Hi Karsten, Thanks for the question! The major objective of our team is to assess how to increase awareness of Sugar Labs and Sugar. To that end, we first conducted qualitative interviews with developers, teachers, and other supporters of Sugar. We also did parallel secondary research of other technology providers in the education space, as well as open source organizations. The survey was developed as a result of our preliminary research to gauge the perceptions of those involved with Sugar. The goal is to quantify many of the questions and observations raised during the qualitative interviews, again with the goal of bolstering awareness of Sugar in the global community. If you have any other questions, please do let me know. To give a little more about my background, I formerly worked as a pollster, so I also have a background in survey design and methodology. Best, Julie (<a href="mailto:j2ulie@mit.edu">j2ulie@mit.edu</a>) <div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Karsten Wade <<a href="mailto:kwade@redhat.com">kwade@redhat.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im">On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 08:43:48PM -0500, Julie Lein wrote: > Dear Sugar Community, > > We are MBA candidates at MIT working with Sugar Labs to help generate > awareness for the organization as an independent, open-source educational > innovator for children. To do this, we would love your input! > > We will be sending out a brief survey to assess how Sugar and Sugar Labs are > perceived by those who know them best. We would be very grateful if you > would take a few moments of your time to share your perspectives with us. > We will use your input to generate strategic recommendations for how Sugar > Labs can increase its reach throughout the global community. </div>Hi folks, I started to take your survey and I had some curiosity as to how it came about. That is, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about the methodology behind the question set. Not being experienced at academics and surveys, I'm not sure what the considerations are from that direction about raising the curtain on the methodology behind a survey. I was just thinking about how we could apply the principles of the open source way, such as radical transparency[1], to this process. How much of this process *can* be opened and shared? Thanks - Karsten [1] From "The Open Source Way": <a href="http://bit.ly/TOSWOpenDiscussions" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/TOSWOpenDiscussions</a> -- name: Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener team: Red Hat Community Architecture uri: <a href="http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki" target="_blank">http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki</a> gpg: AD0E0C41 _______________________________________________ FourthGradeMath mailing list <a href="mailto:FourthGradeMath@lists.sugarlabs.org">FourthGradeMath@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/fourthgrademath" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/fourthgrademath</a> </blockquote></div> -- Julie Lein m: 415-613-5401