[Marketing] SoaS Strawberry release debrief - marketing

[Sean DALY]

Actually, based on the half a dozen teachers (identifying themselves
as such) who came by the booth at LinuxTag - three of whom said they
came to LinuxTag specifically to talk to us (!) and who have little
technical expertise, in one case I booted Strawberry right on her
laptop to show her how to do it - they are really, really interested
in the idea of 1) recycling aged equipment sitting around or donated
by students' parents 2) allowing kids to take their sticks home and
show parents what they are doing in class.

One teacher said she works with learning-impaired children and felt
the simplicity and "gentleness" of the Sugar interface would be very
helpful.

The teachers were intrigued by the XO and the netbooks too and were
all disappointed that XOs are not readily available. By the way,
airport security was so intrigued by the little machines I almost
missed my flight out as they looked at each one ("Can I have one for
my kid?").

The BBC covered us from the angle that we can run in unexpected
places: old hardware, netbooks, Intel Classmates. True, that's a
technical analysis, but teachers know about older equipment gathering
dust.

My personal hunch is that one well-written article in a major
educator-targeted print publication will put us on the map overnight.
With the caveat that such publications are country-specific, far more
so than tech publications, so it may be more accurate to say that we
should look at targetting one flagship publication for each widely
spoken language in a shortlist: English, Spanish, French, German,
Portugese?

thanks

Sean



On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 5:09 PM, David Farning<dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 9:24 AM, Sean DALY<sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>> these are good reflections I'll write up an in-depth debrief when I get home.
>>
>> but a launch cannot be limited to the marketing team, everyone has to
>> pull together
>>
>> There are a number of things we tried for this release which
>> multiplied our impact and whch we can use again.
>>
>> we are shifting perceptions, but in tech where the naysyers are. We
>> are not reaching educators yet (at least not publicly, the press
>> release went to ed depts & ministries worldwide)
>
> I was thinking about this in terms of something you said about not
> doing a press release about SugarCamp Paris.
>
> I believe that you said something to the effect that no one care about
> what we are doing.  What they care about is what we are accomplishing.
>   You said it much eloquently, but that was the take way for me.
>
> It struck me that when viewed on a continuum,  the SoaS release is an
> big accomplishment to tech leaning people but just a statement of what
> we are doing to teachers.
>
> Sorry is this was obvious to everyone else.
>
> david
>
>> thanks
>>
>> Sean
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Caroline
>> Meeks<caroline at solutiongrove.com> wrote:
>>> Things to do differently next time.
>>>
>>> Make sure we have the Mac vdi ready to go and tested before we do PR.
>>>
>>> Would it help to send an advanced copy to OLPC? It seems likely they will be
>>> called for comment on any major press announcement.
>>>
>>> Are there lessons we should learn from the comments? I thought the
>>> discussions about boot helpers were actually good. People got confused and
>>> others told them about the boot-helper CD.
>>>
>>> Some people spend so much time connected to the internet that they can not
>>> imagine that everyone doesn't have 24-7 broadband.  We might want to bring
>>> that point out a bit more in the future. Explaining that kids in the inner
>>> city and rural areas do not have access to internet at home necessarily and
>>> that school internet access is often not sufficient to allow the entire
>>> school to use the internet intensely.
>>>
>>> I don't feel like we are turning out eyeballs into action as efficiently as
>>> we could.  Or to frame that more positively, we have succeed quite well with
>>> our mission of letting the world know Sugar Labs is alive and kicking and
>>> separate from OLPC.  Our next step is to use our PR to grow the Sugar
>>> ecosystem.  How do we need to adjust our message and follow up towards this
>>> new goal?
>>>
>>> I don't have the answers.  But one though is when we write the next Press
>>> Release lets ask ourselves the question, who do we want to take what action
>>> as a result of this press release.  Then lets try to follow the path they
>>> would need to take to get to that action, looking for road blocks.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 1:09 AM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hey all,
>>>>
>>>> Nice work on the SoaS Strawberry release.  Overall, it went very well.
>>>>
>>>> The message that Sugar Labs is more than OLPC was conveyed clearly.
>>>> By spreading the risk and cost of developments across several products
>>>> or projects, we can greatly diminish the risk to any individual
>>>> partner project.
>>>>
>>>> A couple of thoughts for the next release.
>>>>
>>>> 1.  Try to keep the marketing traffic to the marketing list.  This is
>>>> not that marketing traffic is not important or interesting.  Rather,
>>>> all of us have a limited amount of time.  We need to enable
>>>> participants to easily and readily chose what bits of the project that
>>>> have time to learn about and keep in their minds.
>>>>
>>>> 2.  Get on the develop team early about setting a road map so we can
>>>> keep the public messages clear and consistent.
>>>>
>>>> thanks and good work
>>>> david
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Marketing mailing list
>>>> Marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Caroline Meeks
>>> Solution Grove
>>> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>>>
>>> 617-500-3488 - Office
>>> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>
>