[Marketing] IRC transcript of Tuesday's (October 27) Sugar Labs Marketing Meeting

[Sean DALY]

#sugar-meeting

<sdziallas> there he is ;)
* sdziallas waves to SeanDaly
* SeanDaly waves to sdziallas
<walterbender> hi sean
|<-- aa has left freenode (Remote closed the connection)
<walterbender> SeanDaly: I am going to disappear in about 10 minutes :(
<walterbender> anything I can help with sooner than later?
<SeanDaly> hi walterbender
<SeanDaly> well as you can tell from my proposed agenda, I am very
interested in the eBook phenomenon
<SeanDaly> I've been studying the situation
<SeanDaly> so my marketing instinct tells me we can surf a wave, but
<SeanDaly> I'd like strategy input from you and the others
<SeanDaly> like, is good idea to position Sugar as reading + groups +
annotation?
<SeanDaly> or is reading just one function among many
-->| sdziallas_ has joined #sugar-meeting
<SeanDaly> I guess my issue is, should reading having pride of place
<walterbender> I think the key is a focus on children's books and
children writing books to share
<walterbender> "writing to read"
* sdziallas_ get disconnected, sorry.
|<-- sdziallas has left freenode (Nick collision from services.)
=-= sdziallas_ is now known as sdziallas
<SeanDaly> "writing to read" very interesting... it's a differentiator
compared to those dedicated eBook reader gadgets
<SeanDaly> passive versus active
<walterbender> SeanDaly: but also, maybe we can do a renewed push with
the Digital Childrens Library folks at U. Maryland
<walterbender> I am sure that they'd be up for a joint release of some sort
<SeanDaly> I was looking at their site today
-->| sdziallas_ (n=sebastia at p5B044A38.dip.t-dialin.net) has joined
#sugar-meeting
<walterbender> SeanDaly: I can introduce you to them if you would like
<SeanDaly> that's childrenslibrary.org, right?
|<-- sdziallas has left freenode (Nick collision from services.)
=-= sdziallas_ is now known as sdziallas
* sdziallas got disconnected, again :/
<SeanDaly> they did a press release last December when they got
funding to digitize or index some European children's books
collections
<SeanDaly> yes intro please
<SeanDaly> tomeu and I think could be very interesting to put focus on
supporting minority languages
<walterbender> childrenslibrary.org is the correct URL
<walterbender> SeanDaly: OK. I'll send an eintro
<SeanDaly> minority meaning non-English
<SeanDaly> for example I'm excited about the Internet Archive
Bookserver project, but not clear if non-English?
<SeanDaly> Another issue I need help with: possible/reasonable to
bundle eBooks with Sugar on a Stick Blueberry release
<SeanDaly> would be great if some content in there, offline
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: I'd say definitely reasonable.
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: possible is... what I need to find out (probably
today, if I get to it)
<SeanDaly> but would be best if content in several or even many languages
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: well, this might end up being a bit confusing,
having something like thirty entries in the journal by default, no?
<walterbender> SeanDaly: we could ask the various deployments if they
can each contribute something
<SeanDaly> not necessarily a huge number of eBooks, but enough in each
language to get parents/teachers started
<SeanDaly> walterbender: yes great idea
<walterbender> but that same role could be filled by ICDL
<walterbender> (for younger kids)
<walterbender> SeanDaly: I send an email introducing you to TIm Brown at ICDL
<SeanDaly> perhaps sufficient to preload a number of books from ICDL
collection and do joint PR?
<SeanDaly> Sugar's many languages a real plus
<SeanDaly> did you see how Win7 you have to buy the ultimate most
expensive version to get more than one language
<satellit> a separate dvd with books on it to release with blueberry ?
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: maybe not in Journal; maybe pointers by
language, then each book read enters Journal
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: if that's realisable, yes, it would be great (+1) :)
<walterbender> maybe a Browse startup screen with links to books in
different languages...
<sdziallas> walterbender: oh, maybe something like olpc's library?
<SeanDaly> satellit: if separate, probably best to direct to the
children's library site?
<satellit> k
<SeanDaly> walterbender: a browse startup screen could be cool, could
have some "getting started with eBooks" info in different languages
* unmadindu plans on releasing a newer Get Books with support for USB
sticks, etc (pop in a preformatted USB Stick, and it will be indexed
by Get Books, through which you can add books to your journal) (just
in case it is relevant)
<walterbender> SeanDaly: I guess the question is, for the short term,
will most SoaS users have the internet?
<walterbender> unmadindu: great
<sdziallas> unmadindu: yeah, cool!
<SeanDaly> walterbender: possibly... but would be great if standalone
for at least a few books in each language
<walterbender> SeanDaly: I agree
<SeanDaly> unmadindu: sounds great
<JT4sugar> Could we have bundles of books as downloads on ASLO-grouped
by language and age appropriate levels-15-20 book bundles surley
enough to start
<SeanDaly> walterbender: or scenario where books could be obtained
online by a grownup and added to Sugar on a STick
<SeanDaly> through USB key
<SeanDaly> another question if I may
<walterbender> SeanDaly: we have mechanisms for both
<walterbender> OK. then I need to split :(
<SeanDaly> walterbender: if clear how-to, that will work
<SeanDaly> Q: how best to present Sugar's text-to-speech? Rread Etexts?
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: I guess read text would be our best guess there, yes.
<unmadindu> also the speak activity (?)
* sdziallas nods...
<SeanDaly> for v3 release I would like to do like Iris' project:
recordings of readings
<SeanDaly> anecdote about Speak: my five-year-old who can't spell yet
loves to type in random words & speak says it
<SeanDaly> then he got his brother to teach him "kaka" and "peepee"
* sdziallas grins
-->| sdziallas_ has joined #sugar-meeting
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: wondering when best Blueberry release date for
you would be?
* sdziallas_ grumbles loudly about his ISP
|<-- sdziallas has left freenode (Nick collision from services.)
<sdziallas_> SeanDaly: actually, I wanted to talk to you about that...
<SeanDaly> early December? later?
<SeanDaly> no rush for me...
<SeanDaly> in fact I would like to prepare this launch more than others
<sdziallas_> SeanDaly: it really depends. we *might* be able to make Nov 20.
=-= sdziallas_ is now known as sdziallas
<SeanDaly> PR in many languages for example
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: ah, okay :)
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: actually I prefer not to rush
<walterbender> SeanDaly: I am off for an hour or so, but note that Tim
at ICDL has already gotten back to us :)
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yeah, that makes sense to me. let's try not to
screw this ;)
<SeanDaly> would be great to anchor on France Educatice show, but we
can find another event or something
<SeanDaly> For example, OLPC France will be present at Netbook World
Paris on Dec. 8th
<SeanDaly> Walter did keynote there last year
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: oh, that sounds interesting!
* sdziallas looks for a link
<SeanDaly> we might be able to negotiate a presentation, we could
launch Blueberry that day
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: that would be great (actually, might be a good
possibility to get some companies around there interested in a
cooperating)
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: precisely; I would like to present Sugar as a
"game-changer" for netbook industry folk
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: on a side-note, I'll be travelling from Dec 4 on
- will be in Toronto for FUDCon.
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: great - hope not too cold up there :D
<SeanDaly> http://www.netbookworldsummit.org/
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yes! that's a great way of promoting it, I think
("game-changer")
* sdziallas looks
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: /me dreams of a deal with Lenovo ;)
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: looks neat!
<SeanDaly> actually one of the things I want to do is make the point
that Sugar runs on widely distributed school netbooks such as
Classmates, Dell Latitude 2100s
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: should we set everything in stone for Dec 8?
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yeah, right. and if it doesn't, we'd need to
figure out why.
<SeanDaly> well, Strawberry booted both my Classmates and and the
Dell, and I've just installed Fedora on the Dell
<sdziallas> cool! glad to hear that...
<SeanDaly> the BBC had published my photo of Sugar on the Classmate
next to Sugar on the XO
<sdziallas> :)
<SeanDaly> by the way Walter did a great job adding visuals to the
0.86 release notes wiki page
* sdziallas nods... and is reminded about the static page
<walterbender> mostly erikos who did the work... gotta run.. bye
<SeanDaly> maybe I'm just very visually oriented but those screencaps
were really inviting
<SeanDaly> ah! thanks to erikos in order then!
<SeanDaly> thanks Walter
<sdziallas> walterbender: ttyl ;)
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: yes we need some lead time to work with
Christian on static page (and sitewide navbar)
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yeah... maybe we should start that conversation soon.
<SeanDaly> I've been holding Christian's work on navbar for some time,
very late in replying to him :-(
<sdziallas> heh ;) well, we still have some time...
<SeanDaly> I'am also very concerned about sugaronastick.com which will
only confuse everyone as things stand now
* sdziallas nods. I'm not entirely sure what the current state on that
is, but I hope we can find a resolution soon, too.
<walterbender> there is a truck blocking my driveway, so it looks like
I am not going anywhere for a while :(
* SeanDaly no one is sure what the current state is, but it certainly
needs to be improved before Blueberry launch
|<-- JT4sugar has left freenode (Remote closed the connection)
<sdziallas> walterbender: hehe ;) (you've the backlog, right?)
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yeah... :|
-->| JT4sugar has joined #sugar-meeting
<tomeu> also, if we don't find a way to protect ourselves from these
situations, we'll find the same problem again and again
<tomeu> this is unfortunately a classic problem in successful FOSS projects
* sdziallas waves to tomeu
* SeanDaly waves to tomeu
* tomeu waves everybody
<sdziallas> heh ;)
<SeanDaly> well, Mel would like the SLOBs to get new teeth I think
<sdziallas> tomeu: yeah, +1. and we've probably all had enough of
lengthy e-mail threads.
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yes, I've seen some posts there, too. tomeu, she
was working with you on that, right?
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: I know I have... time intensive :-(
<sdziallas> SeanDaly, tomeu: my fear is that this might not be ready in time.
<tomeu> sdziallas: yup, for next slobs meeting we should go out with a
decision making process
<sdziallas> tomeu: heh.
<tomeu> we just close the channel doors until we reach consensus :p
<walterbender> sdziallas: any idea if the DP will present on Friday?
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: situation has to be cleared up in order to
launch Blueberry. We can't launch if confusion :-(
<sdziallas> walterbender: I wonder if it was such a good idea to ask
for a DP when SLOBs is now possibly (and finally) some decision making
power.
<sdziallas> walterbender: I've no idea.
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yes. exactly. so maybe we should put Dec 8 as
the launch date (I'd update the roadmap and post about that then),
conditional to finding consensus / a solution here.
<sdziallas> tomeu: and then we let smoke come out of the channel to
sign that it's done? :p
<tomeu> SeanDaly, sdziallas: abandoning the sugaronastick brand is not
an option?
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: in my view, always a good plan to test the
institution as it has been designed. And fix if that doesn't work, but
not secondguess
<SeanDaly> tomeu: would be a very bad option
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yeah, right... (on the "testing") ;)
<SeanDaly> would mean starting from scratch to build brand equity
<sdziallas> tomeu: I'm not sure on it. It would give a lot of
marketing work away.
<SeanDaly> would be like throwing away a working architecture and
recoding from scratch
<SeanDaly> there would need to be a very good reason to do it, and I
don't see such a reason
* walterbender thinks we will have a resolution...
<SeanDaly> what I think is that like Sugar Labs, the brand needs to be protected
<JT4sugar> In the end we must make it easy for individulas to create
business models around deploying Sugar-if that means asking for a
donation/fee to use "Sugar on a Stick"naming that should be built in
<SeanDaly> JT4sugar: very good point
* sdziallas wonders whether that would really solve the problem
<SeanDaly> but the name needs to stand for something we can support, or
<SeanDaly> that we can count on others to support
<SeanDaly> may I go back to eBooks subject?
<SeanDaly> I'm wondering if we can make sharing an eBook easy
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yeah...
<SeanDaly> I mean, I imagine it is easy to do so
<SeanDaly> but commercial for-profit eBooks are against sharing
<SeanDaly> Barnes & Noble Nook offers 14-day DRM'd sharing
<SeanDaly> when you loan it, you don't have it til you get it back
<cjb> SeanDaly: don't understand; we already have ebook sharing in Read
<SeanDaly> I think could be interesting to show open-access content
advantage: share all you like
<cjb> when you launch Read and share it and someone joins, the book's
transferred
<SeanDaly> cjb: ok not having done it yet I wasn't sure
<cjb> np
<cjb> you could also use some method of transferring Journal objects
<SeanDaly> cjb: ideally, Blueberry launch materials could show how to
do it for Sugar newbies
<SeanDaly> I'd like to make some screencam films but haven't
identified a working solution for that yet
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: oh, I might have a solution for that... either
you could run the appliance, or you install a package in SoaS (I think
it's called recordmydesktop or so)
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: I remember there is/was an Activity but just
haven't taken the time to check that out, or other solutions
<JT4sugar> sdziallas, Can we get this working on Blueberry, it would
allow making tutorials by students, teachers,others easy to do
<sdziallas> JT4sugar: yes, I'll put that on my list :) (thanks, good idea!)
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: ^^
<SeanDaly> would be great!
<sdziallas> JT4sugar: actually, hinting somewhere that they could
upload their recorded videos at dailymotion might be good...
<JT4sugar> sdziallas, Giving the users the ability to make lessons,
tutorials, etc.-Etoys like project uploads
<SeanDaly> since Sugar is totally different interface compared to what
grownups are used to, orientation vids will be most valuable
<sdziallas> SeanDaly, JT4sugar: since you could play that without
issues on SoaS (for the non-flash side)
<sdziallas> JT4sugar: exactly :)
<SeanDaly> "how-tos"
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yeah, that makes sense - would be awesome!
<walterbender> JT4sugar: btw, I pinged my friend at Dell
<JT4sugar> walterbender, Thanks
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: do you know, can screencam have audio
explanation? or subtitles?
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: I'm not exactly sure... that would probably need
some kind of post-processing...
<sdziallas> anybody up to port pitivi to sugar? ;)
<walterbender> I just use xvidcap and add audio afterwards
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: I am former audio engineer, and own recording
studio and dozens of mics, I could record voiceovers
<walterbender> but I don't have a good tool for the latter in GNU/Linux
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: oh, cool :)
<walterbender> can I also suggest we consider "Sugar Cards"
<SeanDaly> walterbender: xvidcap video is in what format?
<walterbender> SeanDaly: pretty much anything you want
<walterbender> Sugar Cards would be 1 idea per card... a deck of cards
would be everything you want to know about Sugar
<SeanDaly> I very often use ffmpeg, sometimes much faster than timeline editing
<SeanDaly> example: you record voiceover while watching film in realtime
<SeanDaly> then ffmpeg command to merge the two
<SeanDaly> advantage of that approach; trivial to rebuild film with
different audio, including different languages for ex
<SeanDaly> walterbender: reminds me of Mac Hypercards from back in the day
<SeanDaly> walterbender: what I like is, very simple to "operate"
<JT4sugar> walterbender, A template on wiki that would allow lesson
plans to be put on cards-You could then choose which ones to
bundle-create file-take to printer to print
* SeanDaly needs to disappear shortly...
<JT4sugar> walterbender, To push your "writing to read" idea-Might be
chance to get Purdue Writing Lab(OWL jr. idea) to collaborate with
U.Maryland folks(IDCL)
<SeanDaly> "writing to read": i remember from 4th grade, we read
"Stuart Little" by E.B. White and teacher asked us to write an extra
chapter,
<SeanDaly> and amusingly, as a teenager I met a kid a few years later
who said they had just read my extra chapter, mimeographed to death :D
<JT4sugar> SeanDaly, And your still writing-made quite the impression!
<SeanDaly> JT4sugar: hee hee
<SeanDaly> JT4sugar: in fact I tried my hand at writing years ago and
was disappointed with the result, spent too much time trying to
impress with erudition; prefer guitar and bass
<SeanDaly> JT4sugar: actually I'd love to add sounds to TamTam
<SeanDaly> I did some foleying for student films (you know, walking in
place in gravel box)
<JT4sugar> SeanDaly, Even for the best writers it can be a struggle
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: can I get back to you re: Dec. 8th Blueberry launch date?
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: sure!
<SeanDaly> I'd like to confirm what if any participation with Netbook
World Paris possible
<SeanDaly> but I would much rather launch around that date and get
everything right if that's OK
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: okay, that sounds reasonable, yeah... well, let
me know if I need to chime in anywhere ;)
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: I might have another idea...
* SeanDaly listening
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: some students at RIT in the US are working on
activities to teach math...
<sdziallas> mostly game-like stuff, but with interesting approaches
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: I'm thinking about getting them onto Blueberry
(not sure, but maybe that could be mentioned as a good example of how
students write stuff for students... but anyway, we can include those
without having them in the press release, too)
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: what's great about math is, for sure it's educational
<cjb> sdziallas: do you know if any of those activities are working?
<cjb> I tried to check them out six months ago as a base for
Arithmetic, but there wasn't really anything there
<sdziallas> cjb: I've tried Greg's original dungeons-of-something
thing months ago, but will give this all a try tonight.
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: in any case we are overflowing with news
<SeanDaly> interface improvements are great
<SeanDaly> networking,
<SeanDaly> new versions of Activities,
<SeanDaly> pilots underway,
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: that's what I was thinking, too...
<SeanDaly> new Local Labs starting,
<sdziallas> so I'll just test them and get back to you on that :)
<SeanDaly> All Uruguay students on Sugar (Sugarland?)
<SeanDaly> so when the time comes, beyond the eBook focus we will I
think have trouble picking what to put in and what to leave out :-)
* sdziallas grins ;) yes... that's the hard part marketing needs to do
when it comes to great stuff, I guess
<JT4sugar> University connection should be in-replicating this type of
work by students at RIT is a push and plea we should make
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: in a sense, the goal is to make the topic
interesting enough that people want to know more
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: yeah, that makes sense...
<sdziallas> JT4sugar: yes, I think it would be good to get more people
doing this!
<JT4sugar> sdziallas, Highlighting students creating activities for
students is a powerful message
* sdziallas nods
<SeanDaly> have to go now! thanks
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: I think this was really productive today :)
<sdziallas> SeanDaly: let me know how the netbook forum thing goes...
<SeanDaly> sdziallas: ok
<sdziallas> see you!