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What future for OLPC?

• Darren Waters
• 1 Jan 08, 20:35 GMT

Mary Lou Jepsen, the chief technology officer of the One Laptop Per Child program has stepped down to pursue commercial interests.

Jepsen's key role was to develop the laptop's power-efficient display and to ensure the computer was able to withstand the rigours of being used in difficult environments.

Her departure, coming at the end of the Give One Get One (G1G1) scheme which sold the laptop commercially to users in the US, will be seen by many observers as another piece of bad news for a project which has proved difficult to get off the ground.

Few at OLPC would argue that the scheme has yet to turn the idea of one laptop per child into actual laptops in the hands of millions of children.

Thousands of children now have access to the laptops but the success has been modest when compared to the original vision.

OLPC says the Give One Get One scheme has been a success and has seeded the launch of programs in Haiti, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mongolia, and Afghanistan.

I've not seen any actual hard data for G1G1 sales - but they would make for interesting reading.

So does Jepsen's departure signal another setback for OLPC?

Clearly the design work for the current revision of the laptop has finished - so perhaps Jepsen's role had become somewhat diminished. But it does raise question marks about the long-term design evolution of the laptop.

The next 12 months will be crucial for the long-term success of the project. Nicholas Negroponte needs to turn interest in the scheme into hard sales, if his grand vision is to be realised.

He is due to speak at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in the next week - and we'll be speaking with him and asking him about the future of the project, and the significance of Jepsen's departure.

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