[Sur] Sugar oversight board meeting

[Gonzalo Odiard]

Ok, I will reply to your points, just in different order:

On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 6:53 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be en gmail.com> wrote:
> Gonzalo - I'm sorry, I was unable to attend the SLOBs meeting today.
>
> There are issues with doing PR about the release
>
> * Our target market, the ten million or so grade-school teachers worldwide,
> can't benefit from the release; there are no installers. There are detailed
> instructions for using virtualization on the wiki thanks to satellit, and
> the consistently good work of probinson on SoaS, but the release itself
> won't be news if no one can use it.

You are right. May be is better wait until we have images to install.
I am working now on this, and can report when is finished.
SoaS is the the other candidate.

> * It's not clear to me where we are going. The OLPC/Sugar development
> ecosystem seems to be at a crossroads. I am encouraged by the web activity
> work, but don't understand the path of transposing the value proposition of
> Sugar (interface, Journal, collaboration, Activities) to handheld tactile
> devices (tablets to smartphones). PCs (of any size) with keyboards are no
> longer competitive with tablets for grade-school classroom use. Perhaps the
> XO-4 could still be in the running; there is no clear message from OLPC.

Yes, we are at a crossroads.
But Sugar is not OLPC. Is sad lost the support of OLPC, but also open
the opportunity
of re-think who are we and what is our space. OLPC was, from the name,
driven by hardware, running a run difficult to win when you are small,
but needed because nobody else was interested in doing it. This situation
did OLPC invest more in the low level stuff than in Sugar. Also, in
retrospective,
is possible we had a attitude of "we know better" and wasn't trying to solve
the specific problems of teacher in classrooms.

As you say, the landscape now is different, cheap (and at times crap)
hardware is available,
but also there are a expensive option (all the Apple stuff) and a
"almost open" option
(Android). Google started to monetize the education space ̣[1] [2],
how we will fight against that?

In my personal view, we are the option of software, open, free,
focused in our specific range of ages, with a special design to work in schools,
with a pedagogical background and with the possibility to work with
low connectivity.
The low connectivity space will be smaller every time,
but we can (and need) improve the solutions we provide to teachers and
to schools,
and improve our use of free and open resources.
If you ask me about a strategy, is the best I can think right now :)

>
> For these reasons (as mentioned on the marketing list) an
> Activity/pedagogical focus is a safe bet.

I agree.

Unfortunately our Turtle Art Day
> PR flopped because publication of the Spanish PR was delayed by two days
> (technical bottleneck which I very much hope we will be able to solve). The
> PR will however fulfill its role of background for interested journalists
> (www.sugarlabs.org/press). I haven't expected any wider press coverage for
> some time now, since we don't have any easy-to-try products available and
> OLPC's press communications are meant to imply that laptops are out and the
> Android tablet is in, leaving Sugar in limbo. An easy installation & use
> procedure for Sugar on Android or the Raspberry Pi could have major press
> impact, but I don't know how near or far we are from those.
>

Even if we install Sugar in a RasperryPi, this solve the testing for hobbyists,
is not a solution for schools or kids.

> The upcoming TA Days and internationalization work grant will give us ample
> opportunity to mention the release, but we need to know where we are going
> if we hope to get a message out on that topic.
>

I agree. We need focus our (few) resources, thing strategically, and
have a consistent
message and development.

Gonzalo


> Sean

[1] http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/edu/index.html
[2] http://www.google.com/edu/android/


>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 12:34 AM, Gonzalo Odiard <gonzalo en laptop.org> wrote:
>>
>> One topic to add could be do a PR about our recent sugar 0.100 release.
>>
>> Gonzalo
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender en gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > We have a SLOB meeting scheduled for Monday, 4 November at 9AM EST
>> > (2PM GMT). Please join us on irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting
>> > (chat.sugarlabs.org)
>> >
>> > Tenemos una reunión SLOB programada para el lunes, 4 de noviembre a 09
>> > a.m. EST (14:00 GMT). Por favor, únase a nosotros en irc.freenode.net
>> > #-sugar-meeting (chat.sugarlabs.org)
>> >
>> > Topics:
>> >
>> > (1) election
>> > (2) ambassadors
>> > (3) tech/learning meetups
>> > (4) status of Trip Advisor grant
>> > (5) Google Code In
>> > (6) your topic here...
>> >
>> > -walter
>> >
>> > --
>> > Walter Bender
>> > Sugar Labs
>> > http://www.sugarlabs.org
>> > _______________________________________________
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