Marketing Team/Events/Sugarcamp Boston 2008/Feedback

Please add your thoughts inline on this page, and discuss on the Talk:Sugarcamp/Feedback page if you need to reach consensus on how to phrase a certain point. Thanks! Mchua 06:44, 23 November 2008 (UTC) (Original reflections are a collaboration by Bernie Innocenti, Walter Bender, Tomeu Vizoso, Marco Pesenti Gritti, Ben Schwartz, David Farning, Chris Ball, and Mel Chua.)

Awesome

 * It happened!
 * Lots of people came.
 * We met some extraordinary people.
 * We have some new partners now.
 * We had really nice meeting rooms.
 * The TurtleArt portfolio demo was cool!
 * The Infrastructure team got "unstuck."
 * Bringing people together created a lot of energy.
 * We actually can do this [run Sugarcamp]!
 * What we have now [in Sugar as a product] is better than what we admit.
 * We met existing volunteers.
 * We met new volunteers.
 * We got to hear very different points of view.
 * This week was inspiring!
 * We had fun people like Bernie and Yama.
 * We stepped forward on technical problems.
 * We met [Sugar] deployers like Caroline and Brendan.
 * We increased clarity about OLPC funding.
 * We got to spend time with colleagues.
 * We have a better definition of OLPC vs Sugar Labs responsibilities.
 * We got to resolve some issues in person [that we weren't able to resolve online].
 * We got a better picture of our social interactions.
 * Some people developed a lot as leaders this week, like Bernie stepping up to run Sugarcamp.
 * We got to see our own dysfunctional habits.
 * Ryan's speech about Sugar Labs solving a very hard problem that is "the future of computing" was inspiring.
 * Gregdek standing up and trying to get us all to work together was awesome.
 * The OLPC/Sugar Labs umbilical cord was cut.

Interesting

 * 15 hour days, 6 days in a row... cause people to break down
 * We need better organizers than me next time. (said by Bernie)
 * One week passes by very quickly!
 * Our sessions were conducted in a hybrid format between roundtables and conferences.
 * Our schedule was very dynamic.
 * There was a mix between OLPC and Sugar Labs discussions.
 * Walter was coding instead of listening during some sessions! (kidding)
 * This is actually the second Sugarcamp - the first was in Italy about 6 months ago.
 * We did not do much hacking.
 * Everyone was optimizing their own time during the conference; sometimes this meant not listening to the speaker [and working on their laptop or having side conversations instead].
 * "Useful for kids" is our equivalent of "Because I Said So." We say it when we don't want people to argue with us any more.
 * We focus when we make something together, like when we took notes together on the whiteboard.
 * Dfarning was a good cop.
 * If we fix the problem of long-distance collaborators participating in Sugarcamp, we'll also fix the problem of quiet people not talking.

Frustrating

 * Too many unfocused interruptions.
 * The schedule slipped due to untimed talks.
 * People escaped points of disagreements.
 * The pizza was unreliable.
 * Action items didn't come out of technical BS (brainstorms).
 * The OLPC roadmap session was frustrating because it didn't leverage the Sugar Labs community.
 * Few people were able to contribute.
 * The schedule changed a lot.
 * At the beginning of the week, there were some difficulties between people.
 * There was disrespect between some people.
 * Infinite arguments.
 * Some people still think there are "sides."
 * Premature optimization.
 * "Smartest kid in the room" syndrome (a.k.a. Apollo Syndrome)
 * Quiet people didn't talk because we didn't ask them what they thought.
 * Long distance collaborators had a hard time on the phone.
 * Seconded. As a remote participant, I found it was hard to get attention during sometimes heated conversation. It was hard to stay focussed. It was hard to know what was happening and when (schedule changes etc). --Morgs 14:43, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The relationship between OLPC and Sugar Labs remains unresolved.
 * We didn't go into details on why we get frustrated with each other.
 * Good ideas got interrupted by other good ideas.
 * Organizing this talk caused a lot of conflict within/with OLPC.

Possiblities

 * Create ongoing conference committee, and assign specific duties well before events (Conf. chair, venue, food, program, speakers, sponsors, A/V, moderators, funding,...)
 * Ask for use of World Bank teleconferencing network (80 locations around the world) [I have some experience with this--Mokurai 03:57, 24 November 2008 (UTC)]
 * Bigger conference with more people and multiple sessions divided into tracks (some selection from topics like Constructionism, Activities, Glucose, Health, Textbooks, Content, Localization, Translation, Outreach...)
 * Bring in teachers, researchers from education schools, subject matter experts, children!,...
 * Field trips to schools using XOs