In the meantime I wold love to help.


>
>  *OLPC Awareness*
> Once we've compiled the above information, we need to create Press Release
> packages to send to news media, NGOs, companies, personal networks, etc.
> This will require someone to compile a database on every relevant
> organization.
>  **
>

Re: Press packets.  A few people around OLPC (Lidet, Matt, Aaron) are
working on some new brochures and one-pager's that might be helpful in this
regard.  I will be sure to send them to this list when they are finished.



> *General Updates & Info*
> **
> *Communication*
> Please CC any internal communication between olpc-za members to
> olpc.za at gmail.com.  This will help us in information flow, as we're not
> all based in SA.  If you'd like to stay updated on OLPC-ZA activities,
> please reply to this message and I'll add you to the listserve.  I will be
> sending out updates as we move forward.
>

Good idea, I'll add it to my contacts list.  Are you referring to *this*
list-serv or are you creating another one?  If you would like an OLPC-ZA
announce list, you could have one at lists.laptop.org.  I would *love* to
see more announce-lists.


>
>  *Current Situation:*
> South Africa has ~200 XOs.  100 in Soweto and 100 in Limpopo.  A 100XO
> deployment will be arriving in Kwazu Natal in the coming month.  In
> addition, 115 more XOs will be coming from Larry Weber this October (100 to
> Soweto & 15 to Limpopo).  Finally, I should be returning in May with 100 or
> more XOs.  We're gaining awareness and momentum, but there's much more to
> do.
>
>

There is a Semantic Form for this on the wiki.  It allows us to aggregate
data like this from multiple pages and display a chart of XO's in each
country for example.  Pretty snazy stuff when it works.  Another task to
talk to the Wiki-gang about.

All the best,
Seth
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