24 December 2008

28 hours in Colombia with One Laptop per Child

This week we premiered our first installment of "TED in the Field" - I am directing a new series on TED.com where we track significant progress from past speakers, and also introduce new people and ideas.

Our first follow-up: Nicholas Negroponte and his One Laptop Per Child initiative.

I flew to Colombia with just under a day's notice, arriving in Bogota on Thursday, December 4th at 6am. Three hours later, camera in hand, I was soaring over the Andes in the cockpit of a military transport (the kind of plane you'd expect Val Kilmer to drive a Jeep into) along with Nicholas Negroponte, the Commander-in-Chief of the Colombian Army, the Minister of Defense, a lot of soldiers, and a handful of dignitaries and journalists. We were visiting a town in the center of Colombia, called La Macarena, which had been under guerrilla control over the last 40 years. Nicholas presented the kids with 650 of his little green computers.

After losing myself for an hour or so filming the kids in their classrooms I realized all the soldiers had disappeared and Nicholas was nowhere to be found either. I ran along the dusty road leading to the airstrip just in time to watch a military plane take off and when I asked the three guards on duty if they had seen my friends they pointed to the sky.

I was in the middle of nowhere, I had no cash in my pocket, no cellphone reception, and I speak Spanish exclusively in the present tense.

Conjugating nearly every verb I could channel from the eighth grade, I told the soldiers I had to return to their nation's capital inmediatamente. Next thing I knew, I was being whisked away in a motorbike cab by half a dozen members of the local youth police corps. Their ring leader, an eight year-old girl, explained to the rest, "You need to ask him easier questions. He speaks Spanish like a baby." I didn't know where they were taking me, but so long as we didn't drive the motorcycle over the Andes and past the FARC, I figured things would work out.

Sure enough, the kids dropped me off at an incredible vista to be reunited with Nicholas and the rest of my travel companions. They hadn't left at all, they had just moved on.

Laptops delivered, the next morning I was on a plane back to New York.

My rescuers are pictured above. Below are a couple snapshots of the gunner from the helicopter and me playing with his ammo.

You can find out more about OLPC and the G1G1 program here - www.laptop.org

And you can watch the video here - Nicholas Negroponte Takes OLPC to Colombia (6 mins)

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22 December 2008

TED goes to Colombia with Nicholas Negroponte

Earlier this month, Nicholas Negroponte flew to Colombia, along with a team from One Laptop per Child, to deliver bright-green XO laptops to schoolchildren in territory once held by guerrillas. TED came along to film as part of a new, occasional feature called "TED in the Field" that offers updates on TEDTalks speakers and the initiatives, ideas and products they announced. Negroponte talks with TED about OLPC and what he's learned along the way -- and invites TED viewers to take part in the Buy One Get One program.

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26 June 2008

One Laptop per Child, two years on: Nicholas Negroponte on TED.com

Nicholas Negroponte talks about how One Laptop per Child is doing, two years in. Speaking at the EG conference while the first XO laptops roll off the production line, he recaps the controversies and recommits to the goals of this far-reaching project. (Recorded December 2007 in Los Angeles, California. Duration: 20:46.)

Watch Nicholas Negroponte's 2008 talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances -- including Negroponte's talk at TED2006, just one week after he committed himself fully to One Laptop per Child for the rest of his life; and his eye-opening talk from the very first TED, in 1984, where he makes 5 predictions about the future (and 4 of them are right).

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Subscribe to the TEDTalks video podcast via RSS >>
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20 May 2008

XO laptop redesign: Pics!

One Laptop per Child designer Yves Behar (watch his TEDTalk) shares exciting news about the top-to-bottom redesign of the XO laptop -- sometimes called the "$100 laptop." He writes:

With the XO (1.0), we pushed the boundaries of what a laptop could be by lowering the cost dramatically, being green (no heavy metals, lowest energy consumption ever), and a human-driven unique design approach.

Now, with XOXO (2.0), we are challenging what a truly collaborative and creative computing experience could be ... a true departure from the traditional keyboard and screen layout, a new way to interface and play with data, information and communication:

- imagine if your learning machine was an un-interrupted screen one could interface with from any direction

- imagine if it was a reading experience just like a book, and at the same time a seamless large visual tablet

- imagine if children could play board games sitting across from each other (or computer games).

The XOXO is a book, a tablet, a board...and yes, a laptop too if that is what you need. The design is still green and white, but thin, simple, and un-interrupted by keyboards, buttons, speaker holes, input devices and visible connectors. And it is soft to the touch, like a piece of luggage, everyday luggage you can take anywhere.

Planned for early 2010, the XOXO should be the next learning object of desire, from Bogota, to Istanbul, to New York.

Read more about the XO laptop and One Laptop per Child >>

Technorati tags: $100 laptop, Nicholas Negroponte, One Laptop per Child, Yves Behar

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31 August 2007

Catching up with One Laptop Per Child

Update: OLPC has announced that, starting Nov. 12, it will begin selling the XO laptop to consumers through its Give 1 Get 1 program. From the site:

For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home.

Or, right now, you can donate $200 to send a laptop to a child in a developing nation.

[This summer], the US news show 60 Minutes rebroadcast its segment on Nicholas Negroponte and his One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. As Bruno Giussani has reported on the TED Blog, much news has emerged since that segment first aired in May:

+ OLPC and Intel have agreed to work together, not compete, to put laptops in the hands of every kid on the planet.
+ OLPC's chief technology officer, Mary Lou Jepsen, said last month that a retail version of the laptop may be commercially available by this Christmas.

You can see more from Nicholas Negroponte here on TED.com -- he gave a rousing talk at TED2006, just days after he took a leave of absence from MIT's Media Lab to devote himself fully to One Laptop Per Child. Watch the TEDTalk and join the conversation >>

To contact Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project, visit the OLPC website's Contacts page >>

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18 July 2007

"100-dollar laptop" could go commercial by September

For all those who, seeing the first "100-dollar laptops," have wondered "when can I get one?" the answer is: sooner than expected.

One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte said this week during a speech in Geneva, Switzerland, that a retail version of the laptop may be commercially available in September 2007, according to a report published by local blog GenevaLunch. Negroponte presented the laptop project at TED2006 (watch video or read summary) and had already spoken of the possibility of a commercial rollout, suggesting however a longer time-horizon. The laptop may be sold under a "buy one, pay two" model (the second going to a kid in a developing country).

Currently, 7,000 of the computers are in use, said Negroponte. He expects to see this figure grow to 1 million by the end of the year. And being the ambitious visionary we know, he believes that within five years -- if not sooner -- OLPC could account for 20 percent of the world's computer production ... Rolling out large numbers of computers could be made easier by last week's announcement that OLPC and Intel -- which until then had pursued competing inexpensive computers for developing countries (OLPC's laptop is built around a chip by AMD, Intel's main competitor) -- have agreed to work together.

Technorati tags: Nicholas Negroponte, One Laptop per Child, TED2006

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