[IAEP] Topics & deliverables from Marketing IRC meeting 03-03-2009: Sugar 8.4 launch date set

[Sean DALY]

David, I'm going to assume you meant to cc the list, I apologize if
that's not the case.

I agree with both of your points. As I've said earlier my associations
with "sugar" and "children" are not positive. In fact, I believe it
will be easier to build an association between "Sugar Labs" and
"children". And, teacher buuy-in - and that includes teachers on a
digital learning curve - is essential.

Sean



On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 9:25 PM, David Ally <david_ally at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well.... all point noted, but remember the so called global poor kids don't
> even have access to chocolate, they're poor and hardly have access to things
> like that, those things (chocolate and co) are for up-town babies.
>
> But, since the point here is to separate sugar from the XO platform, and
> make it more platform agnostic, why not just emphasize that and leave every
> other issues alone.
> Now, i have not really tried sugar on stick up till now, but i have tried
> sugar Livecd on Ubuntu linux, and it loaded fine and i think it is cool with
> the various new learning and teaching paradigms it tries to encourage,
> they're quite encouraging. However, the emphasis is always on the learners,
> and in most cases we implied the pupils, but we've forgotten that if
> developing countries are among the target, then there's a miscalculation as
> to who the real laerner is, i think it is the so called teachers, and that
> is why we are proposing and pushing a capacity building effort in Africa
> that focuses on both the implied learners, and teacher learners. Don't
> forget, most of these teachers are not digital generation kids.
>
> We're glad for what all the open source community are doing and should
> invite active players at the launch of our projects soon. All efforts to get
> digital lifestyle into education is well appreciated.
>
> David
> ________________________________
> From: Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com>
> To: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org; Sugar Labs Marketing
> <marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org>; josh williams <josh at tucson-labs.com>; Jonas
> Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk>
> Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2009 8:48:39 PM
> Subject: Re: [IAEP] Topics & deliverables from Marketing IRC meeting
> 03-03-2009: Sugar 8.4 launch date set!
>
> Josh - reaching hundreds of thousands of teachers and parents is
> different from talking with half a dozen distributions (and OEMs too),
> and of course we need to do both - and we are. That said, I am
> convinced the more Sugar succeeds,the more distributions will be
> encouraged to include and promote it. They are aware of a key
> differentiator, that Sugar is free software and lives best on
> GNU/Linux.
>
> Jonas - what I want is to reach teachers and parents with the message
> that Sugar is a good choice for children. A key way to do that is to
> spread the news that Sugar works on other classroom-friendly hardware
> platforms. Teacher buy-in is essential for Sugar's success on non-OLPC
> platforms. Although some educators have likely heard of OLPC, it's
> likely very few have heard of Sugar Labs. Of those who have, like it
> or not, we are facing perception problems today: that OLPC/Sugar is
> floundering, that Sugar only works on the XO-1, that the restructuring
> has sounded the death knell for Sugar and active development is
> winding down, etc. Marketing is about perceptions and it's not stinky
> to combat false perceptions with a key fact, that Sugar runs on
> netbooks. perhaps it's a better idea to call out that Sugar runs well
> on older desktop PCs, which are more likely to be in the back of
> classrooms; it's a choice. I just think talking up netbooks better
> advances Sugar's image of modernity and innovation.
>
> We are hampered by a numbering system that implies work-in-progress
> status. However, we can use that to our advantage by stressing that
> Sugar on a Stick will be our big product 1.0 launch, and therefore not
> overselling it at this time. I'm sorry, but I don't see how obscure
> marketing will help us reach the goal of communicating that Sugar runs
> on lots of other machines now.
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> [sent again - to the marketing team too this time]
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 07, 2009 at 01:36:37AM +0100, Sean DALY wrote:
>>>Bert made a very astute observation: we need to be Googlable. Luke is
>>>quite right, Sugar by itself is ungooglable and Sugar "needs" Labs
>>>close by in this context.
>>
>> Searching just for the single word "sugar" in Google have Sugar Labs
>> rank 6th in my experience, and OLPC Sugar page ranks 4th.
>>
>>
>>>Jonas makes the excellent suggestion to baptise the version with a
>>>name. It's a good way to reduce the importance of the version number
>>>in communicating. I fear that unfortunately, honoring chocolate barons
>>>may not be the best path... the biggest names were part and parcel of
>>>the colonial era :-( and some names including Van Houten are
>>>registered trademarks which will be zealously protected so off-limits
>>>:-(
>>
>> Do you say that Chocolate companies have registering their trademarks not
>> only in the context of Chocolate but also in the context of computing?
>>
>> Even if so, we can then use first name (like Debian does): Coenraad.
>>
>> I see no problem in picking names of "evil" people - quite the contrary:
>> Colonialism is an integral part of the history of World society - and
>> here is an excuse to tell one of the stories about it.
>>
>> Coenraad did not "invent" chocolate, but industrialized it. Brought it
>> to the masses. Just like Sugar draws from inventions of others but have
>> real power in what is done on its own. With industrialism also is evil
>> powers - just as OLPC is challenged by "the dark side" of the computing.
>> And I am not only thinking financially here, but also the dilemma of
>> pursuing novel ideas of human interface design contra pleasing the
>> expectations of the masses by reusing classic concepts. With the
>> industrialization of chocolate, Coenraad also have a small part in the
>> destruction of the rain forests, in that naturally growing cocoa trees
>> might produce the richest flavoured beans but not the largest produce -
>> so they were systematically cut down and replaced with more effective
>> breeds of cocoa trees - to the extend that today most of the original
>> sorts of cocoa is distinct.
>>
>> By picking Coenraad we do not make him a saint. We acknowledge his
>> importance in the world of Sugar. Both the parallel world of that thing
>> to put in your mouth, and our world of bringing back balance in
>> knowledge among kids globally - a balance skewed by people like
>> Coenraad.
>>
>>
>>>I propose a different approach... a roadmap approach, meant to
>>>reinforce SoaS. Netbooks are the fastest growing category in the
>>>industry; they are the cheapest; there is already a wide number of
>>>them; after the XO, the Classmate etc. are the likeliest candidates for
>>>school deployments. Journalists are on the lookout for netbook-related
>>>stories; they know netbooks are Microsoft's weakest point. So maybe we
>>>should baptise 0.84 "Sugar Netbook Version".
>>
>> You want to ride on the tide of netbooks? Then emphasize in press texts
>> that Sugar was *born* in netbooks, several years before that word was
>> coined in the media. I don't think there is a single changelog entry
>> specifically targeted netbooks in the new release, so emphasizing it as
>> such stinks. And I fear journalists will smell that.
>>
>> Aren't we the educational guys? Shouldn't we then be more powerful and
>> base even our marketing on facts?
>>
>> One fact is that Sugar is unique in the computing industry in its
>> targeting kids globally - and especially poor ones (some of which is
>> suffering from the consequences of people and mindset like that of
>> Coenraad)!
>>
>>
>>   - Jonas
>>
>> - --
>> * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
>> * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
>>
>>   [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
>>
>> iEYEARECAAYFAkmyRN4ACgkQn7DbMsAkQLgB2QCfcim9ExeornXr2TM5WhCOwWNS
>> cUEAnjw20vC6KV0t+BqiqrJ8mu8An+7M
>> =eVy6
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
>