[Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2012-04-30

[Walter Bender]

== Sugar Digest ==

1. Simon Schampijer and the Sugar Development Team have announced the
preliminary release of Sugar 0.96. This development release is a major
milestone as it is the first Sugar release to incorporate the Gtk+ 3
toolkit and introspection, better aligning us with the GNOME
development community and enhancing our long-term positioning
vis-a-vis growth, stability, maintenance, and relevance.

There are some rough edges, as would be expected from such a major
effort. Please report bugs!

New features include a port of the Browse activity to webkit.

There are OLPC builds [1] available for testing and Sugar 0.96 in the
Fedora 17 beta [2].

This extraordinary effort began at the Prague workshop [3] organized
by Daniel Drake. It was sustained by Simon, Gonzalo, and Manuq, with
help from Benjamin, Tomeu, Gary, Raul, Marco, Bert, Martin, Chris, et
al. Congratulations and thank you.

2. Block that metaphor: I am in transit to Korea; my first visit in
more than six years. The occasion for this trip is a lecture at the
opening of iLab, a new "Media Lab" at Pohang University of Science and
Technology. So I am wearing my "former director of the MIT Media Lab"
hat rather than my "founder of Sugar Labs" hat. Not that I won't try
to inject a little Sugar into my keynote speech.

It was in Korea, 10 years ago, that I "revealed" the ''Seven secrets
of the Media Lab.'' [4], based on the symbols of the seven days of the
week in the Chinese calendar: sun, moon, fire, water, wood, gold, and
earth. Today, I am recalling four lessons learned -- both at MIT and
at Sugar Labs -- based on the cardinal directions: the azimuth of the
southern sky* can be used to align goals -- without common goals, we
drift apart; the setting sun can be used to align expectations --
mismatched expectations can lead to disappointment regardless of the
quality of the work; the rising sun is the source of new light (and
new ideas) -- a reminder to invest in community; and the steady
northern light is a message to leadership to provide a safe place for
taking risks. Many of these lessons were reinforced by my experiences
at OLPC and Sugar Labs.

* Note that since Korea is in the northern hemisphere, the sun peaks
in the south.

3. I get a lot of coding done on airplanes. What I have been
experimenting with lately are: (1) some work related to the Gtk-3 port
-- lots of little tweaks; (2) some enhancements regarding touch -- in
Turtle Art, Abacus, and Dimensions (AKA Visual Match); and (3)
different approaches to help -- specifically, I've revamped the
introductory animation in Dimensions [5]. Please try the latter and
let me know if you find it useful.

=== In the community ===

4. Details for eduJAM! [6] the week of May 7-12 in Montevideo are
available. eduJAM will be followed by a [[EduJAM/CodeSprint|code
sprint]] on the 13th and 14th.

5. The week following eduJAM! will be a Squeakfest, also in Montevideo
(May 17-19) and May 21-22 in Buenos Aires.

=== Sugar Labs ===

Gary Martin has generated SOMs from the past few weeks of discussion
on the IAEP mailing list:

2012 Apr 21st-27th [7] 20 emails)
2012 Apr 14th-20th [8] (15 emails)
2012 Apr 7th-13th [9] (13 emails)
2012 Mar 31st-Apr 6th [10] (14 emails)

Visit our planet [11] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments.

-walter

[1] http://build.laptop.org/12.1.0/os8/
[2] http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-prerelease
[3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Marketing_Team/Events/Gtk3_Hackfest_2011
[4] http://www.media.mit.edu/publications/bttj/ForwardPages5-6.pdf
[5] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4246
[6] http://ceibaljam.org/?q=edujam2012 eduJAM!
[7] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:2012-April-21-27-som.jpg
[8] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:2012-April-14-20-som.jpg
[9] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:2012-Apr-7-13-som.jpg
[10] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:2012-Mar-31-Apr-6-som.jpg
[11] http://plant.sugarlabs.org


-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org