[IAEP] G1G1 (was Re: [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-09-29))

[Edward Cherlin]

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.

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 4:50 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> 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 <jg at laptop.org> 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!
>
> --
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>



-- 
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