[Its.an.education.project] www.planet-sugar.com (Was: Cleaning up the activities page)

[Seth Woodworth]

The 'zine should be moving forward in the next few days.  It's pretty silly
that it hasn't been.  But I've been far behind on quite a few projects, and
the 'zine has fallen to the wayside.

I would like it very much if the OLPCzine website, or whatever other news
outlet is created covers Sugar in every context for OLPC and for any other
platform.  And I would be more than happy to help with that project as an
ongoing set hours per week volunteer position.  A CMS is a very powerful
thing, and even better if it's surrounded by a wiki as well.

Seth

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 11:25 AM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 4:06 AM, Christoph Derndorfer
> <e0425826 at student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> > Greg DeKoenigsberg schrieb:
> >  > On Tue, 6 May 2008, Bernie Innocenti wrote:
> >  >
> >  >
> >  >>> People new to wikis often find them confusing and and frankly hard
> to
> >  >>> navigate, definitely not intuitive. Let's not bend the people to
> fit the
> >  >>> tool.
> >  >>>
> >  >> In my mind, this is the result of missing full time maintainers
> >  >> with a clear web design in mind.  A CMS by itself would not solve
> >  >> the issue; It could even make it worse.
> >  >>
> >  >
> >  > Ding ding ding.  I see this conversation in Fedora-land all the time.
>  The
> >  > "real web site" people say "we need a real web site".  The wiki
> people say
> >  > "and just whom do you expect will maintain it?"
>
> s/whom/who/ The structure is "who will maintain it?" Adding another
> clause doesn't change that.
>
> >  >> For example, look at OLPC's institutional web site: the People page
> >  >> lists people that walked away, people I have never seen and other
> >  >> inaccuracies.  Journalists look at this shiny thing for a moment,
> >  >> then come back asking if perhaps we also have a web site with real
> >  >> content :-)
>
> I have made Wiki pages to offer corrected versions of some of the main
> site page content.
>
> >  > Yep.
> >  >
> >  > Really, it all comes back to people to do the work -- and the more
> people
> >  > you have, the more governance you need.  And *not* so that you can
> "tell
> >  > people what to do" -- the purpose for governance is to know what
> people
> >  > are doing.  To know *who* is responsible for *what*.
>
> It is well known that the job of governance in Open Source development
> consists of herding cats, and not as well known as it should be that
> the way to herd cats is not to tell them what to do, but to convince
> them that that is what they wanted to do in the first place, and it
> has nothing to do with you. This is only possible if your goals and
> theirs actually are aligned, and it is only necessary to find the
> context in which this alignment is visible. Unless you can afford to
> put enough cat food at the spot where you want them to congregate.
> Context and cat food may in our case both consist of shiny new toys
> that they get to play with.
>
> Another principle of cat-herding is the Leader Principle: find out
> where people are headed and get out in front of them. Or figure out
> where they would head if they understood the issues, and stake out a
> position over there. Like RMS and Free Software. The naysayers still
> think he's nuts, of course, and us, too. Some cats herd more readily
> than others, so you start with who shows up.
>
> >  > In the activity space, we see a lot of similar problems here that are
> >  > similar to other open source projects.  The need for testing.  The
> need
> >  > for localization.  We must ask ourselves: why do people step up to
> these
> >  > tasks in other organizations, but not in this one?
>
> Somebody asked them?
>
> >  > I would posit that it's because people who participate in other
> >  > organizations are recognized in some way for their participation and
> >  > leadership.  For example: we started having community success in
> Fedora
> >  > only when we started to give *real, core responsibilities* to people
> >  > outside of the Red Hat side of the organization.  Funny thing: when
> your
> >  > name becomes very publicly associated with something, you will *bust
> your
> >  > ass* not to see it fail.  OLPC never turned this trick.  Maybe Sugar
> can.
>
> Nicholas Negroponte and the old-style managers at OLPC (Fadel and
> Kane) have almost never talked to the community at all, unlike Walter
> Bender and Kim Quirk.
>
> >  I just had an idea which might be able to address some of the issues
> >  (facilitating activity testing and development, tying in contributors,
> >  making new activities more visible, more overall community engagement)
> >  which we've been discussing here.
> >
> >  How 'bout setting up www.planet-sugar.com (working title) which could
> >  basically be the one-stop-resource when it comes to activity
> >  development, testing and related matters? Something along the lines of
> >  Gamasutra.com or what PlanetHalfLife used to be back in the day. We
> >  could include reviews of activities, have featured activities of the
> >  week / month, competitions, how-to articles, interviews with different
> >  community members, etc. Basically an xo-zine on steroids focused on
> >  activity development...
> >
> >  What do you think?
>
> Seth Woodworth tried to start one, http://olpczine.org/, but AFAIK I'm
> the only one to contribute to it. Also AFAIK, nothing prevents us from
> jumping and and running with it. Take a look and tell us what you
> think.
>
> >  Cheers,
> >  Christoph
> >
> >  > Any possible Sugar foundation that depends upon volunteers should
> start to
> >  > consider questions of governance sooner, rather than later.  We need
> >  > localization?  Create the (unpaid, of course) "VP of localization for
> the
> >  > Sugar foundation," who recruits a team of volunteers.
>
> Me! Me! That's me! (Well, Sayamindu is in charge of Pootle. I don't
> know who got the previous several dozen projects started last year.)
>
> I have been recruiting localizers for Cambodia, Haiti, and Rwanda.
> G1G1 has more than 10,000 XOs on order for each of them, but nobody
> had thought to get the projects started. Haiti was straightforward to
> find people for, including one from Ubutu localization, Rwanda is easy
> because of the government's campaign to computerize the whole country
> and make Rwanda the high-tech hub of Africa, but in Cambodia it's like
> pulling teeth. Mentally, they seem not to have recovered from the
> Khmer Rouge sufficiently to be willing to express their own opinions
> in public, or to support others in doing so. The whole country is
> remarkably slow to adopt Wikis, open forums, and the like. Also,
> Javier Sola of the KhmerOS project is actively hostile to OLPC in
> general, and to me in particular.
>
> One person cannot recruit all of the localizers. I need to recruit
> recruiters. Anybody? Pass it through your networks. I have found
> several people to help through LinkedIn. BTW, you're all invited to
> connect with me there.
>
> >  > We need testing?
> >  > Create the (unpaid, of course) "director of quality assurance for the
> >  > Sugar foundation" who recruits a team of volunteers.  We need a great
> >  > website?  Create the (unpaid, of course) "Czar of Content Management"
> who
> >  > recruits a team of volunteers.  Look at the number of VPs in the
> Apache
> >  > organization; it's insane.  But it's incredibly effective.  Who wants
> to
> >  > be the "VP of Failure"?  No one.  Which means that when you *do* find
> >  > people who are legitimately willing to take leadership roles, they
> will
> >  > work night and day to create success.
>
> I don't know how big a factor the titles would be. Showing
> appreciation in a more practical way, say by listening to the
> volunteers, seems more important to me.
>
> >  > The future of Sugar will depend on volunteers, and on the ability of
> all
> >  > of us to get the most out of those volunteers -- including enabling
> them
> >  > to make Important Choices on behalf of the organization.  Learn from
> >  > OLPC's failures in this regard.
> >  >
> >  > --g
>
> --
> Edward Cherlin
> End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
> http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
> "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay
>
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