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

[Sean DALY]

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. 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.

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.

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.

(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.)

Sean


On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 2:28 AM, Sebastian Dziallas <sebastian at when.com> wrote:
> So I've been accepted to GSoC and will spend my summer - starting on
> Monday - making Sugar on a Stick even more awesome
> (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2010/Improved_Sugar_on_a_Stick).
>
> First business: as SoaS v.3.0 Mirabelle nears its release date
> (Tuesday, May 25), it's time to gear up for publicity for the release
> - this is not necessarily a one-time blast thing, but a consistent
> message of some sort (mostly geared towards recruitment) that will go
> out throughout the month of June (and possibly afterwards as well).
>
> Here's a short outline of what I'm thinking about writing up for the
> announcement - let me know if you can think of anything that is
> missing.
>
> * overview of SoaS
> ** as a project (goals)
> ** as a product (technical)
> * changes since the last release
> ** activity selection
> ** focus on sustainability
> *** Fedora Spin
> ** focus on deployability
> * next steps
> ** targets for v.4.0
> *** activity selection criteria
> *** deployment feedback loop
> ** how to get involved
>
> And here's the list of people that I'm planning on sending it to when it's done.
>
> I'd also like to brief the folks at Ars Technica and Wired, as well as
> the Spiegel, in advance and ask whether they would be up for an
> interview.
>
> xconomy - wade roush
> arstechnica - ryan paul
> desktoplinux - eric brown
> technology review - david talbot
> wired - chuck lawton
> spiegel online - matthias kremp
> linux magazin - anika kehrer
> linux.com - joe brockmeier
>
> --Sebastian
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