Community building

This page focuses on building communities to support the OLPC project. If you want to help OLPC in another manner the "Getting Involved in OLPC" and Getting_started_programming entries is a good place to start. Also check out the OLPC Foundation that focuses on stimulating grassroots organizations.

To enable the open content revolution, OLPC must not only build and distribute the XO, it must nurture and encourage three groups of people to develop content. This list is incomplete; please add. The categories are interrelated and may blend into each other; most groups will consist of people from multiple categories, and people will fall into multiple categories. This grouping is only a rough attempt at ordering.

Community Segments

1. Hardware Developers
   1. XO hardware developers
   2. XO hardware repairers
   3. Peripheral/accessory development
2. Software Developers
   1. Low-level software developers (drivers etc.)
   2. Code library developers (graphics, sound, etc.)
   3. Application developers (games, office programs, etc.)
   4. UI developers (sugar, accessibility, etc.)
3. Educators
   1. XO teachers (directly using laptops with children)
   2. XO administrators (supervising XO teachers)
   3. XO teacher trainers (explaining to / supporting XO teachers)
   4. Curriculum contributors (creating raw materials for libraries etc.)
   5. Curriculum/material curators (creating/packaging "sets" of materials for classroom use)
   6. Curriculum translators (translating raw materials for libraries etc.)
   7. XO students (children using the laptops)
   8. XO student supporters (organizations/individuals from outside school systems providing financial, academic, etc. support for children using the laptops)
   9. Non-XO students (children from non-laptop countries who want to study and collaborate with laptop-using children; needs a better name)
4. Artists
   1. XO guardians (parents/guardians of children with laptops)
   2. Graphic/web/interface designers (layouts, css, usability, book covers, print templates, etc.)
   3. Musicians/composers
   4. Journalists (writing time-sensitive, breaking-news work)
   5. Authors (writing non-time-sensitive work, fiction or nonfiction)
   6. Filmmakers/videographers
   7. Photographers
5. Advocates
   1. Government agencies & ministries of education
   2. Advertisers/promoters
   3. Non-governmental agencies

These communities may be international or national and have sub-groups by nation or linguistic region. There are some rough ideas on how to stimulate the development of these communities. There should be special emphasis stimulating communities in developing nations.

Resources on Community Building

• Presentation Slides
• How to build a Grassroots organization -- these are specific to creating the OLPC project in a specific country
• Team Building coming soon
• Stimulating Content Communities
  1. Software Developers
  2. Educators
  3. Artists
  4. Advocates
• Fund Raising

Current Grassroots Organizations

Here are organizations that are currently promoting OLPC. Please add to the list

• OLPC Nepal Nepal
• Un Computador Por NinoChile
• Tuquito Argentina
• OLPC Brazil
• OLPC Germany
• OLPC Colombia
• DMU - revista sobre OLPC no Brasil Brasil
• OLPC Greece
• Earth Treasury
• Other sources may be present in each country page. Current 'green' countries: Argentina, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Libya, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Thailand, United States, Uruguay

Grassroots Organizations by Region

Spanish America

Links to Existing Open Courseware Repositories

• Curriki.org
• OER Commons
• MIT OpenCourseware
• eShiksha Learning Portal Series of Flash tutorials, in English, Tamil, and Hindi

OLPC recommends the Creative Commons license for content licensing.