[IAEP] Soas backstory and summary was Re: [Sugar-devel] Fwd: [Marketing] Press release flurry planning (LinuxTag - FOSSED - NECC - GUADEC)

[David Farning]

I just thought I would take a minute to fill in the Sugar on a Stick
back story and summarize the thread. That way we can let it ferment a
bit before we get back to it at the next marketing meeting.

Last August Brian Jordan and I made the original Sugar on a USB memory
stick at the XO-Sugar Book Sprint.  If I remember correctly we made it
so that Yama would have a usable Sugar Platform for a translations
sprint he was holding in Bolivia in the coming weeks.

Why Ubuntu?  We were just trying to get something to work.  At the
time, Ubuntu had the most complete developer documentation for their
live cd tool.  (Never underestimate the power of good documentation
for getting someone over the first hump.:)  The Ubuntu live cd tool
developer was also available and willing to help via irc. (Never
underestimate the power of easy access to knowledgeable developers for
getting someone over the first hump:)

The USB key idea sat and fermented until Caroline Meeks picked it up
in November at a conference at which Walter spoke.  Her company,
Solution Grove, was working on a similar product called School Key[1].
 She combined School Key, Sugar, and the proof of concept USB Key and
started working on SoaS.

Caroline continued to drive SoaS's growth.  Development shifted to
Fedora because, at the time, the Fedora packages were the most stable,
the Fedora community was the most helpful at working on bugs, and
several key contributors were Fedora users. (Never underestimate the
power of a helpful community in getting a project started:)