[Marketing] The End of Sugar (thought exercise)

[Samuel Greenfeld]

I don't see promoting strengths as mutually exclusive with researching
weaknesses.

But Sugar's crusade reminds me a lot of Les Miserables.  Being too
insistent on ideals may cause others to abandon their support.

Perhaps we should ask marketing to do a SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses
Opportunities Threats) analysis.  However we might not have enough funds
for more than an online survey of current/past users and indirect friends
of the project.
On Jun 23, 2016 8:21 AM, "Walter Bender" <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 9:45 PM, Samuel Greenfeld <samuel at greenfeld.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Historically there have been several organizations financially supporting
>> Sugar development.
>>
>> But at least some of those have left, others have reduced their
>> contributions, and it is unclear to me if any new groups have made
>> significant tangible investments in the project.
>>
>> The XO laptop and icon, both commonly associated with Sugar, are OLPC
>> trademarks.  There is nothing stopping anyone from licensing these and
>> putting applications in the Android/Apple/Chromebook stores claiming to be
>> "Based on Sugar" with a new "Journal" interface.
>>
>> In short: Sugar is having trouble expanding beyond its current territory,
>> or at least publicly appears to be.
>>
>> So this week I thought of a couple of questions:
>>
>>    - What would cause you and/or your school(s) to stop using Sugar?
>>    - What would another project have to offer in order for it to be used
>>    instead?
>>    - When would it be a good idea to move everyone to a new project?
>>    - Under what circumstances should Sugar Labs be shutdown?
>>
>> If we can answer these questions, maybe we can reform Sugar to better
>> meet these competitive challenges.
>>
>>
> I guess I have a different vision of Sugar than you. I am interested in
> our creating a best-of-breed pedagogical framework what hopefully will see
> wide dissemination in schools, but also will show the way forward for the
> ed tech community as a whole, which I think tends to focus on market share
> more than learning outcomes. What I would like from marketing is some
> mechanism for highlighting the powerful ideas in Sugar that seem to be
> lacking in most other systems so that even if a school decides to go with a
> different product/project, they put pressure on that project to provide
> tools, not apps, collaboration, transparency, self reflection and group
> critique, and responsibility on the shoulders of students and teachers to
> shape their own world. So personally, I find your questions irrelevant to
> my goals.
>
> -walter
>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> <http://www.sugarlabs.org>
>
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