[Marketing] press release opportunity...

[Walter Bender]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 5:36 AM, Sean DALY<sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip] but this is a tricky one...

That's why we pay you the big bucks :)

> the "magic" if I may say so is to find an "angle" that is
> newsworthy... that will bubble to the top choices a journalist or
> blogger will choose to write about. Unfortunately, "we need help" or
> "we are succeeding an ambitious technical challenge", etc. are not
> newsworthy in and of themselves. So we need to find a link, a "hook"
> to generate newsworthiness. My instinct is to springboard from Sugar
> on a Stick which has already captured the imagination of many writers
> and bloggers.
>
> Marketing, advertising, even recruitment springs first from emotional
> response, then reasoned analysis. If you listen to Red Hat's CEO in
> the BBC link I sent two days ago you will hear him try to motivate
> potential recruits in terms of social responsibility and making the
> world a better place. I think all of us are deeply motivated by the
> desire to educate children.

I didn't share with you the discussion with mtd, but I am convinced
that part of the angle should include the connection between the
culture of FOSS and what is missing in the culture of traditional
education: a meritocracy which espoused sharing and critiquing.

> Perhaps, Slashdot-style, we can announce a technical challenge with a
> deadline (cf. JFK man on the moon). For example: "Sugar on a Stick is
> a liveUSB system and is based on liveCD solutions which impose certain
> limitations on writable media; one of the consequences is a higher
> failure rate for USB sticks than optical media. We want Sugar on a
> Stick to be absolutely reliable for children and their teachers; who
> can help us design and implement an improved liveUSB architecture by
> May 2010, to prepare Sugar on a Stick for wide deployment by the
> beginning of the school year?"

This moon shot could have legs.

> This is only an idea, but the brainstorming aspect of it - we want to
> do something which has never been done before - could raise awareness
> among sharp geeks who could bring their experience to the project. It
> would position ourselves as being at the leading edge of innovation,
> bringing high tech on a $5 stick to kids. We could imagine a "contest"
> with the only prize being the implementation of the best idea; but a
> wiki page where we invite geeks to propose their best take on the
> subject could build traffic amongst prequalified developers.
>
> This is a double-edged sword, because there are some pundits who love
> to diss Sugar and OLPC by implying that Python is a silly choice, or
> OLPC "failed" by doing X and not doing Y or Z. But we could maybe
> minimize mindless trashing by asking the community for the best ideas.
>
> This might work best as a blog post not a press release... although if
> we raise the bar of the challenge high enough, some tech writers might
> want to write about it if it is a press release too.

I think a press release, if we can find the right angle, will reach more people.

>
> We absolutely have to improve the Getting Involved page as part of our
> recruitment too, I had had some suggestions a couple of months back
> but no time for me to find those today :-(
>
> I will think about this some more, feedback appreciated thanks
>
> Sean
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 4:01 AM, Walter Bender<walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I will spare you the discussion details, but an idea that emerged from
>> IRC would be PR around our technical challenges in order to recruit
>> more interest. We could get Tomeu, et al. to draft some descriptive
>> text and you could work your magic???
>>
>> -walter
>>
>



-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org