[SoaS] [Marketing] SOAS-3: Final Activity List - Attention needed!

[John Tierney]

Hi Peter,

 

Thanks for all the work you all are doing! Working together

is surely the desired path!
 

I ask the following questions because I am attending a Computers and

Writing Conference at Purdue University May 20-22, 2010. On Saturday 

morning May 22nd we will be putting on a Sugar Workshop for K-12 

Teachers, University Professors and Students. 

http://www.digitalparlor.org/cw2010/workshops  (bottom of page)

 

I will be joined by Tammy Conrad-Salvo Associate Director Purdue Writing 

Lab, Gerald Ardito who has headed up and XO-Sugar on a Stick deployment 

in Six fifth grade classes over the last two years and has based his PHD 

Dissertation on Sugar(Defending May 21st), and by distance Walter and 

Prof. Rich Rice Texas Tech(has an XO display at Science Spectrum Lubbock,TX).
 
We will be distributing 300 Sugar CD's for all conference participants to 

try out. I am trying to figure out if Mirabelle is the choice for this occasion.
If we do give out Mirabelle, I want to be able to be very clear with Audience 

on expectations with additional activities. If this is framed in the correct way 

we could turn this into a group of activities testers.(Since they are Computers

and Writing group they are very technically oriented but that does not mean 

on the command line) As part of our presentation we will be talking about University

Level Professors and Students collaborating with K-12 Teachers in a multi-discipline 

way reaching out to College of Education and College of Computer Science colleagues 

to participate with student project work as resources.


I believe we are all working towards the same goal. From the marketing,
educational outreach, not so techy side of things, I believe we need some
help actually understanding the process of getting the activities qualified, the
time frame(timeline), the upstream-downstream relationships. I along with the
Teachers, Educators, University Professors outside of Computer Science have
a hard time understanding and visualizing the process. 

 
Possibly a Workflow/Mindmap/Timeline Project Map that explains the SoaS Process, 

the Sugar build, the Fedora build, the connections/constraints as they relate to 

Upstream-Downstream, who is Upstream-Downstream, the dates when activity testing 

should take place, and any other tasks/constraints that relate to putting together this 

successful build. If you could come up with a one page visual that would be enormously 

helpful to our messaging and help new members of the Sugar Community understand the 

mechanisms and processes related to FOSS projects. Having a Big Picture view helps 

understand where your individual work fits in and also helps with the expectation aspect.
Clear, Simple, Visual.
 
After this stable build with group of activities is released, what is process and what
will it take to get other activities working?
 
 
Some questions:
Is there a plan to include with the release a Guide with Screenshots for Bug Tracking

(How to file bug and where for SoaS 3), Activity testing reports, USB Creator. For the 

Elementary teacher, College of Education individual, and the students the screenshot 

variety of tutorial is essential. If not I understand  with lack of resources, but could 

this possibly be worked on following release.(I read in the threads that some documentation 

is being included) Doing a little extra here by going beyond written instuctions on the wiki 

and putting together these screenshot tutorials will help the future users of Sugar tremendously. 
 
Another question would be after they receive Mirabelle and go to ASLO to get
more activities what exactly happens? 
Do they just try and download any Activity and see if they work?  
Will they be prevented from downloading non-working activities?
Do we have a second list of partially working or completely broken activities?
 
I want to fully understand the present situation that way when we present to them
I will know the kind of resources to ask them to try to put in place when they return
to their perspective Universities and reach out to colleagues.
 
I am toying with the idea of giving them two CD's. One would include the image that
Gerald Ardito is using in New York and has been working well. The second would be
much like the SoaS Creation Kit with the Mirabelle image included. What are your
thoughts on this approach?
 
Thanks For All the Hard Great Work You Guys are Doing!
 
John Tierney
 
> Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:54:55 +0100
> From: pbrobinson at gmail.com
> To: sdaly.be at gmail.com
> CC: soas at lists.sugarlabs.org; marketing at lists.sugarlabs.org; sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Subject: Re: [Marketing] [SoaS] SOAS-3: Final Activity List - Attention needed!
> 
> Sean,
> 
> I would much rather we work together as well!
> 
> Firstly your point "(SoaS-1 was beta-1, SoaS-2 was v1, etc.)" is a
> completely different point of view than your previous official press
> releases from SugarLabs [1] and [2]. I believe one of the major points
> of marketing is about consistency.
> 
> To quote the first release "LinuxTag, Berlin, June 24, 2009: Sugar
> Labs™, nonprofit provider of the Sugar Learning Platform to over
> one-million children worldwide, announces the immediate availability
> of Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry." and the second "PARIS, December 8,
> 2009 — Netbook World Summit — Sugar Labs(R), volunteer-driven
> nonprofit provider of the Sugar Learning Platform for over one-million
> children around the world, announces the release of Sugar on a Stick
> v2 Blueberry."
> 
> You are correct.... we all want "to make Sugar better known". The
> whole reason we have slimmed down the Activities is to make the
> included Activities stable so "Sugar could catch on quickly if robust"
> but I completely disagree with your "the new version won't fulfil the
> demo role". The whole point of the Activities chosen was to cover all
> the major features of Sugar in a group of Activities that is stable
> and works. As stated previously I and others think we are better off
> shipping a smaller selection of Activities that cover all main
> features of Sugar such as Collaboration and Media rather than 100s of
> Activities that don't work as expected, crash randomly or fail of
> different hardware. So what major features of Sugar have we missed in
> the list of included Activities?
> 
> Given that there is not enough people doing QA and that I believe we
> are better off shipping a smaller stable base that demos the core
> features of Sugar. If we stop releasing official releases until we had
> the resources to make every Activity stable and tested we would never
> have released "Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry" or "Sugar on a Stick v2
> Blueberry" and by the time that happened for v3 people would have long
> since forgotten that SoaS even existed..... not what the ides of
> Marketing is about and we wouldn't be making "Sugar better known, to
> developers, to teachers, and to the industry (OEMs...)."
> 
> Peter
> 
> [1] http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=press&article=20090624&language=english#20090624
> [2] http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=press&article=20091208&language=english#20091208
> 
> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 3:16 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'd much rather we work together. Making Sugar and its Activities
> > robust is a challenge and doing so on Sugar on a Stick even more. We
> > have a resources problem that needs to be solved; part of the solution
> > is to make Sugar better known, to developers, to teachers, and to the
> > industry (OEMs...). It's a chicken-and-egg situation; Sugar could
> > catch on quickly if robust, but that requires resources we don't have.
> > But teachers, education buyers, journalists need to be able to see and
> > touch Sugar, and for that they need a solution (the historical
> > scarcity of XOs for reviewers has been part of OLPC's PR problem since
> > the start). Sugar on a Stick has had that role. However, the new
> > version (as well as it will fulfill a production role) won't fulfill
> > the demo role. This creates a problem. The version numbers were
> > marketing numbers (SoaS-1 was beta-1, SoaS-2 was v1, etc.) and
> > appropriating the number for a version unsuitable for demoing Sugar
> > means marketing can't work with it.
> >
> > Sean
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hi Sean,
> >>
> >> I'm so pleased that you think that all the hard work that Sebastian,
> >> myself and all the other Sugar developers that have put into the Sugar
> >> 0.88 release and associated SoaS release is so 0.5. and a whole lot
> >> less than previous releases. I think your choice is demeaning to the
> >> hard work that everyone does and without active testing of other
> >> Activities by other people it only hurts SoaS when things don't work
> >> because the release team are the only people that test stuff and
> >> aren't paid full time to do this.
> >>
> >> Peter
> >>
> >> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 8:22 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> As stated previously, it's a mistake for this release to be numbered v3.
> >>>
> >>> I won't be able to do anything with it.
> >>>
> >>> Sean
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 9:16 PM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> Hi All,
> >>>>
> >>>> So as it stands the final Activity list that we're pushing for SOAS-3
> >>>> will be as below unless someone gives me reasonable doubt as to the
> >>>> release team's (Sebastian and myself) decision.
> >>>>
> >>>> So the final list is:
> >>>> - browse
> >>>> - physics
> >>>> - turtleart
> >>>> - irc
> >>>> - log
> >>>> - terminal
> >>>> - Record
> >>>> - Read
> >>>> - Write
> >>>> - Chat.
> >>>> - etoys
> >>>>
> >>>> In literally the last 10 minutes Sebastian and I have fixed the Write
> >>>> issue and over the last 2 weeks with the latest Record release and a
> >>>> number of fixes and testing I've got Record to what seems to be a
> >>>> stable and working release. The last of the changes should be in the
> >>>> daily build from tomorrow (including a fix from sdz for the lack of a
> >>>> boot screen).
> >>>>
> >>>> One thing to note is that other than sdz and I there has only been one
> >>>> other person test and report back on the builds (Thanks Thomas!) so if
> >>>> you haven't done so until now we are now on the home straight so
> >>>> please test. I don't want to here the day after release "Blah is
> >>>> broken" because someone hasn't taken 10 minutes to test the release, I
> >>>> will be less than impressed!
> >>>>
> >>>> For those who forget where they can get the daily build you can from this link.
> >>>> http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/soas/
> >>>>
> >>>> Regards,
> >>>> The SoaS release team!
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> SoaS mailing list
> >>>> SoaS at lists.sugarlabs.org
> >>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
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