[Marketing] SoaS Strawberry release debrief - marketing

[Caroline Meeks]

Hi,

First the bad news. Walter and I will be at the Lilla Fredrick tomorrow at
11am and can't make the marketing meeting.

Things went amazingly well with the last press release.  I would have been
impressed if all 3 had resulted in this.

I am also getting worried that we aren't ready to make too big a splash
yet.  I think we should announce the nexcopy site and partnership for sure.
But I wonder if we should wait on GCompris + Activity portal.  I worry
teachers who use the backend will be disappointed.  Also I just wonder if we
want to dial it back a bit for a few months.

I also think we are coming close to a far more impressive content story.
EBooks are moving right along. Teachermate is very impressive set of
content.  Being able to write about all 3 together would be very solid.

I also think the Activity Portal is moving a great direction. People are
starting to make video's write down classroom ideas. We need to get these
into/linked to the Activity Portal in a nice way.  Being able to watch the
video embedded in the download page would be very cool.

The other side is of course everything always gets better and GCompris + AP
is already awesome!  But my gut is saying we should wait till its
overwhelmingly impressive or it will be a disappointment vs what they just
saw with Sugar Strawberry.

Just putting that out there to see whether it resonates with other people
I'm a long ways from sure.

+1 to working on getting into the education magazines in major langugages.
This seems like a longer term project of gettng a feature lenght article.
Might be something Caryl can help us with.

Thanks!
Caroline



On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 6:25 AM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> 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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