[IAEP] Goal for .86

[David Farning]

.84 is out the door and looks good!  The distributions are set to pick
it up, package it, and deliver it into the hands of users around the
world.

The last twelve months centered around building a stable foundation.

The infrastructure team assembled a scalable system of machines to
support the growing needs of Sugar.... and the people to keep the
system going

The development team has settled into a nice steady release cycle.

The activities team brought aslo online.  They are migrating  packages
to the service.  They are engaging people to develop and maintain
activities for Sugar.

You might say, "Yes, but where is the education and learning in all of
this."  I have to admit, that it has been rather absent.  Building a
community to develop and support a learning community is a bit like
building a house.  First, you need a foundation, then walls, finally
the roof goes on.

The foundation is our infrastructure and development team.  Everything
else rests on their work.

The walls are our activities team.  They reach out of the foundation
to hold up the roof.

Finally, the roof is our education and deployment teams.  After all,
the point of a house is to provide a roof over your head.  The point
of Sugar Labs is to get a great learning platform into the hands of
kids around the world.

Building our foundation required meeting two challenges:

1. Designing a foundation that would work well for what we envision
the walls and roof to require.

2. Encouraging people to invest their time talents and money in
building a foundation with only the hope that someday walls and a roof
would sit on it.

Going forward, we need to focus on engaging additional people to help
build our walls; the activities and content.

Building the walls will require meeting three challenges:
1. Continuing to provide feedback to the foundation builders to help
them improve their work.

2.  Engaging new developers to work the walls with the belief that
within a few months we will focus on the roof.

3.  Communicating the current and future value of the project without
over promising on its ability to keep out the rain:)

david