<incom> Negroponte's Bite of Humble Pie

[Geert Lovink]

Give1Get1 Backstory: Negroponte Admits Sales Defeat & Rebounds
http://www.olpcnews.com/people/negroponte/ 
give1get1_backstory_xo_sales_.html

Posted on September 24, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Countries,  
People: Negroponte, Laptops: XO-1

Today Nicholas Negroponte took a big bite of humble pie.  He finally  
admitted that his grand plan to sell One Laptop Per Child to developing  
world governments through orders of at least one million XO laptops is  
a failure, that President's loving laptops doesn’t equal Ministers  
buying XO's:

"I have to some degree underestimated the difference between shaking  
the hand of a head of state and having a check written," said Nicholas  
Negroponte, chairman of the nonprofit project. "And, yes, it has been a  
disappointment." But rather than kick a man when he's down, I'd like to  
say "Thank you" to Dr. Negroponte. He's surprised me by actually  
admitting his mistake; I didn't think his expansive ego would've  
permitted it. In addition, he is trying to correct his mistake and save  
OLPC production.

See, the OLPC USA sales plan shows failure in Negroponte led sales  
plan, not the overall idea. The developing world still wants XO  
laptops, and wants to buy "$100 laptops", just not in million-unit  
blocks with no maintenance plan.

For proof, look at the OLPC Uruguay bid. Ceibal wants one-to-one  
computing, but in small lots of a few thousand computers each so they  
can implement XO laptops at a measured pace. They also want warranties  
and localized repair, not Humpty Dumpty on a million unit scale.  
Wouldn't you if you were buying computers for a whole nation's school  
system?

Nicholas Negroponte deserves credit for recognizing that developing  
world governments were not going to commit on his time or orders scale  
and changing his distribution method. He needs to get a critical mass  
of users and programmers to show that One Laptop Per Child is a  
credible agent for educational change. Or as Walter Bender says:

"Part of what we're doing here is broadening the community of users,  
broadening the base of ideas and contributions, and that will be  
tremendously valuable."

The Buy 2 Get 1 sales plan is Professor Negroponte's way to stimulate  
orders for his computers while simultaneously building up a war chest  
to self-finance his own "implementation miracle":

Negroponte explained that if donations reached, say, $40 million, that  
would mean 100,000 laptops could be distributed free in the developing  
world. The idea, he said, would be to give perhaps 5,000 machines to 20  
countries to try out and get started. "It could trigger a lot of  
things," he said.

I know that XO Christmas sales will trigger at least one thing:  
Quanta's production line to sell out the 120,000 laptops it plans to  
manufacture in 2007. Yes, American geek tech-lust and greed will usurp  
developing world children at first, and that will probably be the best  
thing that happens for One Laptop Per Child.