[IAEP] (engineering) capacity building

[David Van Assche]

One thing that comes to mind here is to guerilla market in irc
channels... usually these are already full of developers and its just
a matter of looking at the projects around, going to their respective
channels, and let them briefly know wht sugar is and ask if they have
time to spend on any other projects... still a long shot, but much
more direct...

David

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Tomeu Vizoso<tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



-- 

Milton Berle  - "If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." -
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/milton_berle.html