[IAEP] Communicating project goals and Roadmap

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 16:37, Sean DALY<sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> OK Tomeu
>
> To be clear, I'm making a distinction between marketing (in the
> spreading the word to regular people sense, not in the FOSS community
> building sense) and deploying. I fully agree we need to nurture a
> large and wide downstream FOSS community.

I'm a bit confused, how does this affect the guy who works on Sugar
and releases source tarballs every 6 months?

Thanks,

Tomeu

> So there's no narrowing of who deploys it, but a prioritization of how
> we can get the word out to the most teachers and parents.
>
> I hope to see Sugar included in distros, but I hope even more they
> make an effort to get it out to classrooms. To me, such an effort
> would merit our marketing support. I actually think distros could be
> much more out in front in the education sector, and Sugar could help
> distros leap ahead in K-6, an opportunity they should seize. Look at
> the Dell education netbook: Ubuntu went to the trouble of being the
> standard OS on it (Windows on option), but they missed the boat on
> making Sugar a central part of their K-6 offer. I'd like to work on
> that with them. Dell claims 500 school districts have already ordered
> the netbooks; rather than write them off, I'd like those buyers to
> know that they could run Sugar off an SD-Card for each Learner, a
> nominal expense to obtain the best learning environment for smaller
> children.
>
> Distros are not good at "vertical marketing", something Apple for
> example excels in and which Microsoft has copied these past few years
> (look at their medical industry push). There are historical and
> traditional reasons for that, but the situation is that distros are
> ill-prepared to make a difference in education without helpers. We can
> be a helper, in fact we are uniquely qualified to help in K-6. Perhaps
> a different way to look at it is to enumerate the places where there
> have been major GNU/Linux projects in K-6 education and concentrate on
> those?
>
> Any model where we can help OEMs sell netbooks is a model that can
> broaden distros' tiny marketshare. That's no betrayal of our education
> mission, because we don't exclude running Sugar on an old PC with a $5
> USB stick, or on a Mac, or even on Windows with virtualization - Sugar
> can arrive in front of a Learner by many technical means.
>
> If breaking out of marginal marketshare is interesting to distros, we
> can help them do that together. It requires marketing work on their
> part though, the technical work is a necessary prerequisite but is
> insufficient.
>
> Sean
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 4:01 PM, Tomeu Vizoso<tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 15:39, Sean DALY<sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Now is a good time to work on this, as the SoaS launch is behind us.
>>>
>>> My understanding is that Sugar Learning Platform releases such as
>>> v0.84, v0.86, v0.88 are of interest to our downstream partners and
>>> projects... distros naturally, but in particular the OLPC XO-1.5 and
>>> the Sugar on a Stick Fedora-based distribution + tools.
>>>
>>> The XO-1.5 is of interest to everyone involved in OLPC projects but
>>> particularly Learners, who certainly have things to tell us about the
>>> Sugar they have if they could.
>>>
>>> Sugar on a Stick is of interest to everyone in K-6 education:
>>> teachers, school management and buyers, parents of kids in school.
>>>
>>> At this time, the distros do not have the reach or potential impact of
>>> these two projects. I feel therefore our marketing priority should be
>>> on these two projects, and especially Sugar on a Stick, here's why.
>>>
>>> The enormous OLPC installed base is the source of our credibility and
>>> adding potentially hundreds of thousands more Learners through SoaS
>>> makes us news, in particular SoaS running on other large installed
>>> bases such as Intel Classmates and old PCs.
>>>
>>> From a marketing perspective, dialogue and coordination with our
>>> partners and projects is community liaison and is best served through
>>> direct contact, information sharing and negotiation. Should any
>>> distros become motivated to market Sugar to educators (as opposed to
>>> just adding it to their distro), we could of course be very helpful.
>>>
>>> But our two biggest ongoing projects, the XO-1.5 refresh and SoaS,
>>> require separate and I believe higher priority marketing strategies.
>>>
>>> 1. The XO-1.5 refresh.
>>>
>>> OLPC has probably not given a lot of thought to XO-1.5 marketing,
>>> although I feel they certainly should, for several good reasons:
>>> * silencing naysayers who talk about the "failure" of the OLPC project
>>> * making clear what the XO-2 strategy and timetable is (in the absence
>>> of this info there will be confusion and speculation)
>>> * sharing OLPC Stories, showing the worldwide impact of OLPC, and not
>>> only in midsize and small developing countries
>>> * explaining unambiguously what the dual default Gnome-Sugar desktop
>>> is, how it works, and what the advantages are
>>> * communicating that a newer improved version of Sugar will be on it
>>> * publishing some deployment numbers so serious journalists will know
>>> what's what
>>> * giving some indication as to what the Windows on XO status is.
>>>
>>> They will probably not want to say that the Windows pilots have not
>>> resulted in contracts. However, it's entirely possible that the
>>> updated hardware will allow XP or even Windows 7 to run, which could
>>> still lead to contracts, so I feel it's not something for Sugar Labs
>>> to crow about beyond stating the obvious, that buyers prefer Sugar.
>>> Journalists, analysts and pundits will want to know what's up with
>>> Microsoft though and OLPC will need to address that to avoid
>>> confusion.
>>>
>>> For us, the refresh is an opportunity to say that OLPC has made a vote
>>> of confidence by choosing the latest version of Sugar (or "a later"
>>> version, if the refresh arrives after Sept.18th), for the benefit of
>>> hundreds of thousands of Learners to come. The dual desktop is no big
>>> deal since we are positioning ourselves as best-in-class K-6 and it's
>>> natural that older Learners will want to explore free software and
>>> tools beyond Sugar. (By the way, many Intel Classmate projects boot by
>>> default into a locked-down kids' desktop such as EasyBits Magic
>>> Desktop, allowing access to Windows only through a password exiting
>>> tthe desktop.)
>>>
>>> It's my wish to work with OLPC on the refresh message, it's their
>>> golden opportunity to reverse the negative associations amongst
>>> journalists and in the blogosphere and pave the way for the XO-2. The
>>> availability of SoaS means interested observers can have the core
>>> experience of the XO-1.5 on any other machine.
>>>
>>>
>>> 2. Sugar on a Stick.
>>>
>>> I would venture that the importance of this "distro" far outweighs all
>>> the others, because no one else is marketing Sugar to educators like
>>> we are and SoaS is our project - in its current incarnation it depends
>>> on Sugar upstream and Fedora upstream, a solid partner since Fedora is
>>> an active project with known release dates. Could there be an
>>> alternate SoaS non-Fedora distribution? I feel the answer is yes and
>>> we could certify the name for another, but only if the quality and
>>> ease of use (including stick loader) could match or surpass the
>>> Fedora-based one. The underlying distro should not be visible anyway,
>>> inasmuch as it is in a support role and the distros can't bring any
>>> brand value to teachers and educators at this time.
>>>
>>> Sugar on a Stick is a game changer, disrupting the status quo in
>>> bypassing the stranglehold of preinstalled systems (98% of which are
>>> not distros). Its very low cost and very high quality make it a
>>> compelling choice for classrooms. The possibility of relieving kids of
>>> lugging computers around, yet keeping their environment with them, is
>>> an incredible advantage. The next few months are our opportunity to
>>> prepare SoaS for classroom deployments and to find the missing pieces
>>> of the puzzle such as school server, documentation, hardware
>>> compatibility notes including Macs, Local Labs to help with
>>> implementation while school system integrators get up to speed.
>>>
>>> Our biggest marketing efforts should be on Sugar on a Stick, and in my
>>> view the ideal release timing
>>> is three months before the new school year (June in the Northern
>>> Hemisphere), giving educators enough time to evaluate, plan, and test
>>> its deployment. However, the actual timing is not as critical as
>>> making sure we can maximize marketing impact; ideally, creating buzz
>>> during or prior to NECC in the USA for example, or another key
>>> educators conference.
>>>
>>> SoaS v1 Strawberry F11/v0.84 could very well be SoaS v1.1 Strawberry
>>> F12/v0.86 by the way, if the Learner experience is close enough. In
>>> other words, the numbering/naming should be based on the end-user
>>> experience, and not what techno goes into it. Our wide coverage was a
>>> direct result of positioning SoaS as our first major standalone
>>> release, replacing the complicated numbering system with a simple one
>>> instantly understandable to everyone; it may well make more sense to
>>> plan the v2 "another flavor" for a year from now and not sooner. In
>>> the meantime, we can build the brand value of Sugar on a Stick by
>>> building its ecosystem, learning from the GPA pilot, building the
>>> Activity and ebook offers, and of course repeating our
>>> differentiators.
>>>
>>> An OEM deal targeted to education could change this strategy, but at
>>> this time I feel this is the best way forward.
>>
>> I think this is a very good plan for the downstream part of SLs, but
>> unfortunately plays very bad with my work as an upstream developer. It
>> makes a lot of sense for you to focus on some ways to deploy Sugar and
>> thus on one (or two?) distros, but Sugar as an upstream project needs
>> to nurture an as big as possible downstream community.
>>
>> Or could you make a case on how I as an upstream developer would win
>> anything by narrowing the people that can use my stuff?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Tomeu
>>
>>> thanks
>>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:41 PM, Simon Schampijer<simon at schampijer.de> wrote:
>>>> On 07/02/2009 12:27 PM, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 18:18, David Farning<dfarning at sugarlabs.org>  wrote:
>>>>>> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 7:14 AM, Tomeu Vizoso<tomeu at sugarlabs.org>  wrote:
>>>>>>> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 00:40, David Farning<dfarning at sugarlabs.org>  wrote:
>>>>>>>> This thread is an attempt to help clean up a couple of issues that
>>>>>>>> have been cropping up over the past couple of months.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> There have been a couple of instances of suboptimal communication
>>>>>>>> between different parts of the project.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Several times recently, external organizations have been looking for a
>>>>>>>> big picture view of what is happening at Sugar Labs.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The .84 release was pretty easy to coordinate.  The development team
>>>>>>>> picked a release date about six months after .82.  The developers
>>>>>>>> followed the time line pretty well.  Simon did a fantastic just with
>>>>>>>> just a stick and a handful of carrots as release manager getting
>>>>>>>> getting the release shipped on time.  The only two external
>>>>>>>> organizations we worked with closely were Fedora and OLPC.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> With the midterm release of Strawberry, we have seen the importance of
>>>>>>>> improving communication with more internal groups and external
>>>>>>>> organizations.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Internally, we have seen the importance of synchronizing development,
>>>>>>>> marketing, and the project as a whole's time lines and goals.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Externally, we have seen a significant increase in external
>>>>>>>> organization participation.  Several university have express
>>>>>>>> interested in working with SL.  Several distributions are becoming
>>>>>>>> more involved. Several new pilots and deployments are participating in
>>>>>>>> Sugar development rather than just consuming Sugar.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> A first step will be to start working on project and team level road
>>>>>>>> maps which assign dates and champions to significant events.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Sugar Labs and each team already have  roadmap pages listed.  Over the
>>>>>>>> next couple of weeks, I would like to work with the development, SoaS,
>>>>>>>> marketing, infrastructure teams to create roadmaps and goals.  (This
>>>>>>>> is not to exclude any other teams participation.)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Then using iteration and project level goals we can start linking the
>>>>>>>> roadmaps together.
>>>>>>> Sounds great!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Tomeu
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> There is now a very rough draft/outline at
>>>>>> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Roadmap .
>>>>>
>>>>> First of all, you mention several times a "release" but don't specify
>>>>> what gets released. Also, is the Sugar Learning Platform the upstream
>>>>> project? What about SoaS? Also, what is "Unified SoaS"?
>>>>>
>>>>> "Release dates up to and including .86 have been determined by the
>>>>> development team. Starting with .88, the release schedule will be
>>>>> determined by the Sugar Labs oversight board."
>>>>
>>>> Is this picking a date for the release or deciding what goes into a
>>>> release?
>>>>
>>>> For the date - we have picked it to align to our downstream projects -
>>>> the linux distributions. So far this worked quite well. So the current
>>>> dates are not picked arbitrary.
>>>>
>>>> Features: Depending on the Fedora policy I hacked up this one for
>>>> features: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Policy
>>>>
>>>> To reduce overhead, like an engineering steering commitee I took out the
>>>> Fesco part. I think for the near future we are fine with such a 'simple'
>>>> policy.
>>>>
>>>>> I didn't knew that the oversight board was supposed to take such
>>>>> day-to-day decisions. In any case, I hope that the date that the SLOBs
>>>>> decide for the Sugar Learning Platform is the same as the development
>>>>> team decides, because otherwise we are going to have a big conflict
>>>>> here.
>>>>
>>>> +1
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>    Simon
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>>
>>>
>>
>