[IAEP] (engineering) capacity building

[Tomeu Vizoso]

Hi all,

has been suggested that maybe we should code less and instead invest
more time mentoring newcomers.

Though this is something very sensible to suggest and a good
recommendation in most occasions, I'm afraid is not what Sugar Labs
needs now. I say this after more than two years welcoming developers
that were attracted by the OLPC mission but that never had contact
with FOSS development before: has resulted in a few very big successes
but far less than expected.

My suggestions are:

== Send our message to channels that reach "already activated" people ==

By "already activated" meaning people who are already FOSS
contributors or volunteers in grassroots organizations. If we grow our
community of these people, we may reach a position where we can
fruitfully introduce random people and help them contribute
successfully.

Right now we are getting ourselves known in the general public (kudos
to Sean), but this is a very inefficient way of increasing our
contributors base. Nor the message is appropriate for FOSS developers
nor we use channels that specifically reach them.

Concrete actions: publish articles in the Ubuntu, Fedora, GNOME,
Mandriva, etc "planets" and in specialized outlets like LWN, GNOME
Journal, Ars Technica, etc. making very clear our non-profit nature,
governance model, educational impact, relationships to other FOSS
projects, etc.

== Understand better how current contributors got to contribute ==

We have this knowledge in some of our heads, but aren't putting it in
common nor profiting from it. How did you got to know about Sugar? Why
did you establish contact with the Sugar community? Which was your
first contribution? Why did you kept contributing? What are your
suggestions for improving? Etc.

Concrete action: publish interviews to existing members with similar
questions and debate how we can improve the volunteering experience.

Regards,

Tomeu