I’m spending a few weeks in La Rioja, Argentina, again helping with a One Laptop per Child deployment.

The La Rioja project is interesting for a number of reasons; firstly, it’s the first large-scale XO deployment in Argentina. Secondly, the scale itself is quite remarkable: each and every one of the 60,000 primary school children in the entire province will receive a laptop. Thirdly, it marks the worldwide debut of the XO-1.5 laptop, the brand new hardware offering from OLPC.

I’ve been working exclusively with the technical and logistics team and it’s really impressive to see the work they’ve already completed. They already prepared an inventory system, selected teams for flashing, infrastructure, software customization, server rollout, and technical support. They produced manuals based on a handful of XOs they had available, and studied the OLPC/XO/Sugar documentation religiously. It’s great to see the project in good hands.

The first laptops have already arrived, and I’ll be posting updates in the next few weeks.