[Marketing] SoaS Strawberry release debrief - marketing

[Sean DALY]

I don't mind rescheduling the marketing meeting if that is helpful.
I'd like the two of you present to discuss debrief and next PR step.

We're fine for GCompris and Activities portal - we had decided to lump
them all in together in the Strawberry press release as mentions not
as featured releases. My chief concern is getting something out during
NECC. The Nexcopy site is up but needs work (bad logo etc), if it can
be bent into shape quickly I think we should go for a release
Wednesday the last day of NECC. I have added a number of NECC
attending contacts to our list. Alternatively, we could hold off,
although I'd be very pleased if at least some education bloggers
picked us up before July.

I'm not worried about getting too much coverage :-) we've been very
clear that classroom-ready is still in progress. But I completely
agree that content is the step which will raise our visibility; the
graf in the PR about the Activities was picked up in many articles -
the fact that SoaS has everything, OS/system/Activities/storage.

the idea of the flurry (well, 2 releases :-) is to encourage media
outlets/bloggers who passed us over at the first release to sit up and
notice with the second. Anyone who does a news search will see right
away that we are news.

thanks

Sean


On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Caroline
Meeks<caroline at solutiongrove.com> wrote:
> 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
>