Technology Based Social Ventures
Lessons from the Field
Associate Professor Sameer Verma
Social and Technological Entrepreneurship Program at SF State (STEPS)
2. Technology Based Social Ventures:
Lessons from the field
Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Presentation:
Associate Professor Social and Technological Entrepreneurship
Information Systems Department at SF State (STEPS) Initiative
San Francisco State University
San Francisco, CA 94132 USA
Available online at http://slideshare.net/sverma
4. To create educational opportunities
for the world's poorest children by
providing each child with a rugged,
lowcost, lowpower, connected
laptop with content and software
designed for collaborative, joyful,
selfempowered learning.
—OLPC Mission Statement,
It's an education project, not a laptop
project. —Nicholas Negroponte,
5. The Prophet
Children
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you
cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
-kahlil gibran
6. July 2007
The first time I actually saw the OLPC XO laptop.
33. Bhagmalpur photos
Bhagmalpur School
http://www.zooomr.com/photos/sameerverma/sets/40063/
Bhagmalpur Village
http://www.zooomr.com/photos/sameerverma/sets/40075/
47. Networks
Offline technology
Rise of the Sneakernets
48. Content
Open content standards (SCORM, IMSCP)
Creative Commons
Offline Wikipedia
1.6 million books from the Internet Archive
49. Language Diversity
● India: 28 states and 7 union territories
– The Constitution of India recognizes 22 languages
1. Assamese 9. Konkani 17. Sanskrit
2. Bengali 10. Maithili 18. Santhali
3. Bodo 11. Malayalam 19. Sindhi
4. Dogri 12. Manipuri 20. Tamil
5. Gujarati 13. Marathi 21. Telugu
6. Hindi 14. Nepali 22. Urdu
7. Kannada 15. Oriya
8. Kashmiri 16. Punjabi
50. Languages
Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian,
Aymara, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa
Melayu, Basque, Bengali, Bengali (India),
Bislama, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese
(China), Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese
(Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari,
Dutch, Dzongkha, English, English (South
African), English (US), Estonian, Filipino,
Finnish, French, French (Canada), Friulian,
Fula, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek,
Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian,
Icelandic, Igbo, Italian, Japanese, Kannada,
Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Korean, Kreyol,
Macedonian, Malayalam, Maltese, Marathi,
Marovo, Mongolian, Nauruan, Nepali,
Norwegian, Norwegian Bokmål,
Papiamento, Papua New Guinea Pidgin
(Tok Pisin), Pashto, Persian, Polish,
Tutorial: Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Punjabi,
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/452 Quechua, Romanian, Russian, Serbian,
Sindhi, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian,
Translate: Solomon Islands Pidgin, Sotho, Spanish,
Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Templates,
http://translate.sugarlabs.org/ Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur,
Vietnamese, Walloon, Wolof, Yoruba,
pseudo L10n
Approx. 90+ languages
54. Laptop can also be a:
● Phone
● Healthcare monitor
● Microfinance platform
● Anthropological documention platform
55. OLPC XO1
Antenna
Microphone
Camera
Speaker
Rotate screen USB
Keyboard
Mouse pad
Gamepad
Power
Battery
56. OLPC San Francisco Bay Area
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SanFranciscoBayArea
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpcsf
57. OLPCSF Deployments
● Exchange of ideas, plans, content, etc.
● Deployments
– Afghanistan (Carol Ruth Silver)
– Jamaica (Sameer Verma/Univ. of the West Indies)
– Madagascar (June Kleider)
– India (Humaira Mahi/Sameer Verma)
– Senegal (Drew and LickWilmerding Schools)
– South Africa (EduWeavers)
– San Francisco (Starr King Elementary)
63. SFSU Lending Library
● New! (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/SFSU_Lending_Library)
● Library Media Services has 10 XO laptops
– Loan to students, staff and faculty
– HSS 127
– You get:
● XO Laptop
● Charger
● Instructions
● Join the community!
64. OLPCSF and SF State University
● Meets once a month at SFSU Down Town Center.
– See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SanFranciscoBayArea
● IMSA (student association) helps with organizing meetings, donation drives,
translation jams
– http://imsa.sfsu.edu/
● Engineering student started OLPC SF XO Repair Center
– See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SF_Repair
● Internships?
● Volunteers?
● Course projects?
● More...
65. How can you help?
● Educators
– http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Educators
● Translators
– http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Localization
– http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/452
● Developers
– http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developer
● Getting involved
– http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Getting_involved_in_OLPC
● Sugar
– http://sugarlabs.org
66. Mailing lists
● Educators
– http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/educators
● Software Developers
– General development
● http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
– Sugar UI
● http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
All mailing lists are at http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/
67. Community lists
● Everyone
– http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots
– http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpcopen
● OLPC San Francisco
– http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpcsf
68.
69. About the Cover Photo
This photo was taken in
Bhagmalpur, India on November 3,
2008.
I was trying to connect to the Internet
using a cell phone. This was the first
time a computer from Bhagmalpur
had connected to the Internet...ever.
I had to go to the roof of the house,
where I could get a good cell phone
signal, but we had no electricity, so I
had to do all this in the light of a
kerosene lantern.
5.1 billion + of the world's population http://www.flickr.com/photos/olpc/3011271194/
is still unconnected. Not every one
has 24/7 Internet access.
Sameer Verma