OLPC UK

One Laptop per Child has minimal presence in the United Kingdom. This page is for those who would like to change that.

Existing UK presence

The Sugar collaboration features are primarily developed by Collabora, based in Cambridge.

Daniel Drake, based near London, is an OLPC volunteer developer who performed an internship at OLPC HQ in the US (summer 2008). Daniel is interested in founding a UK community but is currently spending most of his time working on OLPC deployments in other parts of the world.

Give One Get One v2 (launched in November 2008 till December 31th, 2008) finally enabled UK consumers to get their hands on an XO at http://laptop.org/global

Media

The BBC has produced some of the best media coverage in the history of the organisation, although it is a bit outdated in the present day.

The Racepoint Group, one of OLPC's media partners in the US, has a UK office with a group who assist OLPC by generating media attention in the UK.

Ideas for UK community activities

• Social events
• User support groups
• Repair centres
• Media outreach
• OLPC pilots
• Working with government for OLPC adoption in the UK education system
• Formation of a non-profit/charity organisational structure
• XO demonstrations to potential community members
• Make a logo and website for the group
• Link people/organisations who want to Give Many, to increase scope of UK-backed deployments in other parts of the world

Mailing list

We have set up the OLPC-UK mailing list to allow for announcements, community development and misc. discussion. The information/subscription page is http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-uk

For those who have not used mailing lists before, Mailing lists/Introduction acts as a suitable introduction and tutorial.

Next steps

Someone needs to step up and plan/propose some kind of UK-based activity or meetup to get things started. This should then be broadcasted here and on the mailing list.

Interested People

Please list your name and location if you would be interested in participating in UK OLPC activities. Please ensure that there is some obvious way of contacting you (e.g. put your email address on your user page, and link to it).

Please also list what you can offer to the community. Offers of help from those who can offer resources critical to UK community formation (e.g. venues for events, sponsorship, media contacts, etc) are especially appreciated.

Finally, please sign up to the mailing list (details above) so that you will receive information on any developments.

• Alan Bell
• Alan Lord
• Martin Dengler
• Tom Hannen
• Frankie Roberto, Manchester. XO owner.
• Jeff Plante Leeds
• Chris Lawrie, Aberdeen
• Mark Simpkins, London. XO user.
• Shanmuhanathan Thiagaraja, Reading. XO user.
• Dave Lee - Conisbrough, South Yorkshire
• Gani Bhagavathula, Norwich UK. XO User. Experimenting with Ubuntu.
• Louie Christie, London UK. System Admin, Ex-programmer, Youth Worker, Social Entrepreneur
• Daniel Drake, nr London
• Peter Robinson, London. Fedora packager
• Gary Martin, Edinburgh, freelance developer.
• Mark Bools, Leicester, freelance IT consultant
• Joe Kelleher, West Midlands, developer and (parent of) XO owner
• David Craddock, Brighton, sysadmin/developer with XO on order
• Vaz Singh, Hertfordshire & South-East London.
• Tony Vroon, Peterborough, sysadmin. G1G1 order placed.
• Edward Mooney, Brighton, Sussex. Teacher and e-learning co-ordinator. Could, with some grovelling, offer the use of a real life school as a venue for any OLPC UK events.
• Mark Hadman, Sheffield. Imported my XO from the US way back in early 2008. Running the DebXO OS.
• Kev Thomas, Glasgow. support/development background. Keen to see UK education pick up on XOs. Start small in Scotland and aim high!
• Faisal Sadeq Khan, London. Interested in founding a UK OLPC community. Start small with a minimalistic structure and build on from this foundation.