that bloke would be me :-)
I am Alan Bell, together with my partner in crime Alan Lord we formed 
The Open Learning Centre 
http://www.theopenlearningcentre.com We are 
providing consultation and services around Free and Open Source software 
to allow businesses to take advantage of all the great Free software out 
there. We are both big believers in the power of community developed 
software and other projects to transform all areas of business, 
education and society, when the OLPC give one get one programme was 
announced I set my alarm and ordered on the first day they were 
available. My XO laptop is currently somewhere between USPS and 
Parcelforce, I am not quite sure what kind of plane takes 3 weeks to 
cross the Atlantic, but it certainly should be here by April.
I was hoping to demo my OLPC at the BETT educational show which is 
happening this week from Wednesday 9th to Saturday 11th at Olympia. 
Looks like it won't be here in time for that, but I have managed to get 
in touch with a UK based contact from OLPC and he is going to lend us a 
couple of laptops for the show.
If you want to see some of the little green laptops before the April 
meeting, hopefully in a mesh and doing cool stuff, then you are most 
welcome to come along to BETT and find us at the Open Forum Europe stand 
SW105. We would really like to have as many Open Source enthusiasts as 
possible attend the show and wander about chatting to people about why 
Free software is good for Schools.
Alan.
Vic wrote:
>> I have received an email from John Denhams office with a provisional
>> booking of Friday 18th of April at 2 o'clock. He is offering to come to us
>> but that is not obviously not practical and so we should go to him at his
>> office in Southampton Street.
>>     
>
> This might be of interest: I've made contact with a bloke who has an OLPC.
> He'd be happy to come along with it...
>
> Vic.
>
>
>