Throughout the last couple of weeks, we’ve had some great and positive feedback on our book project – next to a whole bunch of contributions/submissions, of course. And by the way, we is Bas van Kaam and myself. We spoke about supporting a charity case before, and when multiple others suggested something similar we decided to just go for it. Here’s what we have in mind…

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

What we are currently doing

The digital version of our book will be 100% free of charge. The paperback version will cost a few Euro’s, Dollars, or whatever currency you are used to. That’s only because books are not printed for free, which makes sense. There’s manual labor involved, paper, carton, ink, and so on. However, because we design and create everything ourselves and make use of the self-publishing printing services from Amazon’s KDP, costs will be low. Or at least as low as possible. Unfortunately, we don’t exactly know what the final list price will be. Various factors play a role in this. The type of paper, measurements of the book, number of pages, the type of ink used (colored or black and white), and a few more variables. When we have the manuscript ready and back from proofreading/editing we will know how many pages we will end up with. Based on this information we are able to calculate the exact and final product pricing.

How we (or should I say, you) will contribute

The idea is to put another 1,5 or 2 Dollars/Euro’s on top of the final list-price, which we will donate to the below-mentioned cause. It goes without saying that we will personally donate a (certain) amount as well. Hopefully, many of you are interested in ordering a physical copy as well, next to the free digital version, that is. The information shared in the book will be valuable to everyone working with Cloud solutions/services or is thinking about doing so. Try to think of it like this, you’ll own a cool collector’s item, perhaps one with your own name in it, learn about Cloud in general, and donate to a good charity! All at the same time.

By the way, it’s not too late to contribute! Go here for some more information on the project if you have no idea what I’m talking about, or go here to file your personal submission.

Byte-Sized Cloud Survey

If you don’t feel like writing something, at least give our short (and fun) 5-minute survey a chance. You’ll find it here. Thank you very much.

One laptop per child

Preferably, we wanted to donate to a cause that has a close connection to what we do, day in, day out. Well, we think we succeeded. The main goal of the ‘One Laptop Per Child’ foundation, or OLPC, in short, is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child.

Their mission statement:

“To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.”

If you would like to know more, have a look here, or go to their website at www.laptop.org/en/

We are very excited about this, hopefully, so are all of you!

That’s it for now, keep the submissions coming and fill in our short survey. It’s already a big hit, let’s make it a major one!

We are closing submissions for our Byte-Sized book at the end of March, so be quick!

Christiaan and Bas