One Laptop Per Child in South America talk at The World Bank [video]

While I was in the United States in early September I gave a talk about the current status quo of the OLPC projects in Uruguay, Paraguay, and Peru (which I had visited on my olpcnews road trip) at The World Bank. I was joined on the panel by Wayan Vota, publisher of OLPC News and EduTechDebate, and The World Bank's Sr. Education Economist Cristian Aedo. While I unfortunately ended up talking longer than planned we still had some time in the end to take audience questions which led to some very interesting discussions and insights.

Anyway, I have embedded a recording of the talk below. Please note that the session only starts at around 9:15min and that the slides I used are available for download here.

You can find the OLPC News posts I've written about my experiences in South America here and we'll be publishing plenty more information on both OLPC News and EduTechDebate over the coming weeks.

Upcoming talks in Lima and D.C.

One of the side-effects of my involvement with the One Laptop per Child project has been that it has given me a chance to regularly speak about and present the project. The audiences I’ve presented for in the past 3 years range from visitors of 26C3 and students at various Austrian universities to OLPC aficionados in Washington, D.C. back in December 2007.

Now the main focus of my current OLPC News South America road trip was to listen and talk with – rather than for – people involved in the South American OLPC / Sugar projects. However I’m happy that I’m also getting a chance to speak about my experiences a couple of time.

The miniJAM! artistico on my last day in Montevideo was a great start that also allowed me to practice presenting in Spanish (which I did for the first time since I finished school). I mainly talked about the activities of the OLPC / Sugar communities in Europe as well as contrasting my experiences in Uruguay with the ones I made volunteering with OLE Nepal in 2009.

Now last week the details for two upcoming talks were finalized:

Wednesday, August 25: 7:30PM – Escuelab, Lima: One Laptop per Child: Una perspectiva europea

Monday, August 30: 12:30PM – World Bank, Washington, D.C.: One Laptop Per Child in South America: Reports from on-the-ground

If you happen to live in these cities and/or know people there who might be interested in learning more about OLPC and Sugar Labs in general and my views of the status quo of the projects in Uruguay, Paraguay, and Peru in particular then please spread the word and stop by at the talks.

How time flies

I just realized that it’s been exactly one year since I flew to Washington, D.C. to start my 3-month internship at the Austrian Embassy’s Office of Science and Technology. Really makes me realize just how quickly time flies by these days.

The internship, life in D.C., my subsequent month of traveling in Canada and the United States, the return to Austria, the 6-week summer internship, coming back to Vienna and university, a super-busy autumn where I got tons of things done, going to Brussels for a weekend, the relaxing Christmas holidays, all the studying and exams in January, going to back to Brussels for FOSDEM, spending a couple of days in London. All that and a hundred other things that I can’t even remember happened in the past 12 months. It’s definitely been a great ride and looking ahead I’m pretty sure I won’t have to worry about being bored in the next 12 months…

(P.S. On some level this post is a hyper-condensed version of something like A look back at 2007 which I had originally planned to write around this New Year’s. Quite obviously I relaxed a bit too much during the Christmas holidays to actually get the post written.)

Off we go...

Good bye United States. Next stop: Europe!

Last day in Washington, DC

I've had an excellent last day here in Washington, DC and really couldn't be happier. After some research and 15 minutes spent in the queue of Lufthansa's call-center I managed to change my flight back to tomorrow. I'll be leaving in the late afternoon on a flight to Paris CDG where I'll switch over into a plane to Vienna which is about as far away from home as Munich. So overall I'll be home a couple of hours later than originally planned but that's still significantly better than getting home on Sunday afternoon.

Anyway, apart from figuring out these details the day was certainly well spent. It started off with visiting the Afghanistan - Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. This turned out to be an excellent decision as it was a great exhibition which I'd definitely recommend anyone going to while in DC! Some of the pieces on show were simply stunning, the whole thing was very well set up and informative and with the entrance fee being $0 it's hard to beat it in terms of value.

I proceeded to pay my former neighbors a brief visit and even though I only saw two of them it was good to say our good-byes in person, something which hadn't quite worked out in June. It was also good to have one more chance to walk the well known route from the Metro station to what used to be home for 3 months.

Afterwards I went to see my former colleagues at the embassy and even though I had initially feared it was going to be awkward to get back there after a month it was a great experience. To some degree it was also the final closure for me as my first departure in June was totally crazy due to the large amount of work I had to deal with in the last couple of days. Leaving the office and then being on-the-road the next morning didn't really allow me to process my experiences.

I realized just how happy I am to have had this month in-between finishing the internship and flying home. Not only for the obvious reasons of having the chance to catch up with old friends, hang out with new friends and generally travel to cool places. Also because this gave me some time to reflect about my experiences in the past few months. This process is obviously still going on it but I certainly wouldn't be as far if I had gone home at the beginning of July. I would probably be too busy with a million other things and wouldn't allow for the necessary mental bandwidth to deal with this process.

After two hours of catching up with many people at the embassy and realizing just how well I had gotten to know some of them over the course of my internship we went out for some beers. Unfortunately we initially made the mistake of heading to the German Embassy's Happy Hour which was just as boring and cumbersome to get to as back in June. However afterwards we still went to one of our favourite bars close to Dupont Circle and so the evening turned out pretty great!

Now I'm off to pack my stuff and then grab a couple of hours of sleep as I still have a somewhat busy day ahead of me and also want to get up early in my efforts to counter jet lag.

Damn, flight no longer confirmed...

I knew it. The German trade union (ver.di) strike at Lufthansa is starting to mess with my flight back across the pond. Since 8:30 a.m. this morning my flight is no longer listed as a confirmed, unaffected flight. As I'm writing this I'm on-hold at Lufthansa's call-center which is "experiencing more calls than normal" as the introductory message says, what a surprise! Let's see what happens... :-/

Update: Looks like I have an extra day here in DC as the only available flight outta here leaves on Saturday evening and goes to Munich via Brussels. Definitely not the kind of option that makes me all to happy but for the moment being it seems to be my best shot. Will call back in the afternoon to ask for an update.

iPhone sales

1/3 of all iPhones were sold in New York.
1/3 in San Francisco.
1/3 elsewhere.

And Research in Motion owns the phone market in Washington, DC because literally everyone here (or at least everyone riding the Metro) has a BlackBerry.

These are the results of my extensive research into the topic over the past few weeks. Don't believe anything else, it's all lies lies lies.

The last evening on the road...

I just realized that this is the last evening which I'm spending "on the road". By this time tomorrow I'll be on a plane en-route from San Francisco to Boston via New York. And a week from today I'll already be half way across the Atlantic in my flight from Washington, DC to Munich.

The reason why I'm calling this the last evening on the the road is that the next few days will pretty much follow my regular routine of working (Boston) and partying / socializing (DC). No more sleeping on couches or in sub-standard hostels. No more walking x km a day while exploring a previously unknown city. No more shallow conversations with random room-mates in backpacker-hostel dorms. The next 7 days will take place in well-known environments with people I know.

Not that I'm complaining, I'm really looking forward next week, I'm definitely going to have a blast and it will be great to be able to spend some quality time with people which I'll probably not see for many months or years afterwards.

However it's still always weird when these travel-episodes come to an end. Somehow it's quite easy to get used to this feeling of always being on the road, with a new city, new people and a different bed every day...

Decisions, decisions, decisions

Damn, sometimes life can be really tough. I'm currently staying at casa de H. about 100km from Toronto where we arrived on Wednesday evening. Tomorrow evening I'm flying to Vancouver to meet my friends Igor, John (both Handi Mobility) and Mike (from SilentPCReview) after not seeing them for what sometimes seems like eternity but really did go by in no-time. So that's the fun part, the difficult part is trying to decide what to do next.

My general itinerary calls for me to go to San Francisco, Boston, New York and back to DC from where I'll be flying home to Europe on August 1. However the question is how much time I want to spend in each of those places plus whether I should stop anywhere else on my way. Both Seattle and Portland are options, not necessarily because I originally wanted to visit those places but rather due to A.H. suggesting that they're actually quite nice cities (and going there by bus and taking a domestic flight to SFO would also be cheaper). Plus both of these cities have (or at least had back in Q1 / 2008) local OLPC user-groups which I would like to visit if they're still around. Anyway, everything is still up in the air so I still haven't booked any transportation out of Vancouver. I'm probably going to wait 48 hours until Tuesday noon to see what kind of feedback I get from the various people I've contacted and then decide what to do.

Ah, life really is full of hard decisions, right?

Scared of the ticking clock

I know, I talk about this a lot, but it is really really scary how time flies. I'm not even talking about those outstanding 5 days in Boston from where I just got home two hours ago. Rather it's the fact that I realized that I only have a bit more than 2 1/2 weeks left here in DC!

Anyway, off to get some badly needed sleep... Good night everyone!

Remembering... Taipei

After last night's post and keeping an eye on all the news coming from Computex today it's not really all that surprising that I had another 'Taipei moment' tonight. After an interesting discussion session about ICT in education that Wayan had organized, we went out for dinner and beers. The moment we got out of the building and saw that it had rained I had somewhat of a flashback to my Taipei experiences in 2006 and 2007. The rain, the wet streets, the yellow lights in terms of the atmosphere combined with the fact that I was talking ICT over beers with a bunch of outstanding people from different parts of the world certainly reminded me of all the good times in past years. On top of that I didn't get too much sleep last night and had quite an intense and productive day and so it's not hard to connect the dots. Plus the weather in DC these days is remarkably similar to Taipei as it's hot and humid here and there's no escape from it, especially when the A/C in your office isn't working.

The generally interesting thing here of course being that I had spent quite a lot of time these past 48 hours reminiscing about Computex and Taipei. But it's one thing to think about something and a totally different story to actually be back there, to literally relive these moments long gone. I've often thought about these sort of moments and for some reason they're often connected to out-of-the-ordinary experiences such as Computex or travelling. I'm starting to believe that there are certain situations that the mind simply can't fully comprehend at the time, often due to sheer exhausting, sleep deprivation and mental overflow (been there, done that), which come back at later times to be thoroughly processed. Reliving those moments is probably part of this process. And actually I really don't mind it, quite the opposite, I cherish the chance to mentally be back in situations and places long gone.

So cheers to good memories and here's to many great experiences in the future! ...and could you please bring me another Sam Adams?! ;-)

Listening to Heavens - Patent Pending and In Flames - Come Clarity while I write these lines sitting in the metro on the way home...

3 quotes from 3 people

"Beer without vodka is money for the wind."
- a Russian proverb, according to my Russian neighbour

"Homosexuals caused Hurricane Katrina."
- a quote from an online forum linked to a Christian group

"Close but no cigar."
- something my neighbour's grandfather used to say (meaning of the phrase)

Can you tell that I had a good Wednesday night?

Serj Tankian - 05/15/2008 - '9:30 Club' Washington, DC

As mentioned in my brief entry about the Apocalyptica concert I decided to go to the Serj Tankian (of System of a Down fame) concert when I found out that he was coming to town. Needless to say it was a great show!

I had spent a lot of time listening to his first record called "Elect the Dead" on his MySpace site where you can enjoy the complete album without any restrictions. The concert started with "Empty Walls" which I embedd here for your convenience (and because I want to look at the video again).


It was followed by the rest of his songs, obviously with only having one record out at the moment there weren't too many surprises. However it was definitely a very lifely concert, with a highly motivated audience that had a serious mosh pit going in front of the stage. Also with Serj Tankian being the crazy f*** that he is there's no chance of boredom. He catered to the crowd with some experimental music sessions which at times reminded me of minimal electro. While he also played the guitar a couple of times it's actually at the piano where he really shines. Plus of course there's his voice which when amplified by the 9:30 Club's great PA system makes for a very memorable experience in itself.

All in all another great concert to be remembered for a long time.


Unfortunately the outlook now is relatively grim as they're no good shows coming up in the forseeable future. Pearl Jam will be in town in mid-June but at $69 per ticket I'm not sure I want to go... Anyway, let's see what happens.

What I call a Sunday night...

Uncle Ben's Country Inn: Broccoli Rice au Gratin, a glass of water, Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo 1435W laptop with lots of post-its: for documentation writing, a bottle of "Turn Me Red" Austrian Red Wine, a glass of wine: for keeping my sanity, OLPC XO laptop: for testing my Python code (from left to right)

An interview with Whozat? co-founder Alex Bäcker

As most of you know my internship here in Washington, DC is at the Office of Science & Technology at the Embassy of Austria. One of the things that kept me busy in the past 3 weeks was the crunch-period for bridges (I shall never forget the italics!), the OST's quarterly online-publication on science and technology. Having quite a thing for technology-related writing (see EPIACENTER.com, OLPCnews.com and SilentPCReview.com, and entries tagged with 'technology' here on the blog) I had a great time getting the job done. Even though at times my to-do lists were insanely long and I did quite a lot of overtime in the week before bridges was published.

I was also lucky to be able to do an interview with Alex Bäcker who is the co-founder of Whozat?. Whozat? is an interesting people search engine which uses real-time semantics to determine the meaning of words. My favourite part from the interview is the following excerpt:

"bridges: What are the biggest challenges that you’ve had to face while developing Whozat?

Alex Bäcker: When you’re starting something new with existing competition that has millions, as in the case of Spock, and billions, as in the case of Google, people are initially skeptical that a small start-up working out of a garage can actually do something that these companies haven’t done already. However the beauty is that you can actually prove that it works, which is very encouraging."

All in all the preparation, research and writing of this article was a lot of fun. On top of that I also learned a lot about the process behind a professional grade article. While I do have some experience when it comes online publishing over the past few years the environments where I worked were very different. It basically boils down to writing by geeks, for geeks. There simply aren't too many publications where an extensive 11-page review of the AMD GeodeLX DB800 Mini-ITX motherboard would fetch 50.000 hits. Plus normally I served as researcher, author, and editor with some input from my colleagues.

This time 'round I had to answer to an editor-in-chief. Plus my article was sent to a professional native copy-editor before we published it. It's safe to say that these two elements significantly improved the quality of the final work that I posted. Especially in terms of thinking about which audience I'm addressing, punctuation details and the overall style the input I got was invaluable. Who would have known that the 'w' in Web site is writen with a capital letter? At least according to the AP Stylebook which I'm definitely going to order before I leave the United States.

To cut a long story short: A great and very valuable experience! Already looking forward to the bridges vol. 18 where I started with some initial research this week.

The last time that I experienced that much rain...

...was during Computex 2007. I don't quite remember which day it was but I was pouring down to earth as though all of heaven's gates had opened at once. In fact the rain falling on the roof was so insanely loud that it even drowned out all the excessive noise (a.k.a. music) and booth announcements that were going on in Hall 2 at the time.

Same thing happened tonight, on the way from the cab, that dropped me off at the street corner, to the front door I got completely soaked!

Anyway, only 6 more hours before the alarm clock goes off (for the last time this week, yeah!) so I better turn off this machine and get to bed.

Apocalyptica - 05/07/2008 - '9:30 Club' Washington, DC

As mentioned earlier today I spontaneously decided to go to the Apocalyptica concert which took place in the '9:30 Club' where I had also seen the Saul Williams concert a month ago. This was the third time that I saw Apocalyptica in concert - I had previously watched them in Vienna's Gasometer and afterwards at the Nova Rock Festival 2006. I really liked the show in Gasometer but was less thrilled by the performance at the festival. To me Apocalyptica doesn't really work at an enormous festival stage, especially not if performed at 6 p.m. or something. Rather the band should be in relatively small and private venues. Venues like the '9:30 Club'.

I really couldn't think of a better location as both the atmosphere and the sound were just perfect. The first song or so the drums seemed to be significantly louder than the cellos but adjustments were quickly made because afterwards the sound was really good.

In terms of the music itself it seemed to be significantly more experimental and crazy than what I remember hearing at Nova Rock 2006. In general I also like their latest album Worlds Collide from which they played a couple of songs. It's definitely an interesting experience to hear these songs, many of which come with vocals on the CD, in only acoustic versions. All in all they certainly performed a good mixture of old and new material, no complaints there!

The concert ended with Nothing Else Matters, still one of my all-time favourite songs, no matter whether it's played by Metallica or Apocalyptica.


Next stop: Serj Tankian (a must-see website) from System of a Down fame at 05/15/2008 in the '9:30 Club'.

Another great day!

My readers must be thinking that I'm constantly stoned or something with all my shiny-happy-Christoph postings these past few days... :-D

However I'm simply having another great day around here. A productive day at work with interesting assignments which will keep me busy for the next couple of weeks. Plus I decided to take off two days in early June so I can head up to Boston for 4 days to attend some interesting meetups at OLPC HQ. On top of that I spontaneously decided to go to an Apocalyptica concert tonight as another embassy employee had some spare tickets. Having previously thought about going to the show (but totally forgotten about the fact that it's on tonight) and with the tickets coming in at $15 it really wasn't a hard decision.

Plus I'm writing these lines sitting in the sun at Dupont Circle before I meet up with some embassy colleagues for beer and dinner.

And the outlook for tomorrow isn't to shabby either as my schedule tells me that the Austrian Happy Hour is on again and the venue just looks outstanding!

This is why I love where I live...

So picture this: I came home at around 9 p.m. after a long and productive day at work and a nice but too short coffee meetup with a friend of mine. Two of my neighbors (one from the United States, one from Russia) were sitting on the porch behind the house and less than a minute after I sat down the question of whether anyone was up for a drink arose. Needless to say everyone was thirsty so for the next 3 hours we enjoyed a great mixture of homemade fruit juice and cheap vodka (thanks B.). All while talking about life, goals in life, sacrifices we make in our lives, discussing the differences between the educational systems in Europe, the USA and Russia before having a heated argument about statistics, their meaning and interpretations. Needless to say a good night was had by all!

And now while I'm walking down to the kitchen to grab some water, one of my new housemates - a guy from France who moved in last week but who I only met yesterday evening as I really hadn't been home before - looks at my AFS (the organization with which I went to Peru in 2000-2001) t-shirt and asks me whether I've participated in one of their programs. As it turns out he spent a year in New Jersey from 1998 to 1999.

It's evenings like this that show why I love where I live... :-)

Bloggin' on the bus...

I'm currently sitting on the bus from Washington, DC to New York and thanks to the bus offering free wifi I can surf the web, check my e-mails and blog. How cool is that? :-)

P.S. Yeah, I can see Manhatten already!