Trust me, when I sit down and write my "OLPC: The Inside Story" book a couple of years down the road this past week will receive its own seperate chapter. To say that things behind the scene were crazy would be quite the understatement!
G1G1EU minus 48h...
On Tuesday we broke the story that G1G1 is indeed coming to the EU, Switzerland, Russia and Turkey but now OLPC has officially announced the details in a blog-post on the newly launched blog.laptop.org:
The biggest difference this year is that G1G1’s donors are also going global — we are launching the campaign simultaneously in the US and Europe, at 11am UTC (6am EST) on Monday.
Donors in the US will be able to donate and Give a laptop through Amazon.com/xo. The Get laptops going to recipients the US will be fulfilled right away. Donors outside the US will be able to donate through Amazon.co.uk, where G1G1 will cost £275 (currently just over 322 Euros). The Get laptops for recipients outside the US will be fulfilled as soon as possible — stay tuned to this blog for more details in the coming days. (my emphasis)
What this last part about non-US orders being fulfilled as soon as possible means is that donors will be able to soft pre-order their XOs via Amazon.co.uk. This means that Amazon won't take the money but will see to it that by return of mail donors get a delivery date and can then decide to actually participate or not.
While soft pre-orders obviously aren't as nice as knowing that your order will be fulfilled right away we won't run into last year's situation with people having already paid $399 (plus shipping), yet still having to wait for several months before their XO shows. I therefore think that this is a very good solution as it allows OLPC to utilize the increased attention towards the program which we're going to see over the coming weeks while also giving people in the EU, Switzerland, Russia and Turkey the chance to participate.
Since G1G1 coming to Europe will create demand for everything from technical support over community outreach to translation of marketing materials and documentation the European grassroots groups are in the early stages of organizing joint efforts in these areas. So if you're interested in helping out with any of those tasks (and there's plenty more) please head to [[G1G1EU]] and contact the person responsible for your country or directly e-mail me (christoph AT olpcnews DOT com).
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Rumor has it that Brightstar will be handling European delivery. For those that went through G1G1 2007, its not a good rumor to hear.
A major question is if European donors will now about the fulfillment of their order and the delivery date before Christmas or not. Would be nice if a tentative decision date can be obtained...
Brightstar took a lot of heat in 2007 for problems in other parts of the order processing chain -- they were an easy target, as board members and official partners of OLPC, whereas other contractors involved were not well known. I am biased, since I work with them at OLPC and perhaps see their best side (they currently also help with fulfilling deliveries to our deployment countries), but from my perspective they did an excellent job in trying conditions.
You think your week was crazy, but did you finish planning a V-day xoxo party with a local social club? I think not. We need to do our first videocast, two bloggers talking, catching up casually about the week. I spy a webcam right here. We could do a split-screen side-by-side...
Christoph, any news yet if the second XO is tax-deductible across the EU? (*keeps fingers crossed, hopes it will be deductible in Romania too*)
At the moment it is the decisive factor for me between getting an XO via the Amazon G1G1EU program, waiting for them to start turning up on eBay.eu, or just getting an eee/wind/iRex/something else.
SJ, thanks a lot for your comments.
re: Brightstar, I think it's only normal for people to blame them for much of what went wrong last year. However I do believe that this year things will go quite a bit smoother.
re: parties, I might not have an xoxo party here but am hosting a pre-birthday-party party at my place and instead of getting ready for it I'm geeking out on olpc! ;-)
re: videocast, I'd love to do it, please ping me next week whenever it's convenient for you.
Adi, regarding your question about tax-deductibility: I'm currently not aware of a full answer so we'll really just have to wait and see what the exact terms of G1G1 in Europe are.
According to http://blog.laptop.org/2008/11/10/give-a-laptop-change-the-world-2008-edition/
"This year’s Give One/Get One campaign will begin in November and will become an on-going program"
Does that mean the program won't end, but just keep going in future months and years?
Eduardo,
Yes, OLPC hopes to have G1G1 going on beyond December 2008. This would b a shift from its original strategy of not having individual sales, but I do think t will go a long way to satisfy the groups that want 20-100 laptops. Orders too small for OLPC to deal with directly.
"The biggest difference this year is that G1G1’s donors are also going global"
So, what... does that mean Canada is not "global" ??!!
Kudos to the foundation for finally getting a blog, tho, does that mean we will now be able to figure out what the hell they are up to with our donoations?!?!
Hi!
I'm trying to buy from amazon.co.uk and they say that they only ship
to UK!
If it's international... how come they only ship to UK?
PS: I'm from Spain.
Sebastià
I ordered several on tuesday, shipping address to Denmark, and received a shipping date of 19-24th of December...