Olpc at the Eu Africa Business Forum 2014 Brussels

Major event with many presidents of state, kings, ministers and leaders s.a. Ms. MANDELA and business decision makers that followed them or thought this worth participating in the forum. The olpc-community was invited to participate in the session on eSchools and to formulate recommendations to the European Commission. More: olpc at the Eu Africa Business Forum 2014 BrusselsThe panel and audience were conclude to give recommendations to the EU Commission. It was great to see other panel members and members in the audience confirming what we were presenting and communicating as olpc-community. I had borrowed an XO from former OLPC Europe and still olpc community member Bernadett Lauko. The XO still is a great eye-catcher and opener and indispensable tool for every OLPC/olpc "evangelist". OLPC, olpc, the XO is known by about 30% of the participants. Of course all the participants from Rwanda know it and are happy and very proud to join in the conversations. It gives them a boost of confidence you rarely will have seen. They are very very confident. The leading message from the conference: all these Agenda21 action plan, Millennium Development Goals and other initiatives, they are working, economy is taking off everywhere, even in the regions, but things are moving and indeed teachers get bought away by the private sector everywhere. The money is there, the support programs think micro-finance etc. are all there, the technologies are there, the ngo's are there and it is making a change. The challenge is: transfer of know-how and ... maybe olpc can also help out there to a certain extent. But most definitely: those business leaders want to chip in money in the "pot" of OLPC because they have a huge frustration: they have gone through so much efforts to get a great product or service ... but most are only appealing to a. consumers b. who can read, write and know numbers. So they all know and see that chipping in a bit in the pot of OLPC is will come back as a return on investment in the form of people who can read, write and know numbers, have increased their revenues and can finally label themselves as "CONSUMERS", or maybe some will prefer the label "Active Citizens". :) Several reporters and Euronews heard me pitch at a little booth I created on a table and recorded me. Euronews even filmed and interviewed me for about 10'. I've got about 65 business cards and emails who all received an email from me the same evening. They will be followed up by www.AfricaCO2e.tk - EU and EU Diaspora Leadership Institute / olpc community Dpt. PS I got the confirmation from the Kenyan delegation that OLPC won a public tender a couple of weeks ago for 1,2 million laptops. Some of the competition however challenged their losing and claim that though olpc won indeed, the tender procedure had not followed the Kenyan code of good practices and didn't fulfill the legal requirements and brought the whole case to the Kenyan Court where things are now pending. In my pitches I made it clear that the XO is like the wikipedia, linux, libre office etc. and that nobody is going to pay you because you would "sell" them the wikipedia, because everybody knows the wikipedia is for free. And that the way to make money with OLPC is to provide services: e.g. if teachers would ask you to help them to integrate the use of wikipedia into their lessons during some workshops and you'd give the workshops, they you could make money. Idem the XO's: nobody can make money selling XO's, even the salaries of the staff at OLPC is paid by other means (donations, etc.) but not from some profit on the price of the XO's. The XO's are always sold at rock bottom price: the price of the components and putting them together. OLPC is a very small foundation: just a couple of very brilliant hardware ICT engineers who make sure they visit specialised ICT component manufacturing fairs and implement the every more performing hardware, and then some people who can pick up the phone and all they want to hear is how many XO's you want to order and make sure of a steady and as large as possible flux of orders every month so the manufacturers of components can give rock bottom prices in exchange for a steady stream of orders so they can keep a basic capacity occupation of their manufacturing machines and manufacturing belt/chain. When you explain it like that people get it and understand there is room for them to sell their services and products that can be "ented" on the XO which is like a LEGO block. This was also very useful information for some of the people in the Kenyan delegation to take back. --SvenAERTS 09:51, 2 April 2014 (UTC)