[IAEP] Reviving the Deployment Team

[Edward Cherlin]

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 4:37 PM, David Farning<dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> The first step, from the implementation, side is going back to the
> basics; focusing on easy technical bugs and easy usability bug.  The
> goal is establishing respect and trust between the deployment team and
> the developer team.

This is good, all of it. We also need to consider creation of content,
not just software. Actually, we have to think about something in
between static content and Activities--something that can represent
lesson plans, projects, and the like, with the ability to draw on any
of Sugar. Models built in Turtle Art or Etoys connected with
observations; data sets with processes attached for data extraction,
analysis, visualization, and so on; interactive explorations of
various kinds; frameworks for guided discovery.

We are going to be making a lot of this up as we go along, so we need
ways to validate our work in the classroom and get feedback for
improvement.

> If we reflect on went well and what did not go so well last year.
> Not so well:
> We lost some of the passion because we focused on 'nut and bolts'
> rather than big ideas.
> We lost contact with students, teachers, and deployers by focusing on
> the platform.
> Well:
> Built core community which practices constructionism.  The release
> cycle is fundamentally a constructionism cycle. As a community, we
> come up with feature requests, technical shortcomings, and usability
> shortcomings.  Then, thorough collaboration on the mail lists we came
> up with testable solutions.  After a release, there is a period of
> reflection on how well those solutions worked.
>
> Established a strong culture of mentoring over telling, leading over
> managing,  _doing_ what we can do over _talking_ about what we should
> do.
>
> Established a culture of participation over producer/consumer.
>
> Looking forward:
> Use what worked well to make progress on the parts of the project
> which did not work so well.  High level-- try to create a deployment
> team which shares the overall mission, vision,  values, and culture of
> Sugar Labs.
>
> Concrete step to make this happen:
> 1.  If you are at a deployment please start sending bug reports about
> minor issues.
> 2.  If you are not at a deployment please act as a bridge between
> deployments and developers.
> 3.  Everyone can monitor Sur, ieap, and sugar-dev; whenever you see a
> issue come in please engage the reporter to help him or her turn the
> issue into a good bug report.
>
> Reporting minor issue might seem counter intuitive when looking at it
> from a bang-for-buck pov.  But, from a community pov minor issues are
> easy to report, easy to turn into bug reports, and often easy to fix.
> By starting small we can learn and gain confidence that the process we
> are creating work.  Once we have confidence in the process we turn
> 100% of our energies towards solving those hard problems.
>
> hope that helps
> david
>
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Edward Cherlin<echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 12:36 PM, Caroline Meeks<solutiongrove at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Let me know how I can help!
>>
>> Likewise.
>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> CAroline
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 2:47 PM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> It looks like we have enough sustainable contributors to revive the
>>>> Deployment team!
>>>>
>>>> The existing deployment team information is at
>>>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Deployment_Team .  I would like to begin
>>>> by slightly narrowing the deployment teams mission to:
>>>>
>>>> The mission of the Deployment Team is to enable Sugar deployments to
>>>> participate fully in the Sugar community by organizing forums for the
>>>> exchange of experience and needs between Sugar users and Sugar
>>>> developers.
>>>>
>>>> Once these tasks are well under way we can expand the mission as needed.
>>>>
>>>> Maria del Pilar Saenz of SugarLabs Colombia has offered to be the
>>>> initial co-ordinator for the team.  Maria is both close to deployments
>>>> and quite articulate and knowledgeable about our high-level goals.
>>>>
>>>> Over the next couple of weeks, I hope we can revisit the team's
>>>> roadmap, resources, and TODO list to start minimizing the
>>>> communication barriers between deployments and developers.
>>>>
>>>> In order, to get this started Tomeu has mentioned that he is willing
>>>> to shift his Sugar Labs time from working on new features to fixing
>>>> bugs.
>>>>
>>>> david
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Caroline Meeks
>>> Solution Grove
>>> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>>>
>>> 617-500-3488 - Office
>>> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
>> And Children are my nation.
>> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
>> http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)
>>
>



-- 
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin)