OLPC India/Conference calls

18th April, 2008 5pm IST (730am EST 6:30am CST)

Agenda

1. Brief introductions , everyone
2. Introduction to OLPC in India, the vision
3. Khairat pilot - the past seven months, learning and experiences from the field
4. The road ahead, upcoming pilot projects, how you can help. Who is the OLPC - India team, how can you be a part of it
5. How can you be a part of OLPC India initiative -- individuals, NGOs, corporations
6. How can one buy laptops in India ?
7. Introduction to Student Chapter initiatives by Gaurav Chachra from Punjab University and their content development initiatives, how you can get involved
8. Localization - translators needed. Sayamindu explains the Pootle system briefly. Discussion of keyboard layouts etc
9. Software development -- getting the open source communities in India involved
10. Building Local Communities

Topic requests

If you have any requests for discussion on any specific topics, please add it below. The OLPC-India team will try its best to incorporate it in this conference call. Thanks.

Call-in Number

Dial-in Number: 91-22-3022 1000

Entry Password: 0675#

Minutes of Meeting

Participants at Conference :-

a) Dr. Sameer Verma - San Francisco

b) Marc Valentin - Belgium (Œuvre des pains)

c) Sara - Los Angeles

d) Gaurav Chachra - India

e) Manusheel Gupta – India

f) Mukesh Mukane – India

g) Saymindu Das Gupta - India

i) Harrie Vollaard - Netherlands

h) Amit Gogna - India

[Kindly add if any participants name is missed]

Discussions taken place

a) Introduction :- An Introduction of OLPC in India was given by Amit talking about Khairat project and Implementation Plan for Future. i)India has its first OLPC pilot project going successfully past 7 months at Khairat.

ii)To scale the initiative further , India would be soon deploying another 500 laptops across various places. (Which are expected to arrive in May)

iii)The laptops could be obtained by sending the request to olpc-india@laptop.org

iv)Also OLPC India team is working to put the support structure in place in terms of teacher training , hardware and software support ,building local communities.

v) There seemed a strong sense for teacher training programme. Thus OLPC-India teams is in talk with Nirmala Institute of Teacher Training at Goa and Teacher Foundation , Bangalore for doing the same. The details of the programme would be posted on mailing list soon.

Digital Bridge Foundation – supported by Reliance ADAG would cater to all the above mentioned requirements.

Sameer specified the need for having a strong system in place so that all the deployments taking place have a continuous support of community.

Marc mentioned about need for coming up with website for OLPC India and discussion forum. - Well the same is been worked at and Digital Bridge Foundation website soon would give a clear picture of OLPC India operations.

Manu talked about how India and other Asian Countries could have exchange of ideas on OLPC Front.

Harrie talked about funds gathered for OLPC India. Also he is looking forward for a project identified in North Maharashtra.

Gaurav talked about there initiative in starting - OLPC India Chapter and how they have formed a group consisting of students and some eminent people and would like scale the same. He also spoke about there OLPC Awareness initiative they have been taking. He felt strongly motivated for spreading awareness of OLPC across the country by getting the student population involved and work towards making OLPC project reach in major villages of India matching Abdul Kalam’s Vision of 2020. Gaurav would talk more about it his plans and post it on olpc-india mailing list.

Saymindu talked about localization and about pootle. He would also post the details on mailing list.

[Kindly add if some details are missing]]