For those that missed last night's fun at the OLPC News Happy Hour, where we had an update on Pixel Qi's progress from John Patrick Ryan, VP of Sales and Marketing, you can get an overview of One Laptop Per Child thanks to the "Scobleizer" who interviewed Chuck Kane, OLPC President.
Without a doubt, the "Scobleizer" is a big dork. He did not do his homework before the interview and was embarrassingly ignorant about OLPC. I give Chuck credit for putting up with Robert Scoble's foolish questions, but I am shocked that Chuck gave out the wrong URL for the OLPC project. He said "OLPC.com" instead of "Laptop.org".On a positive note, did you hear that G1G1x2 is going to roll out in three phases; USA, Europe, and then Asia? Pretty cool!
I hope the timeframe will not be so limited like the first one. It would be nice to have a continuously ongoing G1G1 program at least. (I think a simple direct sales to anybody would be the best).
I will certainly advocate the program here in my country if it comes to Europe.
@ sola
it seems to me that anyone who is likely to buy one of these is probably following the project pretty closely in which case the few weeks that the avaiability to buy one is open should be ample time.
also, if they ever do decide to keep g1g1 year round, imho it'll be a sign that the group is headed in the direction of a for profit organization (something which i think they should do)
abe,
I think the plan is that olpc will stay non-profit, and Mary Lou Jepsen's Pixel Qi company will continue to work with olpc, but also design machines similar to the XO-2 that commercial firms will make and sell. At least that is the impression I get from looking over the Pixel Qi web site.
Really interesting is that part of how Jepsen is planing to lower the cost, like down to $75 or less, is to get rid of the motherboard and move all the microcircuits inside the display.
"also, if they ever do decide to keep g1g1 year round, imho it'll be a sign that the group is headed in the direction of a for profit organization (something which i think they should do)"
There is absolutely no logic here. Either you are trying to attach an artificial "winning condition" to your disastrously stupid proposal ("See! They are selling laptops to consumers!!! It's almost the same as what I proposed! They will be even better off if they became for-profit!!!"), or you don't understand the very basics of OLPC project's goals (either original or currently mutated ones).
There is no conditional or casual link between OLPC being for-profit organization and it trying to increase the number of laptops in educational use. The fact is, providing low-cost laptops for educational use in thrid-world countries is among the most unprofitable activities a company can do if it has a choice where to apply its money and resources. As long as OLPC is a nonprofit, this choice does not apply to it because its goal is to provide laptops for this particular use, not to make a profit. If this choice was available, the solution is obvious -- abandon any educational use, put the company on sale to be bought by some hardware company that can use its technology, participate in the development of the next-generation $500 consumer netbook.
Yeppa, da Scobleizer certainly looks badly prepared on the video.
Also, I can't help but feel sentimental during the first 30 seconds of the video which shows the OLPC office space: so many familiar faces of great people and so many outstanding memories (especially of watching the sunrise from 1CC)... :-)
It seems that the interviewer didn't do much preparing for this interview. Pity about the wrong URL being quoted, but the message will be spread, slowly but surely. This story is too good to be repressed.