[IAEP] Getting the message out - take2

[Bernie Innocenti]

[cc += iaep@]

Here's a revised version integrating some feedback from marketing@:

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Does the world know that Sugar Labs is still 100% committed to support
Sugar?

We got nearly zero press coverage lately, and the only message that
everybody got is that OLPC ditched the development of Sugar, and the
general mood is pretty negative.

Perhaps we should be much louder in telling people about a few facts
that would sound surprising outside our small circle and even within it:

 - Sugar's development infrastructure is now mostly independent of
   OLPC, thanks to many generous partners (Ivan, OSL, Free Software
   Foundation, prgmr.com, MIT Media Lab, Solution Groove, Collabora
   and Develer);

 - For about 3 months now, Sugar Labs has already been taking
   care of Sugar development with almost no support from OLPC;

 - Sugar has not lost any of its full-time core developers as a
   consequence of OLPC's layoffs.

 - All of the core team will stay around as unpaid volunteers
   while we're looking for new ways to finance their full-time
   contribution;

 - Today, development of Sugar and activities relies upon 20 active
   contributors (we actually have 30 user accounts on sunjammer,
   but some of them don't count as contributors of any kind);

 - Over the past few months, we have grown our community with new
   contributors, new partners and new distributors;

 - The rate of development seems to be increasing steadily as we
   consolidate our new community driven development model
   (we can obtain some support evidence from git);

 - Through the SFC, Sugar Labs is receiving some very generous
   support (although we're not yet able to credit individual
   donors);

 - While we do not plan to hire a development team within Sugar Labs,
   we're working to get some of our full-time volunteer contributors
   sponsored by external organizations;

 - Red Hat and Solutions Groove are contributing with engineering
   resources and covering traveling expenses for some of our members;

 - The development cycle is proceeding steadily and 0.84 will be
   released as planned in March;

 - We've been working to establish Local Labs, grassroots
   organizations which, in our mind, will fill up the gap left by
   OLPC in deployments;

It's starting to become clear that 0.84 is where we'll prove our
credibility as a self-sufficient, community-driven project.

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To the best of my knowledge, all the above corresponds to reality.

Can anyone spot any factual mistake I should correct, or things
we'd better avoid saying?  Am I being exaggeratedly positive
anywhere?

Anyone who has contacts with local or international press agencies is
invited to help us deliver this message effectively.

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://www.sugarlabs.org/