[IAEP] Where Do We Fit?

[David Farning]

One thing to remember is that a large portion of the Gates Foundation
assets are in the form of Microsoft stock.  As a result, the
foundation will have a strong bias towards supporting Microsoft as a
company.

The two biggest ideas for Sugar Labs that I got from reading the
foundation inform were:
1.  Education improvement is not a monopoly.  If we start to think
that Sugar or Sugar Labs is the _only_ means of improving education,
we have some serious soul-searching to do.  Education improvement is a
long term proposition involving many interested parties.

2.  We don't want to compete with MS.   We have taken some heat for it
but, one of the design goals for Sugar Labs is make it trivial to
reproduce Sugar Labs.  If anyone feels that Sugar Labs is headed in
the wrong direction, on in danger, they can grab what ever content,
source code and organizational structure they find useful and fork
Sugar Labs in a couple of hours.

Where do we fit in the scheme of things to make a difference?
Fighting for something is inspiring, fight against something is
tiring.  We continue to improve Sugar as a technically, pedagogically,
and practically sound learning platform.  We continue to extend our
outreach to educators and deployments.  We continue to build Sugar
Labs as a sustainable organization that will be around to improve and
support Sugar over the long term.

How do we measure our efforts?  At this point the primary measurement
I look at is the quality and size of our ecosystem. Are we attracting
talented developers who are making usefull contributions.  Are we
attracting distributions who are willing to take on the responsibility
of standing behind Sugar distributions.  Are we attracting high
quality deployment support organizations?  Are we attracting high
quality content development organizations to create learning
materials.  Are we attracting academics to Study Sugar and its
effectiveness.  Finally, and most importantly, are teachers and school
districts embracing and using the Sugar learning platform.

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 1:25 PM,  <doxsoup at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Recommended reading .... to help us put into context what has already been
> done and what is planned for the next year or so.
>
> Where do we fit in the scheme of things to make a difference?  And how are
> we to measure our efforts?
>
> *****
> From the New York Times, January 25, 2009
>
> Op-ed by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
> Bill Gates's Next Big Thing
> A peek into a letter Bill Gates will publish on Monday. He's not only going
> to do more for health and development in the poorest nations and education
> in America, he is calling for your help, too.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/opinion/25kristof.html?ref=opinion
>
> ******
>
> From Dennis Wong doxsoup at aol.com
> ________________________________
> A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps!
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