G1G1 2008

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Give a laptop. Get a laptop. Change the world.

One Laptop per Child is launching its second give 1 get 1 (or Give One/Get One) program starting November 17, 2008, following last year's highly successful program. This year the delivery of the laptops in the USA will be handled through Amazon.com.

The laptops will run the latest release of Sugar on a Linux-based Fedora Core operating system. (It will not dual-boot Windows and Linux, contrary to some reports.) For answers to frequently asked questions, and for other XO giving programs, see XO giving and the G1G1 FAQ.

Details

This year's give 1 get 1 campaign launches Nov 17. After this year it will become an on-going program. Amazon will be the distribution channel, and are providing their services at cost. You can see the developing OLPC storefront at http://Amazon.com/xo . The program details will be similar to those from last year's program:

   $199 to give a laptop to a child in the developing world. 
              and/or 
   $399 to give a laptop to a child in the developing world and get a laptop.

The tagline for the campaign is "Give a Laptop. Get a Laptop. Change the World." We are focusing on sharing images and experiences from members of gen-XO, particularly from OLPC's largest deployments. This time last year, we were uncertain how our young project would fare under the demands and needs of large deployments. Today there are hundreds of thousands of children using their XOs every day, including over a quarter of all young students in Uruguay. A few days ago this wiki was slowed to a halt by a surge of interest from Uruguayan elementary schools browsing the wiki and looking for new activities to download -- over 20,000 of them visit the site every week.

You can help spread the word. We will be making a big splash on Nov 17 with PR and advertising to run in donated media across all media platforms: TV, Cinema, Radio, Print, and Out of Home. We want to supplement that with personal outreach over local community and social benefit groups interested in changing education and addressing the root of poverty around the world. Help us identify groups to contact; G1G1 is an opportunity for us to forge new alliances and seed new educational initiatives, at home and abroad,

Materials and media for promotions are available on the Community_media page and via our Flickr stream (http://flickr.com/photos/olpc).

The promotion itself does not begin until Nov 17. We are setting up a mailing list for people who want to be reminded when it launches, and are planning for advertising to run for six weeks from Nov 17 to Dec 26, for the holiday giving season.

Spread the word!

Join our community mailing list, grassroots@lists.laptop.org, to discuss how to get the word out about the new campaign.

Ongoing projects

Projects that need help:

• Social site updates -- Facebook, Twitter[1], MySpace : there are OLPC accounts on many of these sites which need maintenance and regular updating. For instance some 2007-era badges and promotions need to be updated to link to the Amazon site.

• Blog updates -- the relaunch of the campaign will not begin in earnest for a few weeks, but many people will want to know in advance.

• Art projects -- discussions on deviant art, Flickr, photo.net and more. OLPC needs expressions of its cause and mission that do not rely on words; art is a universal language that speaks in ways that advertising can not. The design gang is helping to make great designs for web badges, swag and the OLPC sites, many of which are being revamped. We may also need material in specific sizes/formats for non-standard donated media (see below).

• Donated media -- we can provide advertising materials for any media vehicles. OLPC does not have an advertising budget, but relies on donated media. If you have a friend who works at a magazine, a TV network, or just has an ad supported blog, ask if they will run a G1G1 ad. Note leads on the talk page, or send them to aaron at laptop.org.

• Media concepts -- Nothing is impossible. Ideas that take longer to create can be used when we launch similar programs in other parts of the world in the near future.