1. one laptop per child:
meet the XO
Greg DeKoenigsberg
draft, March 2007

2. (Pic of the XO figure itself)

3. Build Sugar on your laptop right now.
XO Quickstart Guide:
Build Sugar on your laptop right now. (

4. i. where we're coming from

5. We take more for granted than we can possibly understand.
* My trip to India: The anaconda power / laptop story
* Question: what else do we take for granted?

6. Have you ever lived in a town without a library?
Have you ever lived without a telephone?
Have you ever lived without electricity?

7. Americans have such a wealth of informational
CONSIDER THIS:
Americans have such a wealth of informational
resource—books, periodicals and hundreds of television
stations—that they sometimes seek shelter from the
punishing hail of media that falls here.
Africans enjoy no such luxury—which is precisely why
the Internet is so important to Africa.
(Daniel Akst and Mike Jensen, The Carnegie Corporation, 2001)

8. The XO will be a textbook.
* Carnegie and libraries in post-Civil War U.S.
* carnegie.org, Carnegie Corporation, still strong
* Report in 2000 about the crisis in African libraries

9. (pic: XO in ebook mode)

10. The XO will be a library.
* Carnegie and libraries in post-Civil War U.S.
* carnegie.org, Carnegie Corporation, still strong
* Report in 2000 about the crisis in African libraries

11. The XO will be a library.
* Carnegie and libraries in post-Civil War U.S.
* carnegie.org, Carnegie Corporation, still strong
* Report in 2000 about the crisis in African libraries
Wikipedia | Wikimedia | Project Gutenberg | MIT open courseware |
Directory of Open Access Journals | Public Library of Science |
The Avalon Project | the entire internet | Google

12. The XO will be a telephone.
* Carnegie and libraries in post-Civil War U.S.
* carnegie.org, Carnegie Corporation, still strong
* Report in 2000 about the crisis in African libraries

13. (pic: chat windows?)

14. The XO will be a camera.
* Carnegie and libraries in post-Civil War U.S.
* carnegie.org, Carnegie Corporation, still strong
* Report in 2000 about the crisis in African libraries

15. (pic: of camera mode)

16. The XO will be an orchestra.
* Carnegie and libraries in post-Civil War U.S.
* carnegie.org, Carnegie Corporation, still strong
* Report in 2000 about the crisis in African libraries

17. (pic: of tamtam)

18. The XO will be networked.
* Carnegie and libraries in post-Civil War U.S.
* carnegie.org, Carnegie Corporation, still strong
* Report in 2000 about the crisis in African libraries

19. (pic: of network topology)

20. The XO will be human-powered.
* Carnegie and libraries in post-Civil War U.S.
* carnegie.org, Carnegie Corporation, still strong
* Report in 2000 about the crisis in African libraries

21. (Power consumption figures)

22. The XO will be an opportunity.
* Carnegie and libraries in post-Civil War U.S.
* carnegie.org, Carnegie Corporation, still strong
* Report in 2000 about the crisis in African libraries

23. “It's an education project, not a laptop project.”
--Nicholas Negroponte

24. ii. fear and loathing

25. “These people don't need laptops. They need food!”
Jeff Sachs / help the poorest in other ways: get the poor on to the first rung / help people who are already on the ladder but need development!

26. No substantial famine has ever occurred in a democratic and independent country, no matter how poor.
Dr. Amartya Sen
1998 Nobel Laureate, economics
Harvard professor
famine survivor
( the worst famines are information famines )

27. “Computers in schools are an utter failure.”

28. HEY, YOU GEEKS: A SHOW OF HANDS
How many of you learned the majority of
your computer skills in a classroom?
Personal story: I was a poor student, I didn't have the money to be sent to school, but I had lots of time and I used it to learn how computers worked.
( ownership is everything )

29. “The XO will fill landfills all over the world.”

30. “The XO will be used to exploit children.”

31. “The XO will actually cost way more than $100.”

32. “The OLPC people have no plan to deal with (x).”

33. For more excellent analysis (and occasional fearmongering)

34. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
--Colin Powell

35. iii. inside the XO

36. The XO's critical advantage: The software is targeted for
exact hardware specifications.
(Thank God.)
No nVidia driver nonsense!
No guessing about hardware compatibility!

37. Some basic hardware specifications:
366 Mhz AMD Geode 1W
(sorry, Intel)
128 MiB RAM
512 MiB storage
Camera and mic built-in
No moving parts
Membrane-covered keyboard
Trackpad / stylus pad
Sturdy enough for kids

38. what is sugar?

39. What sugar is NOT:
GNOME
KDE
A traditional desktop
Application-centric

40. traditional desktop concept : sugar concept desktop : neighborhood
menubar : the frame
hierarchical filesystem : journal
applications : activities
nouns : verbs

41. neighborhood
(picsplzthx)

42. the frame
(picsplzthx)

43. journal
(picsplzthx)

44. activities
(picsplzthx)

45. iv. how you can help

46. ( but first... why should you? )

47. running pre-alpha software.
The XO is beta hardware
running pre-alpha software.

48. Join the Sugar community.
Get involved, step one:
Join the Sugar community.
(irc.freenode.net #sugar) (

49. Build Sugar on your laptop.
Get involved, step two:
Build Sugar on your laptop. (

50. Get involved, step three: Build a simple activity.(

51. Get involved, step four: Transform a fun application
into an XO activity.

52. ...but your time is far more valuable.
You can also give money... (
...but your time is far more valuable.

53. You can directly impact the lives of millions of poor children.
Starting right now.
How many opportunities like that
will you get in your life?

54. Questions / Comments
gdk at redhat dot com