[IAEP] Teacher in Uruguay enchanted to see his ideas integrated, into global Sugar update

[Greg Smith]

Hi Eben et al,

I'm going to break this in to three parts:

1 - In terms of aggregating and passing on key themes of user input, I'm
on it full time :-). Like Janus I have two faces and one of them points
towards the users and the other towards the engineers.

That said, its much more than a full time job. Its going to take a
community engineers and users learning to work together. Hopefully I
don't interfere and I can be disintermediated as more direct channels
open up. My vision of where we need to go is here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Gregorio

In terms of the 9.1 page, I'm asking that people put things which have
been aggregated. That is:
- collect the input and specific feature request
- uncover themes from multiple requests
- decide if something is well defined and describe what its for and why
(not so much how we will address it)
- ensure you have a good communication channel to the requester

That's what I think of as aggregating. Once that is done it and its
something you think should be built I encourage you to put it on the 9.1
page.

In terms of how better to collect and aggregate feedback in to a system
from which we can easily extract it, I'm open to suggestions. You said
"If our biggest problem is sifting through *too much* feedback, then
we're in good shape."

2 - Christoph, you asked for a press release showing "teacher asked for
this and we delivered". Luis gave you something a teacher needs we also
got the name of the relevant engineer. Can we close the loop, deliver
this and issue a press release?

This is what it takes to build trust and create a lasting relationship.
One request, understood and worked on by a few people and delivered.
Then ++. If you get requests and we ignore them or say "you don't want
that" that hinders future input and damages our relationship building
capacity.

3 - This is a related point which deserves its own thread. I will also
make related comments on the design meeting and clipboard threads. Just 
warming you up here.

We need copy and paste. My concern is that working on copy and paste
does not show us listening to the users. The only user complaint about
copy and paste or the clipboard is that it doesn't work reliably. For 
example, I started to discuss the work flow of copy and paste from one 
write instance to another with Julian from Birmingham yesterday and he 
stopped me. He said, first you should make what you have work. I asked 
if he would accept no new features for 6 months in return for much 
greater reliability and he replied "yes" without hesitation.

Aside from that, the priorities from users related to moving data are 
around how to upload content to the Internet, how to get it off the
internet and on to the XO for editing and how to move files from one XO
to another. The first three suggestions on the Uruguay forum
(http://www.mediagala.com/rap/foro/viewforum.php?f=12) are requests to
build a TamTam lesson plan, simplification of getting files off the
internet and better tools for posting content to the internet. Since
they are on build 656, some of those issues may be solved. Nonetheless
its necessary input which tells us what they are most interested in doing.

I want to make sure that all of our work is grounded in specific
requests and user goals. That has to come first before we design code or
GUIs. Part of my work is to explain what is most important to users so I
apologize for falling behind on making that clear. As usual, engineering
has gotten ahead of me. I did post a few ideas on the file moving area
here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/9.1.0#File_Management

We urgently need to listen to the input we have so far. Everything
we do must be tied to a high level goal and to specific input and users. 
That is my most fundamental request!

BTW I'm not trying to cast aspersions on your work. The 8.2 release has 
been getting great reviews with respect to the new GUI. Its by far the 
strongest new feature set in the release.

Thanks,

Greg S

PS sorry for the long e-mail. Not time to edit as we need to make a real 
release candidate for 8.2 ASAP!

Eben Eliason wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Greg Smith <gregsmitholpc at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Eben,
>>
>> There's already a lot of feedback. Start sifting :-) Please post
>> anything you aggregate and think we should work on to the 9.1 page:
>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/9.1.0
> 
> None of us have time to aggregate, if we even find out where we might
> pull info from. That's the point I'm getting at.  I want a way to make
> this info readily accessible to everyone, without devoting half of my
> week to scouring scattered sources.  That could be a full time job.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure that aggregating on the 9.1 page is a good
> solution. That's a good way for a lot of good feedback to get lost in
> 6 months.  I'd rather have a mailing list, or forum, or some other
> form of database from which we can reference individual responses on
> trac tickets, so that the feedback can live on as a reference in a
> place we won't lose it.  A mailing list sounds like the easiest
> solution, at least short term.
> 
> - Eben
>