[IAEP] [Marketing] Sugar Labs at SCaLE 17x post-conference summary

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hi All... some SCaLE 17X Musings from GrannieB

Alex and Adam have done a great job recapping our adventures at SCaLE 17X. It was the ninth time we have had a booth there and, hopefully will not be the last. At my age, organizing something like this each year gets more difficult so I am pleased that Alex has agreed to pick up the baton and carry it forward next year. If all goes well, I hope to be there again too, but as a volunteer, not the organizer.

This year was a lot of fun for me as I got to see many people who had visited our booth in past years who were still very interested and impressed with the new things that are going on with Sugar Labs. Our visitors included some people who had been involved with a small XO deployment we had at a junior high in South Central Los Angeles and from another with Spanish language XOs in East LA.

Curt Thompson, his wife Chi, and their 2 adorable daughters also stopped by. Curt and Chi had been very active with the Unleashed Kids deployment in Haiti BK (before kids), but for now they have their hands full with a lively 3 year-old and her tiny 2 month old sister.

We ran out of business cards Saturday afternoon, but we kept one last one, and several people took home digital copies... photos they took of it on their cell phones. I notice Alex forgot to attach the copy he has of the card so I'll send the one I have on my phone.

The best moment of the conference for me came on the first day when I helped a little boy do some things on an XO. He didn't really need much help and was obviously enjoying every minute. When they had to leave the father handed him a sticker to give to me... it was a pretty thing with a heart on it and the words: "Today I helped someone with Autism."

When we got home, I found a nice surprise waiting for me... my very own copy of Guzmań Trinidad's new book "Física Con XO." Reading through it gives me some ideas for next year... some hands on science experiments visitors can try would be a lot of fun. There are a lot of technical problems that would have to be solved, but in solving them we would be opening doors for the use of Sugar/Sugarizer in science classes everywhere. It is something to think about.

Caryl

P.S. The file was too big with the picture of the card. I'll try to send it separately.







________________________________
From: IAEP <iaep-bounces at lists.sugarlabs.org> on behalf of Adam Holt <holt at laptop.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2019 11:20 AM
To: Sugar Labs Marketing
Cc: iaep; event-planning at lists.sugarlabs.org; SLOBs
Subject: Re: [IAEP] [Marketing] Sugar Labs at SCaLE 17x post-conference summary

Alex, Caryl & All did an amazing job pulling this together.

It really is a new era when many people came by who were born after OLPC's mass production era, had never heard of OLPC at all (or perhaps completely forgot about it a dozen years later...)

While we could not be there the entire 4 days, Fri-Sat-Sun each generated a ton of very thoughtful interest in Sugar, Internet-in-a-Box and many difficult democratized/global learning questions in general — more so than in prior years interestingly!

Perhaps the world is a "smaller place" than when OLPC/Sugar began in the 2000s, now approaching its 3rd decade (2020-2030) with a more grounded sense of impactful idealism than when it all began.....


On Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 1:52 PM Alex Perez <aperez at alexperez.com<mailto:aperez at alexperez.com>> wrote:
We had a successful presence at the Southern California Linux Expo, and booth visitors chose to take several hundred business cards with Sugar Labs, Sugarizer, Sugar On a Stick, and Internet In A Box logos. In attendance were myself, my wife, Caryl Bigenho, her lovely husband, and Adam Holt, all of whom were stationed at the booth to interact with and answer questions from the attendees.

Estimated attendee count for SCaLE 17x<https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/blog/scale-17x> was around 3,000. Despite being crammed in the rear corner of the exhibit hall, we had a lot of foot traffic, and general interest. We gave away just under 500 sugarlabs.org-branded promotional items, which was a sugarlabs.org-branded LED light and whistle key chain item, as well as several hundred "business cards", which you can view below.

We had six OLPCs on display, including one XO-4, two XO-1.75's, and an XO-1.5, all of which could be interacted with by visitors, and had a lot of kids (I'd guess at least a hundred) stop by and play with the OLPCs. We briefly explained what Sugar was to adults and children alike, and encouraged them to try it out for themselves on the machines, as well as by download Sugar on a Stick.

We also had Sugarizer on demo on an iPad and Google Nexus 7 tablet, as well as a new $200 HP laptop running Sugar on a Stick, to demonstrate how easy it is to run Sugar on commodity hardware.

Please let me know if you have any questions.
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