[Marketing] [SoaS] SoaS 3 (Mirabelle) release 5/25 & publicity/recruitment plans

[Peter Robinson]

Sean,

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sebastian,
>
> Our problem is the incoherence between the two previous versions of
> SoaS and this one, and the incoherence with our marketing strategy
> which is to promote a rich ecosystem of Activities for which Sugar is
> the support.

I'm sorry, I didn't see much coherence between version 1 and version
2.... so not sure how we can continue that with version 3. Its a young
project that is growing and maturing. I remember v2 as being massively
unstable and needing 12 different respin versions of it to get
something that was stable. Sebastian did a absolutely brilliant job
but I remember him respinning it momentarily before it was announced
at FUDCon due to some app breakage. SoaS 1 and 2 were rebuilt
endlessly because so much was broken..... and if you look back to
Fedora 1 to 2 to 3 there was massive churn..... and I've used "Fedora"
since RHL 4.0 in 1995 so I do know what I'm talking about there!

> We can't talk about new SoaS features or large
> deployments, so there isn't news. Trying to get journalists interested
> in helping us with recruitment will be an uphill climb. We need to
> reach developers where they are, which is why I've suggested we
> advertise for volunteer developers as we are quite more likely to
> obtain recruitment results that way.

So..... there's a couple of points above. One word... evolution....

Large deployments aren't the fault of SoaS v3 .... funnily enough it
actually needs to be actually released before it can be deployed....
you seem to miss that point, and the fact that the lack of mass
deployments doesn't reflect on the upcoming release but the past
ones.... see point above about stability..... also note the Microsoft
Windows 7 vs Vista issues.... I know you've referenced that before!
Sebastian and I personally believe that v3 will be better for large
deployments because its more stable. That is a feature!

But to address further your point "We can't talk about new SoaS
features" ...... there are new features..... LOTS..... but not in
Sugar.... but that's not because of SoaS...... its because of upstream
Sugar..... We have 3G support... that's a feature. There's massive
underlying new features we get from Fedora 13.... native IPv6
anyone???

> And we need to reach educators. The installation and unfamiliarity
> barriers of Sugar remain too formidable. That's why it's so important
> to have a SoaS Creation Kit. But, we're bumping up against Fedora
> limitations there. I am sure it has been a positive tradeoff from an
> engineering point of view, but I am not at all sure from a wider
> education-mission point of view.

So where is this famed "SoaS Creation Kit" ???? And its not fricken
well Fedora limitations.... they reach millions of people and then
they use the same tools that RHEL and Centos and Oracle unbreakable
whatever uses..... and what's more they don't need some half arsed
boot CD thing which I've never been able to make work let alone
use....

> Why don't we discuss this tomorrow in the marketing meeting? Hopefully
> we can improve cooperation between the SoaS and Marketing teams, which
> has been abysmal lately.

No! lets not discuss it tomorrow. This release has been in this state
for months and you leave it to the Fedora release date to ask for
discussion about it..... I'm sorry you've missed the boat. Lets
discuss it for the next release after this one comes out in a couple
of weeks so we can try and work with you for SOAS-4. You keep
mentioning that "I've disagreed with this and that" but on the SoaS
list I've not seen any of the discussion..... and that is what we're
talking about here.....

> (By the way: I've mentioned previously that there are several reasons
> why it's not a good idea to cite journalists by name on public lists;
> it's better to cite their publications. In particular, some
> journalists are curious about what is said about them, and on most
> lists someone manages to have something nasty to say about a given
> article, which doesn't help.)

So this is documented in a wiki article with regards to marketing
somewhere? I've lived with marketing people for 5 years.... I worked
for a leading edge marketing company for half of that. But people
forget things and things get lost in mailing lists.... you as the
current marketing lead person should document the strategy somewhere
(like the Fedora guys do) just in case for some reason suddenly your
no longer here (my boss asked me today whether I had an urge to jump
in front of a tube train....... life happens).

Sean.... the problem that I have with Sugar marketing (is that just
you?) is that you go "I've spoken about this" "i've mentioned this
isn't good" but having watched open source VERY closely for 15 years
and lived with marketing people for 5 years I've never met anyone
that's just said "No I won't deal with this". GNOME desktop hasn't
changed massively in the last god knows how many years and they manage
to market "evolution over revolution" very well, and get all the press
reviews even if its "the default theme looks nicer than the last" (and
no that's not a quote).... they manage to use 3G support and stability
as good features..... upstream Fedora support is a great feature....
one of the features of SOAS-4 will be a smaller foot print due to
upstream GNOME.... that should be a good feature due to the 1.5
million XO-1s.....

Think outside the box.... please don't stick your head in the sand....
Sugar is evolving.... Soas is evolving... we are barely a toddler....
Marketing should be dynamic and run with what we have....

To finish.... I've never before been in a situation in my 15 years in
the tech industry where marketing has refused point blankly to market
a product that is put in front of them while seeing what is going on
in front of them and not speak out in the channels to do with that
product (I've only recently subscribed to the marketing list as SoaS
talk happens on the SoaS list.... what ever it is). Normally tech has
to implement the shit that marketing has sold. So if marketing is
going to dictate without input what SoaS technically should deliver
you can count me out... I have a lot of stuff on my plate and enough
to argue about with having to deal with people that are blinkered.
There are a lot of massive improvements to SOAS-3..... be creative....
that is (apparently) what your suppose to do.

Peter

BTW I will be at POSSE and RH summit in June and FUDCon in Zurich in
September if we want to have a SoaS marketing discussion.. and would
be open to another option.... similar to the Fedora FADs if that helps
us to articulate and be on the same page.