Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))
On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Sameer Verma [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This just came to me while sitting in traffic - a stylized bumper sticker: My other XO is in Mongolia (or Rwanda, Haiti, etc. Randomize the stickers or give them a few to choose from:-)) We have a lot of creativity on these lists. Let it rip! I really like this idea. I whipped up something quick in Inkscape: http://eclecti.cc/files/myotherlaptop.png http://eclecti.cc/files/myotherlaptop.svg Massive buzz could be generated by another technique Apple has used for years: the education discount. Offer the pair at $375 for educators and university students, and $425 for others. Imagine thousands of educators holding an XO in their hands, the community feedback potential. This brings the overhead of verifying whose an educator etc. Apple already has this in place. How do we handle it? I'm not sure how to integrate this with Amazon, but having a form asking the person to provide a .edu email address would be a simple, though certainly not foolproof method. Nirav ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))
On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Sameer Verma [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 11:58 AM, Sean DALY [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Effective marketing is targeted. Last year's typical G1G1 donor was probably a generous IT type with a positive viewpoint concerning Free software, curious about Sugar and perhaps even willing to be an ambassador of the OLPC project. This market doesn't need a marketing message; they are ready to donate and merely eager for practical information (cost, available by Christmas or not, available outside the USA, if so with localized keyboards or not, at same price or not, +1 That said, while the message doesn't need to be targetted to these groups, we do need to find them; and while many of them will not be touched by a MSM publicity blitz, hundreds of thousands of them are devoted to one or two lists or communities already focused on free software, new technology, green power, sustainable rural education and health development, or poverty alleviation. These are places where the XO and OLPC as a project are already used as examples of what is possible. To my surprise, that doesn't mean that these people keep up with the latest news or know much about what OLPC has done in the past two years. I meet a number of them that missed last year's g1g1 entirely. partnership. The most effective merchandising could be what Apple has done for decades: a few decals/stickers slipped in the box before shipment -- easily designed and printed with negligeable picking/packing and shipment cost. +1 That's a good idea. I don't know how easy the slipping-into-the-box part is. This just came to me while sitting in traffic - a stylized bumper sticker: My other XO is in Mongolia (or Rwanda, Haiti, etc. Randomize the stickers or give them a few to choose from:-)) We have a lot of creativity on these lists. Let it rip! My other XO is... or my other laptop is... are great memes. I've seen some great shirts around the latter concept. Massive buzz could be generated by another technique Apple has used for years: the education discount. Offer the pair at $375 for educators and university students, and $425 for others. Imagine thousands of educators holding an XO in their hands, the community feedback potential. I would venture that the less said about the XO-2 at this time, the better. I believe the priority should be to combat the perception that OLPC has fallen short and discussing the future version might merely confuse everyone, in particular leading to speculation that something is not right with the XO-1. What G1G1 can do is remind everyone that hundreds of thousands of OLPC XO-1s have shipped and are shipping, and are serving children from Birmingham to Kigali. +1 The shipment numbers are impressive, and must be highlighted as much as possible. Everyone I've spoken to at first thinks of this as a faltered project, but then they hear the numbers and their eyes light up. Numbers assure that the project is alive and kicking. Strongly seconded. Even my tech-savvy friends who think they have been following OLPC are surprised by even our lower numbers of 200,000 laptops confirmedly being used regularly by children. The more we can spread the message of how successful we have been so far, and how pervasive the change in Peru and Uruguay is already (not to mention birmingham and kigali), the more we will inspire people to pass that message on. SJ G1G1 updates : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/G1G1_2008 ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))
Ah, thanks. Does anyone know the name of the font used in OLPC marketing materials, such as the text on amazon.com/xo ? Nirav On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 7:09 PM, Sameer Verma [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 3:52 PM, Nirav Patel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Sameer Verma [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This just came to me while sitting in traffic - a stylized bumper sticker: My other XO is in Mongolia (or Rwanda, Haiti, etc. Randomize the stickers or give them a few to choose from:-)) We have a lot of creativity on these lists. Let it rip! I really like this idea. I whipped up something quick in Inkscape: http://eclecti.cc/files/myotherlaptop.png http://eclecti.cc/files/myotherlaptop.svg These look neat. BTW, www.laptopgiving.org is going away based on what Seth said. Point it to amazon.com/xo Maybe we should start putting these up on the wiki under G1G1v2 marketing -- Sameer Massive buzz could be generated by another technique Apple has used for years: the education discount. Offer the pair at $375 for educators and university students, and $425 for others. Imagine thousands of educators holding an XO in their hands, the community feedback potential. This brings the overhead of verifying whose an educator etc. Apple already has this in place. How do we handle it? I'm not sure how to integrate this with Amazon, but having a form asking the person to provide a .edu email address would be a simple, though certainly not foolproof method. Nirav ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))
On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yikes. Undersaturated billboard markets... I wonder how such things impact the desire to 'launch' new announcements. On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Walter Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: FWIW, I saw a billboard in the Indianapolis airport this weekend advertising last year's G1G1 program!! Ed, you're right that there isn't much visibility yet on the net. We should do better (and earlier!) this year, and target more focused communities of interest. I'm sure that the PR group will deal with things like billboards and print/radio/tv media, but there are hundreds of thousands of people already deeply engaged in missions aligned with ours whom we can reach more directly. You might add to the lists here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community_media Especially groups of interested people (like the readers of boingboing and slashdot, which generally pick up OLPC news, but also specific mailing lists that only hear fringes of information about the project, like environment and sustainable dev groups, retired grandparents, c). Last year we didn't draft much in the way of specific language for different audiences, but we should. Notes I send to my family about the program are very different from the more generic emails that go out. SJ Marketing largely happens through two channels: Mass media and Word-of-mouth. Billboards, TV etc are mass media while talking to your friends, or SJ's family is word-of-mouth. Lately, the network effect has added to the power of word-of-mouth, hence the concepts of viral marketing, etc. One of the most interesting word-of-mouth channels has been the people who come by your table at a cafe or bookstore or the airport when you use your XO, or pretend to use it :-) Obviously, these parties are interested. So, an elevator pitch + pointing them in the right direction should do the trick. I used to carry small slips of paper with URLs and other information (sort of like a business card) last year during G1G1. I'm thinking of doing actual business card size templates with G1G1v2 information and some URLs + a line where I can write down my e-mail address or phone as necessary (maybe a double-sided business card). These are cheap to print and impressive to hand out. Perhaps we can do officially blessed designs early on this year. Of course posters etc. at your neighborhood stores and malls are also helpful. We did these last year. http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/426 I even renamed my hotspot SSID to laptopgiving.org for a couple of months in the hopes that my neighbors would pick up on the hint :-) SJ - any specific mailing list to join for marketing efforts? cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ Ed writes: This is the first time I have heard that G1G1 will start up again on Nov 17. As far as I can tell, nobody in the outside world has picked up on this yet. I s this a leak? Is it true? Has there been any outside announcement? Since it doesn't show up in Internet news searches, I am certain that there was no press release. Should I Slashdot this? ___ Olpc-open mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))
On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Update: Some of the computer press has picked up the story. But we could be all over the Mainstream Media, including having Nicholas, Walter, Alan and others on all the talk shows. If they are willing. Are any of you? This is the one time of year when ordering something you can't get is a positive. We should aim for something ridiculous, like a million units. (Although we shouldn't say that to the media in so many words.) And then we should provide daily tracking of order numbers and of production lead times, to encourage yet more people to order as early as possible. We should be playing up the connection with the 40th anniversary of the Dynabook idea, and of Doug Engelbart's Mother of All Demos. I have been in contact with him and his people, and I know that they are keen on that. We should be doing T-shirts, mugs, stickers, replica mice, and all the rest of the merchandising, and getting several books published. Why anybody at OLPC would want to waste the best marketing time in the year is utterly beyond me. If you don't think my opinion counts, ask Amazon. I agree with Ed Cherlin in that if G1G1v2 begins in 5 weeks, now is the time to get the campaign going. Five weeks isn't a lot of time. What I'd look for in the efforts this year is something a bit more orchestrated. Materials (posters, cards, stickers, shirts, etc) all coming across with a consistency in branding, image, look-n-feel, etc. If we do merchandise from somebody like Cafepress, we don't have to get into the business of printing, cutting etc. I cannot setup shop at Cafepress because the logos involved aren't my copyright, but if someone from OLPC initiates, I'd be glad to help. Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 4:50 PM, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is the first time I have heard that G1G1 will start up again on Nov 17. As far as I can tell, nobody in the outside world has picked up on this yet. Is this a leak? Is it true? Has there been any outside announcement? Since it doesn't show up in Internet news searches, I am certain that there was no press release. Should I Slashdot this? This is a Hell of a way to run a global non-profit. We have one of the world's biggest brands, and we do nothing with it. We could be The Must-Have Gift for this Holiday season without any advertising expense, if we would just let the media have the story. Even with the manufacturing delays that we can predict. That's one of the draws for the Must-Have Gift of the year. Cabbage Patch died the moment you could get one off the shelf. There is a great deal more I could say about this and other management issues, but this is not the place for it. If you want to hear any of it, you know where to find me. But!! I have a better idea. Who wants to fork the PR program, and help write an Open Source press release? We'll have to reverse engineer most of the content, but I have confidence in our community's abilities. On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Jim Gettys [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Community News A weekly update of One Laptop per Child September 29, 2008 Our appearance outside the Marriott attracted a lot of people to out tables; some of them were as far as from Finland; many of them knew about those laptops for children and were asking about the ways to acquire the laptops (we even got questions: are you selling the machines?). So, in addition to conducting our scheduled testing, we also served as unofficial OLPC marketing representatives, steering people to the Nov 17 opening of the G1G1 event through amazon.com. The time we were outside wasn't even the peak lunch time for people to fill that square; just imagine the level of attention, if we were there at the lunch time! -- Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC! http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us! http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children -- Don't panic.--HHGTTG, Douglas Adams fivethirtyeight.com, 3bluedudes.com Obama still moving ahead in EC! http://www.obamapedia.org/ Join us! http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai For the children ___ Olpc-open mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))
Some good suggestions have been made on the list about getting higher recognition of the OLPC/Sugar in educational circles. Colleague, Roland Gesthuizen, and I were able to display three XO's at ACEC2008 last week http://www.acec2008.info the Australian Council for Computers in Education biannual conference. There was strong interest and high recognition is that the one with the hand crank? There were inquiries from two Australian Universities wanting to buy class sets for research as well as teachers wanting to buy one. I was able to tell them that the G1G1 program would run again but not whether it would be available in Australia. The last G1G1 was not. It seems that there is a lot of unmet potential to engage educators in developing activities and lesson resources and to participate in discussions. It would be good if teachers, schools and universities had a clear process for obtaining laptops. Roland was able to put together a lab of XO's at the ICTEV2008 conference earlier this year by borrowing just about every XO in Australia. The VITTA2008 conference http://www.vitta.org.au/conferenceinfo is in November. It would be good if we could get enough XO's to run a lab session. Maybe there could be a conference set that could be shipped round the world as required? Tony Forster ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Olpc-open] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))
Yikes. Undersaturated billboard markets... I wonder how such things impact the desire to 'launch' new announcements. On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Walter Bender [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: FWIW, I saw a billboard in the Indianapolis airport this weekend advertising last year's G1G1 program!! Ed, you're right that there isn't much visibility yet on the net. We should do better (and earlier!) this year, and target more focused communities of interest. I'm sure that the PR group will deal with things like billboards and print/radio/tv media, but there are hundreds of thousands of people already deeply engaged in missions aligned with ours whom we can reach more directly. You might add to the lists here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Community_media Especially groups of interested people (like the readers of boingboing and slashdot, which generally pick up OLPC news, but also specific mailing lists that only hear fringes of information about the project, like environment and sustainable dev groups, retired grandparents, c). Last year we didn't draft much in the way of specific language for different audiences, but we should. Notes I send to my family about the program are very different from the more generic emails that go out. SJ Ed writes: This is the first time I have heard that G1G1 will start up again on Nov 17. As far as I can tell, nobody in the outside world has picked up on this yet. I s this a leak? Is it true? Has there been any outside announcement? Since it doesn't show up in Internet news searches, I am certain that there was no press release. Should I Slashdot this? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
