[sugar] Sugar Labs introduction

[Yamandu Ploskonka]

<snip>
David Farning wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 4:17 PM, Sebastian Silva
> <sebastian at fuentelibre.org> wrote:
>   
>> My research question has been "¿how to jumpstart an ecosystem?"
>>     
>> Hernan Pachas from the ministry, and I offer to organize volunteers
>> for support and training, etc. At the time, they had their hands full
>> LiveCD in spanish for download. Alas, as yama puts it, I was "nobody",
>> so we were left out of helping out in the deployment and were pointed
>> to "boring" (but important) stuff like translating the wiki. This was
>> very frustrating and I will not make this mistake again. This is not
>> to say we wont translate - its part of our mission too.
>>     

Standard procedure seems to be everywhere point volunteers to work no 
one wants (like cleaning up the mess, etc)

lesson for us:  See volunteers differently, point them to "fun stuff".

In successful volunteer-dependent organizations (I've been with Scouting 
and YMCA for several generations), you choose your volunteer coordinator 
as carefully as you choose your CEO, and pay him better than pretty much 
anyone else - often he is the only one who actually gets paid...

>> Now back to the point, Regional SugarLabs. I investigated the Ubuntu
>> LoCoTeam "model" if there is such a thing. I found none, sorry to say,
>> only a Howto describing very crude "how to run a team" and "what a
>> team can do". It does not go into the relation to the mission a local
>>     
> There is nothing in the LoCo team documentation about how to run a
> successful Local Lab.  Because, no one know how yet:)  It is still an
> unsolved problem.  Hence, my approach to Local Labs is to make them as
> autonomous as possible.   Over the next several months and years a set
> of best pratices, adjusted for cultural differences, will develop.
>   

Yama calls community building  an "art", precisely because it doesn't 
seem to fit into "how-to" manual models.  Maybe people who get 
communities running don't read manuals, don't write manuals?  different 
skill sets?  Or maybe it is a good thing, that because communities are 
organic things they can be dealt with only by organic things, not by 
something inherently dead, as a manual?

Best-practices list is a good start.  I'll check with my pals at YMCA, 
ACA, Scouts

>> Regional SugarLabs should be highly autonomous, carry their own
>> identity and mission (which should significantly overlap or include
>> central sugarlabs's mission). They should agree on similar set of
>> values / principles and also joint set of goals. We just want to be
>> "community centers", nodes in a network, not "Regional Offices".
>> Basically this means recognition as local partners and ability to
>> collect donations for our efforts. The reason for this perhaps is
>> obvious: ¿How are we to expect peer recognition if our own structure
>> is vertical?
>>     
>
> Yes, I agree and am pushing for autonomy!  My goal is for Local Labs
> to become the key component of Sugar Labs.  Once we get the initial
> Local Labs setup.  I am guessing that the Local Labs will have 10
> times as many activate participants as the upstream Sugar Labs.
>   
+1