Thanks Sameer, very good points, a few comments/questions below On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 5:53 PM, Sameer Verma <sve...@sfsu.edu> wrote:
> Interesting thread. I'll reply to Lionel's post, but my reply is more > of my own set of ideas and understanding. > > Putting on my business school researcher hat: > > 1) The eventual goal of this project should be to influence the > adoption of Sugar across the world. A person's attitude, combined with > subjective norms, forms his behavioral intention > (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_reasoned_action). To > influence adoption, we have to address the attitudes of the potential > adopter, and the subjective norms. Should Sugar be a part of that > ecosystem (such as a school's curriculum) or apart from it? > > Do we have a option? I don't say the school is the only channel to reach kids, but is the more massive channel without doubt. > 2) Role of marketing: Most of what I've seen thus far is focused on > the internal producer view of OLPC/Sugarlabs. This is natural, given > that that's the world view we are most familiar with. The role of > marketing is to take this internal view, and adapt its value to make > it attractive to the consumer. If this adaptation fails, we end up > with over-engineered products that the market rejects. This adaptation > is largely dependent on addressing the perceptions of the consumer. > This is one of the reasons why shiny products sell - we associate > shiny with expensive, be it chrome polished plastic or iPads. At this > point if you are saying to yourself "we don't care for marketing or > consumer" you are sorely mistaken. > > We need more marketing without doubt. > 3) Vision and Mission are important for the project: Vision is an > inspirational, directional, future state description. Mission is > largely how we get there. Both should be referenced on the basis of a > time frame. So, vision and mission for now + 5 years is a good target. > These might appear cheesy, but FOSS projects are usually non-strategic > by design, because we are all busy writing small bits and pieces, > hoping someone will stitch it all together eventually. We "scratch our > own itch" in a piecemeal fashion, by writing scripts for battery > stats, frame icons, Journal data and such. FOSS projects strive for > operational excellence. Then, we hope that all this gets weaved into a > fabric that can be used by someone (kids). The same applies to Apache, > Ubuntu, Drupal, Linux, etc. In all those cases, there is a foundation > or association or company that puts resources (time and money) and > provides strategic direction, because the project isn't designed to do > so by itself. Apache Software Foundation, Canonical, Drupal > Association, Linux Foundation play that important role (I am on the > Board of Directors of the Drupal Association, and some of this > thinking is from my observations there). Vision, Mission, Goals, > Objectives etc. should come from somewhere for Sugar/olpc. For a while > it came from OLPC, but right now, I don't see any of it in an > organizational manner. > > 4) In the free and open source world, the consumer is also sometimes > the producer. So, instead of treating the consumer as someone with > limited feedback (as may be the case with Windows or MacOSX) the > consumer can switch roles and become a producer (like Ignacio or > SamP). http://www.oecd.org/sti/inno/37450155.pdf This can lead to a > myopic view of the target population being only people like Ignacio or > SamP. Should all kids open the hood to peek into Sugar and become > developers like Ignacio and SamP? Can we get into schools where they > have locked down Windows machines with no admin rights? > > 5) Sugar is not a product. Sugar is a project, that keeps evolving as > time goes by. A product is when we take a snapshot and polish it with > QC, QA and package it for delivery. OLPC's build for the XO platform > is a product. Sugarizer is a product. Suagr is NOT a product. This is > just like Fedora is NOT a product. It's a project. RHEL is a product. > Or for that matter, take the Ubuntu phone. The phone delivered by BQ > is a product that took Ubuntu 14.09 and made it RTM (release to > manufacturer) and ran it through QC and QA and produced the phone with > the polished stack on it. Customers buy products, while developers > work with projects. It is imperative that we understand the difference > and treat the two as different. > > I'm pretty sure Rangan Srikhanta has a strategy for > OLPCAU/OneEducation. So does Rodrigo Arboleda for OLPC Inc. I think we > (Sugarlabs+lowercase olpc) need a strategy going forward to address > Vision, Mission, etc. We also need to operationally pick approaches > (such as Sugar Web) to build for multiple platforms. Android, > RaspberryPi, Ubuntu are prime targets. Low-hanging fruit. How do we > build for Android, but also reuse it for RaspberryPi and Ubuntu? On > Android, stuff should be in the Google Play Store. On Ubuntu, it > should be a simple install via apt-get or in their Software Center > (the current builds are horribly broken). On Rpi/Rpi2, build a > completely workable version for the 5 million units out there. Heck, > people should be able to buy a SD/microSD card on Amazon to run a full > Sugar desktop on the Rpi! Way back, I had a chat with Mike Lee, and I > even proposed a name for this - sweetie pi. Remember, marketing is > key, and branding a huge part of it. Speaking of branding, > Sugar/Sugarlabs has none. It is still a vestige of OLPC, which > continues to enjoy a high brand status around the world (good, bad, > it's all publicity). > > This may be a lot to digest, but unless we address of these issues, > this project will go nowhere fast. > > Our final users need a product, not a project. While I love have kids as Ignacio and Sam joining the project, if we want reach million of kids, we need assume 99,99% of them will not join the project, and will be happy users. In the end we say Sugar is to learn, no to earn to use a computer.If olpc is not available to distribute that product we need find a way to do that. Maybe we need a SugarLabs Foundation. I agree 100% about the need of a strategy and update our vision and mission, and I have tried in different ways to move that for many months, but couldn't find a way to do that. Gonzalo
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