G1G1 2008

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.

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

Below is an announcement of the launch of G1G1 for 2008; the first of a set of staggered rollouts in different countries. We're planning weekly meetings about outreach and publicity to help reach groups that weren't reached last year (and may not be by the mainstream media); see G1G1 meetings for more.

the announcement in plain text (for email distribution)

Give a Laptop, Change the World

One Laptop per Child is launching its second Give 1, Get 1 ("G1G1") program starting November 17, 2008, following last year's popular program, which supported the production of over 150,000 XOs. This year the XO laptops will be shipped to donors through Amazon.com. Amazon.com/XO.

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 Give 1, Get 1 FAQ. For more about the XO see the laptop.org overview.

Media and other materials from the first year's deployments are available from our community media page and our Flickr stream. If you have been involved with a deployment, please contribute your own.

• OLPC's Flickr photostream: http://flickr.com/photos/olpc
• Contribute & share media: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community_media

Details

This year's Give 1, Get 1 campaign launches in November and will become an on-going program. Amazon will be the fulfillment channel, and 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 overwhelmed by a surge of interest from Uruguayan elementary schools browsing the wiki and looking for new activities to download -- almost 10,000 of them visit the site each day.

You can help spread the word. We will be making a big splash 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.

While the promotion will be on-going, the advertising will run from Nov 17 to Dec 26, to take advantage of the holiday giving season. We are setting up a separate mailing list for people who want to be reminded when it launches.

For the moment, please watch this page for updates (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/G1G1_2008).

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.

• Tech/Learning/Volunteering Support -- If you enjoy directly helping other users, join our very active worldwide Support Gang, by emailing holt AT laptop.org (include your phone number!) or submitting your ideas to volunteer AT laptop.org.