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

[Sean DALY]

On the contrary, the wide press coverage we had last June was because
we baptized SoaS-2 as "v1" (reread the BBC article for example). v2
had less coverage, which was to be expected; so the objective there
was to underline Sugar's e-book readers. Mirabelle has neither of
James Simmons' Get Books or Get Internet Archive Books.

Again, I have no quarrel with any effort to make Sugar on a Stick more
stable or reliable, in the time it takes. My objection is the use of
the v3 marketing number. A major opportunity to spread the word will
be wasted if that number is used for Mirabelle - journalists review
v3's throroughly. Sugar on a Stick has been a central pillar of our
marketing strategy, so the loss of that number means changing our
strategy (and quite possibly with lower probability of a breakout).
It's a pity.

Sugar on a Stick has two roles: in production and as a teacher demo.
This second role shouldn't be underestimated - the two greatest
barriers to Sugar adoption are its unfamiliarity and difficulty of
installation. Mirabelle is an excellent solution for the first role,
but very unfortunately is not suited to the second. Our marketing
strategy is designed to make trying Sugar as easy as possible. And,
teachers care about content, not platforms. Our rich Activity
ecosystem is the draw for the platform.

Although it may be traditional in FOSS projects to think of marketing
as an afterthought, that's a recipe for failure - it has everything to
do with why the distros and their desktops have such terribly low
market share (and brand awareness), even after years of existence.
There's no reason Sugar should share that fate, we just need to work
more closely together.

Sean



On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 6:11 PM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
>> No, the version numbers in the press releases were changes I proposed
>> fom the existing numbering. So SoaS-1 became the beta-1, SoaS-2 became
>> the v1. The objective was to make the numbers instantly
>> understandable, and allow us to build omentum wth each release.
>
> Well your releases don't read like that! An apparently looking back
> through the articles written about it nor did the reporters. So you
> failed on that one!
>
>> Unfortunately, we can't do that with Mirabelle, since it is missing
>> key e-book reading Activities we were promoting just six months ago.
>> We need to be consistent. I have no doubt it's solid engineering, but
>> It's unfortunately quite disconnected from our marketing strategy,
>> which is why we should be on the same page when a major decision like
>> removing all Activities needs to be taken.
>
> Its not had to add e-books and what's more its impossible to include
> specific e-books to cover all languages and ages and Read the e-book
> reader is there itself. I added it back in. So your actually incorrect
> there.
>
>> I'm at a loss how to proceed, probably the best approach is to
>> position Mirabelle as a part of the Sugar Creation Kit and promote
>> that.
>
> And rule out the education people with all the other things that are
> there. That's the vast majority of the audience.
>
> When Sebastian and I first put out the call about it we got a lot of
> "you must include the world and its dog" but other than the two of us
> I've had exactly one person testing regularly and 3 or 4 others do one
> or two reports. If that was a feature you explicitly wanted why didn't
> you do the testing of it to ensure it was stable rather than sticking
> your head in the sand and supposedly ruining your own marketing
> opportunity. I'm sick of it being the fault of the people that do the
> work rather that the people that can yell the loudest!
>
> Peter
>