OLPC and Ubuntu at Software Freedom Day 2008 – NCC, Quezon City, Philippines

After Ubuntu Love Day Manila 2008, I thought it would be interesting to take the back seat and do something light as a follow-up and still get in touch with the community.  It was also good timing on my part as I got sick for a week (after Ubuntu Love Day) and got swamped with work when I went back. I’ve gotten myself involved lately with grassroots efforts for One Laptop per Child (OLPC) in my community and it is at the early stages of being formalized so I thought this coming Software Freedom Day celebration in my city would be a good place to re-introduce OLPC project, the XO-1 laptop, and even show how we can run Ubuntu with the XO-1 to provide a different computing environment. I asked my friend Rowen Remis Iral of OLPCPH to join as well. There’s also a good chance I’ll be able to get some suggestions to be able to fix the B2-1 unit that I accidentally upgraded (not bricked) weeks ago.

I approached Magie Antonio of Bluepoint Foundation if this was feasible and approved of the idea the same day we chatted about it online. So far we got 4 XO-1 machines as demo units and I’ll also bring my HP Mininote 2133 running 8.04 LTS. Too bad the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 won’t be on sale till next month so I guess that will have to wait.

So if you’re in Quezon City and not doing anything on September 20 and want to check out the OLPC XO-1 with Ubuntu running and even learn some stuff about Free/Open Source Software, join us at the National Computing Center in Quezon City! You can read more about the event at http://bluepoint.com.ph/sfd08

There is also a celebration happening at the same day in Makati City at the University of Makati if Quezon City is too far from your place. Unfortunately, I’m not going there.

PS. OLPC G1G1 v2 is confirmed in partnership with Amazon!