Re: [Marketing] The End of Sugar (thought exercise)

[Walter Bender]

A few observations/thoughts that may help us in focusing our marketing
efforts:

(1) The primary source of push back in AU re Sugar was the browser. Schools
had websites that they were interested in accessing that were not supported
by Browse at the time. This is something we can turn around in the devel
team and maybe something we need to surface in marketing: that Sugar is
web/cloud enabled on top of all its other virtues. (I had been keeping the
name "cloudberry" in reserve for this.) Ironically, at the time we added
Sugar extensions for access to Google Drive (among other clud-based
services), NSW got in bed with Microsoft and prohibited schools from using
non-MS cloud services. OLPC AU never promoted the Sugar cloud-enabled
features.

(2) The switch to Windows 10 by OLPC AU is a total capitulation to the "we
don't have a clue as to what is of value in terms of pedagogy, so we'll
make a deal with whomever will give us the best deal camp." Not sure what
our response should/can be in such circumstances.

(3) There is a still strong interest in Sugar in Paraguay and some momentum
to go national. We could try to ride that wave. We've been invited to come
to Paraguay in October.

(4) I'm pushing hard in Chile... we'll see what happens.

(5) In UY, they are still using Sugar in primary schools (on Ubuntu). We
should market in the Ubuntu space (I had had an offer from Ubuntu to let us
do the equivalent of a Fedora Spin which we could follow up on).

(6) We should push on Red Hat to give us more exposure.

(7) Can we get a Sugarizer pilot going in a school to get a sense of what
it means.

-walter
___
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing

Re: [Marketing] The End of Sugar (thought exercise)

[Dave Crossland]

On 24 June 2016 at 06:33, samson goddy  wrote:

> I think it's important to use some of the 10,000 $ to maintain and push
> the marketing sector forward. Like the Social manager role i proposed. what
> do you guys think?
>

There is no $10,000 today; the point was to speculate about what to do with
it if it existed.
___
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing

Re: [Marketing] The End of Sugar (thought exercise)

[Dave Crossland]

On 23 June 2016 at 22:01, Samuel Greenfeld  wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 8:55 PM, Dave Crossland  wrote:
>
>> On 23 June 2016 at 10:31, Samuel Greenfeld  wrote:
>> > Perhaps we should ask marketing to do a SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses
>> > Opportunities Threats) analysis.
>>
>> Welcome to the marketing team. Please start a document and I'll add to it
>> :)
>
>
Would you like me to start the document?


> > However we might not have enough funds for
>> > more than an online survey of current/past users and indirect friends
>> of the
>> > project.
>>
>> I already have survey listed in https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/2016_Goals
>> :)
>>
>> If we had $10,000 to spend on "marketing," how would you spend it?
>
>

Well given we seemed to have scared off Sugar's historical marketing
> expert,


lol


> I have no idea what a fair usage of $10,000 would be, or how it might be
> subdivided.


Fair enough. You said "we might not have enough funds for more than
[something]" which implied to me that you had ideas for things we _could_
do with funding and were discounting them as out of the question, and I
wanted you to not be shy about your ideas about how to use funds :)


> Not everyone wants to work on Sugar like it is a tech startup with a brick
> on the accelerator and the brakes disconnected.


LOL :)

I said that it would be good to get Sugar back to where it was, not that we
should seek venture capital and pursue user growth at the expense of all
other metrics.

I am confused why you would say "stop the bleeding!" and a moment later say
you don't want to get Sugar back to where it was.
___
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing

Re: [Marketing] The End of Sugar (thought exercise)

[Dave Crossland]

On 23 June 2016 at 10:44, Walter Bender  wrote:
>> Perhaps we should ask marketing to do a SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses
>> Opportunities Threats) analysis.  However we might not have enough funds for
>> more than an online survey of current/past users and indirect friends of the
>> project.
>
>
> I recall we went through such an exercise a few years back...  we should do
> it again.

Can anyone find the results of this exercise?

https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/index.php?search=SWOT=Special%3ASearch=Go
turns up blank.
___
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing

Re: [Marketing] The End of Sugar (thought exercise)

[Walter Bender]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 9:45 PM, Samuel Greenfeld 
wrote:

> Historically there have been several organizations financially supporting
> Sugar development.
>
> But at least some of those have left, others have reduced their
> contributions, and it is unclear to me if any new groups have made
> significant tangible investments in the project.
>
> The XO laptop and icon, both commonly associated with Sugar, are OLPC
> trademarks.  There is nothing stopping anyone from licensing these and
> putting applications in the Android/Apple/Chromebook stores claiming to be
> "Based on Sugar" with a new "Journal" interface.
>
> In short: Sugar is having trouble expanding beyond its current territory,
> or at least publicly appears to be.
>
> So this week I thought of a couple of questions:
>
>- What would cause you and/or your school(s) to stop using Sugar?
>- What would another project have to offer in order for it to be used
>instead?
>- When would it be a good idea to move everyone to a new project?
>- Under what circumstances should Sugar Labs be shutdown?
>
> If we can answer these questions, maybe we can reform Sugar to better meet
> these competitive challenges.
>
>
I guess I have a different vision of Sugar than you. I am interested in our
creating a best-of-breed pedagogical framework what hopefully will see wide
dissemination in schools, but also will show the way forward for the ed
tech community as a whole, which I think tends to focus on market share
more than learning outcomes. What I would like from marketing is some
mechanism for highlighting the powerful ideas in Sugar that seem to be
lacking in most other systems so that even if a school decides to go with a
different product/project, they put pressure on that project to provide
tools, not apps, collaboration, transparency, self reflection and group
critique, and responsibility on the shoulders of students and teachers to
shape their own world. So personally, I find your questions irrelevant to
my goals.

-walter

> ___
> Marketing mailing list
> Marketing@lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>
>


-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org

___
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing

[Marketing] The End of Sugar (thought exercise)

[Samuel Greenfeld]

Historically there have been several organizations financially supporting
Sugar development.

But at least some of those have left, others have reduced their
contributions, and it is unclear to me if any new groups have made
significant tangible investments in the project.

The XO laptop and icon, both commonly associated with Sugar, are OLPC
trademarks.  There is nothing stopping anyone from licensing these and
putting applications in the Android/Apple/Chromebook stores claiming to be
"Based on Sugar" with a new "Journal" interface.

In short: Sugar is having trouble expanding beyond its current territory,
or at least publicly appears to be.

So this week I thought of a couple of questions:

   - What would cause you and/or your school(s) to stop using Sugar?
   - What would another project have to offer in order for it to be used
   instead?
   - When would it be a good idea to move everyone to a new project?
   - Under what circumstances should Sugar Labs be shutdown?

If we can answer these questions, maybe we can reform Sugar to better meet
these competitive challenges.
___
Marketing mailing list
Marketing@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing