[SoaS] [Marketing] Activities and Features for SoaS V4

[Sean DALY]

Martin, I think you're being hard on John here. We feel that the OLPC
approach - countrywide sales at minister level - is far more difficult
in developed countries. We don't have on OEM deal or formal reference
for Intel Classmates or Dell Latitude education netbooks to offer. We
want education buyers, school IT admins, and tech-savvy teachers to
learn about Sugar - we think high school and university professors can
aid us in recruiting contributors, including potential developers for
Sugar, Sugar on a Stick, Activities - but we are up against two
formidable barriers against getting Sugar into classrooms:
unfamiliarity and difficulty of installation. These are the problems
Sugar on a Stick and the SoaS Creation Kit can help solve.

The FOSS development process can be very obscure even for somewhat
technical edu buyers. John is just suggesting that an impactful visual
can help to inform, like magazine articles which have sidebars
explaining complex relationships for example the money flow between
financial institutions.

Sean


On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 3:08 AM, Martin Dengler <martin at martindengler.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 01:11:32PM -0400, John Tierney wrote:
>> I am trying to figure out upcoming schedule for SoaS V4. From my reading
>> of Fedora 14 release schedule which from my new understanding applies
>> directly to the next Sugar on a Stick release the two upcoming dates that
>> are super important are:
>>
>> 2010-07-13     Feature Submission Deadline
>>
>> and
>>
>> 2010-07-27     Feature
>>  Freeze--Planning & Development Ends
> [...]
>> In a few recent threads I have been pushing the developer/coding
>> side to begin to offer visuals of the processes they use and adhere
>> to because many of less tech-oriented simply don't understand the
>> process and get more confused bouncing around multiple wiki's trying
>> to put puzzle together.
> [...]
>> These visuals will create very strong recruiting tools for those of
>> us involved in Facilitation and Outreach.  I would happily do it
>> myself but I simply don't understand the technical processes or
>> inter-relationships involved, precisely why these visuals are
>> needed.
>
> You're going to try to recruit SoaS .iso developers without
> understanding development processes or meta-processes (e.g.,
> schedules)?
>
> May I respectfully suggest that the overworked and underpaid volunteer
> developers have more productive things to do than create visuals of a
> schedule.  Much better would be for you to take YOUR understanding
> (including the dates about) and create the materials you think
> developers would want to know about (?!) and share them.
>
> When you hear a deafening silence (or even get encouragement), you
> will have a) gained the understanding you say you lack (though you did
> a good job summarising things, IMHO); and b) gained the recruiting
> tools you think you need.
>
>> If we can stop for a moment and capture much of what we are doing in
>> this visual sense we will make it enormously easier for people to
>> join and actively participate in the community.
>
> It will be easier for people to comment on the developers' schedules,
> but it won't make it significantly easier to participate the SoaS .iso
> development schedule (I don't know what else you might mean by "the
> community" here, though it could be almost anything).  kickstart files
> and filesystems and shell scripting and boot processes still need to
> be understood, and a visual of the SoaS .iso creation schedule isn't
> going to help with that.
>
>> We must always remember the Key contributor we are trying to get on
>> board is the Elementary Teacher and Students.
>
> ..."Key contributor" to SoaS?  Or to Activity authorship?  Please
> don't mix the two up - they're quite different.  And please don't mix
> up creation of the SoaS product (.iso) - the process I think you want
> to map out - with contribution to the SoaS project.  One is a part of
> the other, and - as evidenced by the liveliness of the SoaS mailing
> list - one needn't understand how the .iso is created to contribute.
> But to understand how the .iso is created one needs a heck of a lot
> more information than the SoaS release schedule.  Please be precise
> about to what you want to attract contributions via these visuals.
>
>> Best!
>>
>> John Tierney
>
> Martin
>
>
>
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