[IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Planning for the future (Samuel Greenfeld)

[Gonzalo Odiard]

Talking about good marketing, daniel g. siegel shared this today:

http://www.dgsiegel.net/news/2015_03_18-lego's_1981_ad_campaign

I think we should look at this creation moments in kids using Sugar,
and not limit that to programming only. There are a lot of creative,
wonderful,
and happy people who is not interested in programming.

Gonzalo

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 8:47 AM, Gonzalo Odiard <godiard at sugarlabs.org>
wrote:

> Thanks Sam. I never read that.
> Have good points.
>
> Gonzalo
>
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 8:21 AM, Sam P. <sam.parkinson3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I just found this interesting powerpoint from a few years ago.  Slide 25
>> is basically a summary of this discussion:
>> https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxtYXJrZXRsYWJzdWdhcnxneDo0Y2U3ODFjZDczMmU1Mjlh
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Sam
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 7:16 AM Gonzalo Odiard <godiard at sugarlabs.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Sameer, very good points,
>>> a few comments/questions below
>>>
>>> On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 5:53 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Interesting thread. I'll reply to Lionel's post, but my reply is more
>>>> of my own set of ideas and understanding.
>>>>
>>>> Putting on my business school researcher hat:
>>>>
>>>> 1) The eventual goal of this project should be to influence the
>>>> adoption of Sugar across the world. A person's attitude, combined with
>>>> subjective norms, forms his behavioral intention
>>>> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_reasoned_action). To
>>>> influence adoption, we have to address the attitudes of the potential
>>>> adopter, and the subjective norms. Should Sugar be a part of that
>>>> ecosystem (such as a school's curriculum) or apart from it?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Do we have a option? I don't say the school is the only channel to reach
>>> kids,
>>> but is the more massive channel without doubt.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> 2) Role of marketing:  Most of what I've seen thus far is focused on
>>>> the internal producer view of OLPC/Sugarlabs. This is natural, given
>>>> that that's the world view we are most familiar with. The role of
>>>> marketing is to take this internal view, and adapt its value to make
>>>> it attractive to the consumer. If this adaptation fails, we end up
>>>> with over-engineered products that the market rejects. This adaptation
>>>> is largely dependent on addressing the perceptions of the consumer.
>>>> This is one of the reasons why shiny products sell - we associate
>>>> shiny with expensive, be it chrome polished plastic or iPads. At this
>>>> point if you are saying to yourself "we don't care for marketing or
>>>> consumer" you are sorely mistaken.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> We need more marketing without doubt.
>>>
>>>
>>>> 3) Vision and Mission are important for the project: Vision is an
>>>> inspirational, directional, future state description. Mission is
>>>> largely how we get there. Both should be referenced on the basis of a
>>>> time frame. So, vision and mission for now + 5 years is a good target.
>>>> These might appear cheesy, but FOSS projects are usually non-strategic
>>>> by design, because we are all busy writing small bits and pieces,
>>>> hoping someone will stitch it all together eventually. We "scratch our
>>>> own itch" in a piecemeal fashion, by writing scripts for battery
>>>> stats, frame icons, Journal data and such. FOSS projects strive for
>>>> operational excellence. Then, we hope that all this gets weaved into a
>>>> fabric that can be used by someone (kids). The same applies to Apache,
>>>> Ubuntu, Drupal, Linux, etc. In all those cases, there is a foundation
>>>> or association or company that puts resources (time and money) and
>>>> provides strategic direction, because the project isn't designed to do
>>>> so by itself. Apache Software Foundation, Canonical, Drupal
>>>> Association, Linux Foundation play that important role (I am on the
>>>> Board of Directors of the Drupal Association, and some of this
>>>> thinking is from my observations there). Vision, Mission, Goals,
>>>> Objectives etc. should come from somewhere for Sugar/olpc. For a while
>>>> it came from OLPC, but right now, I don't see any of it in an
>>>> organizational manner.
>>>>
>>>> 4) In the free and open source world, the consumer is also sometimes
>>>> the producer. So, instead of treating the consumer as someone with
>>>> limited feedback (as may be the case with Windows or MacOSX) the
>>>> consumer can switch roles and become a producer (like Ignacio or
>>>> SamP). http://www.oecd.org/sti/inno/37450155.pdf This can lead to a
>>>> myopic view of the target population being only people like Ignacio or
>>>> SamP. Should all kids open the hood to peek into Sugar and become
>>>> developers like Ignacio and SamP? Can we get into schools where they
>>>> have locked down Windows machines with no admin rights?
>>>>
>>>> 5) Sugar is not a product. Sugar is a project, that keeps evolving as
>>>> time goes by. A product is when we take a snapshot and polish it with
>>>> QC, QA and package it for delivery. OLPC's build for the XO platform
>>>> is a product. Sugarizer is a product. Suagr is NOT a product. This is
>>>> just like Fedora is NOT a product. It's a project. RHEL is a product.
>>>> Or for that matter, take the Ubuntu phone. The phone delivered by BQ
>>>> is a product that took Ubuntu 14.09 and made it RTM (release to
>>>> manufacturer) and ran it through QC and QA and produced the phone with
>>>> the polished stack on it. Customers buy products, while developers
>>>> work with projects. It is imperative that we understand the difference
>>>> and treat the two as different.
>>>>
>>>> I'm pretty sure Rangan Srikhanta has a strategy for
>>>> OLPCAU/OneEducation. So does Rodrigo Arboleda for OLPC Inc. I think we
>>>> (Sugarlabs+lowercase olpc) need a strategy going forward to address
>>>> Vision, Mission, etc. We also need to operationally pick approaches
>>>> (such as Sugar Web) to build for multiple platforms. Android,
>>>> RaspberryPi, Ubuntu are prime targets. Low-hanging fruit. How do we
>>>> build for Android, but also reuse it for RaspberryPi and Ubuntu? On
>>>> Android, stuff should be in the Google Play Store. On Ubuntu, it
>>>> should be a simple install via apt-get or in their Software Center
>>>> (the current builds are horribly broken). On Rpi/Rpi2, build a
>>>> completely workable version for the 5 million units out there. Heck,
>>>> people should be able to buy a SD/microSD card on Amazon to run a full
>>>> Sugar desktop on the Rpi! Way back, I had a chat with Mike Lee, and I
>>>> even proposed a name for this - sweetie pi. Remember, marketing is
>>>> key, and branding a huge part of it. Speaking of branding,
>>>> Sugar/Sugarlabs has none. It is still a vestige of OLPC, which
>>>> continues to enjoy a high brand status around the world (good, bad,
>>>> it's all publicity).
>>>>
>>>> This may be a lot to digest, but unless we address of these issues,
>>>> this project will go nowhere fast.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Our final users need a product, not a project. While I love have kids as
>>> Ignacio and Sam joining the project, if we want reach million of kids,
>>> we need assume 99,99% of them will not join the project,
>>> and will be happy users. In the end we say Sugar is to learn,
>>> no to earn to use a computer.If olpc is not available
>>> to distribute that product we need find a way to do that.
>>> Maybe we need a SugarLabs Foundation.
>>> I agree 100% about the need of a strategy and update our vision and
>>> mission,
>>> and I have tried in different ways to move that for many months,
>>> but couldn't find a way to do that.
>>>
>>> Gonzalo
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Gonzalo Odiard
>
> SugarLabs - Software for children learning
>



-- 
Gonzalo Odiard

SugarLabs - Software for children learning
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