[Marketing] SL at NECC 2010

[Mike Lee]

NECC was at the same time personally a challenge for me to prepare for, and
enchanting to experience first hand being in such a wonderful concentration
of tech-savvy teachers. We really need to have a big presence for Denver.
There's no better way to get seen by 18,000 tech teachers in one place.
Conversely, we spoke to hundreds of people, distributed hundreds of flyers
and LiveCDs, but have little idea of the impact.

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Mel Chua <mel at melchua.com> wrote:

> Kevin, Anurag, Mike, Luke, Jeff - (please forward to SL folks from NECC
> that I missed... also copying sugar-marketing for broader discussion)
>
> Was thinking recently about the kind of NECC presence Sugar Labs ought to
> have next year, and was wondering about your impressions of how things went
> this time around.
>
> * Being able to tell people about SoaS rocked. It seemed like most people
> still associate Sugar with "the stuff that runs (only) on XOs" - perhaps
> having only one XO at the booth next year, alongside a host of demo netbooks
> and laptops and maybe even a desktop running Sugar (and all collaborating)
> would make a compelling demo to the contrary. If Sebastian is in town
> (unlikely given geography, but... I can dream!), he should stop by to show
> off SoaS.


One thing that I was not consistently able to do was keep my collection of
netbooks out for display. I've accumulated various netbooks (in the same way
Sean has), but I completely agree with Mel that it would be more instructive
to have a mix of hardware--an old laptop and an old desktop machine
(mini-tower with 15" LCD, keyboard and mouse) with perhaps only one netbook
and the XO. I pretty much have all that laying around in my basement
already. Running Sugar on diverse hardware will help to drive home not only
cross-platform advantages, but the computer resuse angle.


> * SoaS press releases awesome! Wish we had more swag. Stickers, etc. would
> be rockin' - but I'd settle for a stack of SL business cards for someone to
> take (I should have thought of making a bunch of these). I wish Sean could
> have come, too.


A year from now, I think swag like stickers would be more effective when the
brand is better known. Most convention goers will habitually pick up
anything shiny or colorful to toss in their swag bag. When it's my own
money, it's hard for me not to see dollar bills being peeled off a roll for
three days straight.


>
> * We need to have an education person (off the top of my head: Caroline,
> Walter, and/or a deployment teacher) run a Sugar workshop next year and show
> folks how it can be actually used in a classroom. Pre-load Sugar on the
> thin-client lab image, have people play with it.


We were close. Jeff would have been our ticket as a real teacher using
Sugar. He and his crew gave a good talk though during the time they were
able to attend.


>
>
> * I don't know what big developments are likely to hit in the near future,
> but if the "use Activities online, in browsers!" thing works, then we have a
> *huge* winner to demo.
>
> If we come up with solid things to propose, then we can ask around for
> resources and funding to make it happen. What should we do? What did you
> think of our showing at this year's NECC?
>
> --A Somewhat Belated Mel
>

I wish for a more instructive poster next year with bullet points and photos
showing Sugar in use and some of the Activity interfaces. Something a
teacher could read in a minute while walking by. I'll try to work on that
soon. The Sugar Learning Platform poster meant nothing to most people.
Additionally, it would be really nice to have a projector going to do
non-stop 10-minute live demos of Sugar and Activities.

Collaboration is a killer feature of Sugar, and we were largely blocked from
demoing that because the wifi channels at the convention center were
saturated much of the time. My Verizon MiFi card wouldn't work for the same
reason. I will bring a hub/switch with hard wiring next year.

The Revolution Linux LTSP booting in the lab on 54 ASUS nettop computers was
amazing. Walter says there's no technical reason we can't do that with
Sugar, so if they are back next year, we should get on their server.

Lastly, I will know to make a pitch way before Denver to pay for our own
table in the open source area so that we can plan for a more versatile booth
setup with some assurance of enough table space. I'm sure we could hit up
the Scratch and Etoys teams next year for help in expanding the booth. I'd
also like not to wait a year before doing another education conference and
will be looking for opportunities in the DC area in the coming months to
keep practicing our elevator pitches and building the field demo kit.

Mike
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