[Marketing] idea for funding /stories

[David Farning]

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 10:38 AM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Marten
>
> Our hope is that a local Sugar Lab can develop in every country...
> although one of us could send a CD this time, we would certainly need
> a lot of funding to handle the logistics of mailing to everyone who
> wants one. I agree that the Ubuntu model (ShipIt,
> https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ FAQ:
> http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/shipit-faq) is a great way to bypass
> bandwidth limitations, but that model requires very significant
> funding (not to mention lots of volunteers to stuff envelopes and
> manage order taking, tracking, shipments, customs forms, reporting,
> etc). You may recall that Mark Shuttleworth personally financed
> Canonical with millions of rand of his own money and placed US $10m in
> the Ubuntu Foundation in 2005.
>
> Most African countries, even the poorest ones, have IT firms and
> computer-equipped companies, if we can find people in those countries
> interested in assisting Sugar Labs we will have a more scalable model.
> Canonical is getting a handle on ShipIt costs (which are confidential)
> by sending boxes of CDs to Loco teams for local distribution, e.g.
> http://jonathancarter.co.za/2009/05/07/ubuntu-za-loco-discs-have-arrived/
>
> We would need to look long and hard at a decision to do a shipit-like
> organization, especially as an ongoing commitment. The speed of Sugar
> development means most CDs woud probably be swiftly obsolete. I do
> think however that a targeted mailing of branded CDs to journalists
> and education ministries/departments would be an excellent promotion
> tactic.

To reiterate Sean's point.  Shipit, loco teams, and ambassadors
already exist at the distribution level.  Long term, the most scalable
option will be to make Sugar compelling enough for them to promote and
distribute Sugar as an integral part for their distributions.

Once Sugar on the distros rock, we will be able to use disks from
them.  My guess is they will be willing donate disks to Sugar Labs or
sell them to us at cost.

In the meantime, it sounds like Marten is on to something good.

The most important lesson I learned from SugarCamp is that I am
focusing too much on where Sugar Labs should be in 5 years, rather
then where Sugar Labs is today.

david


> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 9:47 AM, Marten Vijn <info at martenvijn.nl> wrote:
>> >From private conservation:
>>
>> A man in africa wants to use Sugar,
>> due a slow uplink the download will cost
>> 8 hours.
>>
>> - gzipping the iso save 10 Mb only.
>>
>>
>> Maybe there is a funder interested to
>> burn cd and off them to delevoping contries.
>>
>> Like ubuntu does.
>>
>> kind regards,
>> Marten
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Marten Vijn
>> linux 2.0.18 OpenBSD 3.6 FreeBSD 4.6
>> http://martenvijn.nl
>> http://opencommunitycamp.org
>> http://wifisoft.org
>>
>>
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