2016 Goals

The following is a DRAFT, that will eventually be presented to the Sugar Labs Oversight Board at a regularly scheduled monthly meeting as a motion to approve it for the year.

Your edits are welcome!

You may also enjoy the Vision proposal 2016 page

TODO: convert this structured list into a spreadsheet (and then back into a wiki table with http://marianogappa.github.io/mediawiki-table-utility) with cols for who/when/etc

Software Goals

• to successfully complete our six GSoC projects;
• to make two releases of Sugar, one in February (0.108) and one in October (0.110);
  • to package 0.110 for Fedora and Debian;
  • to check all activities on github work with the 0.110 release, and ensure their activity.info file is current;
  • to check that all activities work well on the XO-1;
  • to make a release video, similar to the release video for 0.106;
• to allow Sugar Activities to run outside Sugar;
  • on GNOME/KDE/XFCE and other free desktops;
  • on Android with python-for-android;
  • on ChromeOS;
    • with Crouton;
    • with broadway;
  • on Windows;
  • on Mac OS X;
• to port more Activities to Sugarizer, the web-based version of Sugar;
• to port all Activities from PyGTK+3 to PyQt (docs);
• to port all Activities and Sugar from Python 2 to Python 3;
• to localize the activities/games that were produced in collaboration with the children of the Seed-Programmers Workshop+SugarCamp in Chía (La ciudad de la luna ;) Colombia in 2014;
• to make "Sugar On A Stick" into "Sugar Local Lab On A Stick," so that sugar communities without active/direct internet connections can do more to self-support themselves, and eventually upload what they have back to the central repos;
• to make Sugarizer self-translatable, and via sugar-web thus make sugar desktop self-translatable;
• to complete the documentation of the Sugar toolkit;
• to consolidate all active development to Github (see Infrastructure Team/Migrating to GitHub);
  • to transfer the repositories of all of the core Sugar activities to github.com/sugarlabs, and set Gitorious read-only;
  • to transfer the issue tracking from bugs.sugarlabs.org to github.com/sugarlabs, and set Trac read-only;
  • to transfer the development discussions from sugar-devel to the issue tracker, and set the list read-only;
• to measure Sugar against the LF CII Best Practices (https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/ + www-sugarlabs#47);
• Improve ASLO (which is by far the most important web service of Sugar Labs according to http://stats.sugarlabs.org/);
  • to link each activity entry to its github repo;
  • to tag each activity entry with the releases that it is known to work with;
  • to identify each activity entry as working/unavailable for each version of the XO;
  • to update each activity to use the cpu architecture and sugar toolkit version detection (in newer releases) to ensure there is is a single canonical version of each activity;
• to ensure all Sugar Labs services are running the latest versions;
• change the UI font to noto;
• to update the Sugar HIG;
• to develop a better Activity for creating Activities, with features from Bret Victor's essays, like https://atom.io/packages/hydrogen;
• to improve support for touch only based interfaces (e.g. virtual keyboard support);
• to revisit original Sugar design goals and see if any are able move forward (overlay chat, bulletin board, Journal object vs action view, Journal versioning UI, etc);
• to gather feedback and usage information from real users to improve the design loop;
• to sign all commits on core repos (details);
• to have all github members use 2-factor authentication;
• to have an activity for qb64 (LGPL) which per http://www.nicolasbize.com/blog/30-years-later-qbasic-is-still-the-best/ is the best for very young kids (7 years) to learn code with typing;
  • to have an activity for https://github.com/antirez/load81;
• review http://www.hackety.com/questions for UX ideas;
• to add a simple www.lowband.org integration into Browse;
• to curate ASLO;
• to set up a matrix of VirtualBox prebuilt Sugar VMs, perhaps in partnership with Oracle;
• [your goal here]

Organization Goals

• to fully staff all boards, offices, and committees;
• to make XO-4s—the machine we aspired to build at OLPC in 2006 is available as the XO-4 laptop—available from us pre-installed with the 2016 release of Sugar individually or in batches of 20+ with 1+ school server units, so any developer can get one conveniently and any classroom-sized group anywhere can become a Local Lab with almost "1 click" like convenience if they have $X to put down;
• to make a release event for the 0.110 release;
  • to track the event with https://github.com/OpenTechStrategies/streetcrm;
  • to hold a "new contributor day" event, at which the experienced contributors meet with the newcomers and, together, work through the new-contributor documentation that the experienced folks themselves have written. That lets the two communities work together, and it lets the experienced coders see firsthand what struggles the new contributors encounter—including, notably, where the new-contributor documentation is falling short. Having "onboarding" documentation was important, and equally important is to encourage bug reports and patches to that documentation from new contributors as they work through it (edited from lwn);
  • to screen the "Web" documentary (as OLPC SF Summit 2015 did, reference);
• to find and develop as a reference a new laptop for kids with;
  • required attributes
    • a 10" screen and larger keyboard than the XO, so adults can use it too (similar to the 10" macbook pro from around 2004, or many 10" chromebooks today)
    • zero proprietary software (in bios, firmware, drivers, soundcard, wifi, graphics card, etc) such that it becomes FSF endorsed;
  • desirable attributes
    • rugged casing
    • low power consumption
    • sunlight-readable screen (as found in the XO and nowhere else)
• to offer github.com/sugarlabs organization membership as a 'badge of honor' similar to the old certificates;
• to clean up all Sugar Labs websites, starting with the wiki and issue tracker;
  • to provide a step-by-step guide on the homepage website to setting up a 2016 vintage deployment device—one that can be purchased in quantities of 30+ for under $100 each—that covers where to buy them, how install Sugar on all of them at the time of deployment, how to get connected to the net with devices like https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B017CZWBBG/ and http://outernet.is/;
  • to find out and document on the site why past deployments moved away from Sugar Desktop;
  • to find out and document on the site why potential deployments did not choose to adopt Sugar Desktop (reference);
  • to show the finances on the website. https://github.com/NYCComptroller/Checkbook might be relevant, and also https://github.com/OpenTechStrategies/anvil which wraps ledger-cli which Conservancy uses at the moment. (Conservancy also started a replacement - http://npoacct.sfconservancy.org/ - but per this discussion it has stalled out.);
  • to update https://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/ (see http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2015-May/003859.html);
• to successfully apply for Sugar to be listed in https://education.github.com/pack;
• to consolidate libre licensed books about Sugar;
  • port http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sdenka_Salas_-_The_XO_Laptop_in_the_Classroom to our site;
  • port https://www.gitbook.com/book/icarito/physics-with-xo/details to our site;
  • liberate the Learning To Change The World text, and write a new and more detailed history of Sugar (reference) starting with User:Walter/Fueling Learning With Sugar;
• to raise funds
  • to develop a supporting members list, by making a 'super list' with as many possible members as possible, such as from Special:LastUserLogin (admins only) and mailman and Sugar_Labs/Members/List;
  • to make persistent quarterly attempts to contact members until they pay a membership donation, ask for a membership bursary so they don't have to pay the fee personally, or explain why they don't want to make a donation;
  • to develop an affiliate members list, and a sponsors list (similar to https://opensource.org/node/816);
  • to find out of US DoE funding for Open Education is available (reference);
  • to successfully apply to Y Combinator (reference), Knight Foundation grants, and NSF/USAID grant;
  • to put all grant application/approval documents (drafts and final copies) on the wiki;
  • to ask Project Instigators for monthly updates;
  • (more ideas in https://titanpad.com/SLFC);
• to run a joyful election for the 2017 board;
  • to deploy a SL instance of the https://dem.tools Elections app (https://github.com/nditech/elections) or https://github.com/OpenTechStrategies/openstv, or if our own voting tool is not ready in time, use http://civs.cs.cornell.edu again (reference) ;
  • to get an accurate list of active members. There are some 'ambient' lists of members - eg, the wiki's usernames list, the total of all emails subscribed to all mailing lists - and then the list at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Members/List is and the subset of that at https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Members/Survey2015 - However, this subset is unreliable, so we'll develop a 'super list' with as many possible members as possible, and then make persistent attempts to contact them until they show they are active members.
• to run a local labs 2016 survey (see Marketing_Team/Local_Labs_Survey_2016 and Oversight_Board/Deployment_Survey_2015);
• to host the http://turtleartday.org website (see thread);
• to implement specific outreach strategies for:
  • homeschool/unschool parents/families;
  • families with children on the autism spectrum;
  • montessori private/charter schools;
  • regular private/charter schools;
  • regular state schools;
    • to create detailed guides describing how Sugar can be integrated with 1 US state curriculum, derived from work Claudia and Mellisa did for OLPC-A;
  • regular state school districts;
    • to solicit the requirements that 1 school district has to deploy Sugar (such as any tweaks to the software that they require);
  • (This theconversation article is a helpful lead in this direction)
• to work with OLPC Inc. to:
  • get an end-of-life schedule for each XO model, either privately or publicly;
  • get their lesson plans for Sugar, either privately or publicly;
  • remove everyone from http://one.laptop.org/about/people that is no longer involved in the project;
  • chat with each person who is actively involved in 2016 about what they are doing and what they would like to see changed in Sugar;
  • align their roadmap with ours;
• to find a large organization to champion usage of Sugar, and be a willing reference when other organizations ask about using it to find a 2nd large org;
• to flush the ASLO update/new activities queue every week;
• to hold a Sugar Summit in October/November;
• to develop a marketing strategy, based on http://www.mail-archive.com/marketing%40lists.sugarlabs.org/msg01515.html;
  • to develop a social media strategy, based on http://www.mail-archive.com/marketing%40lists.sugarlabs.org/msg00974.html;
  • to sign up for https://www.google.com/nonprofits/account/signup/us?hl=en and then https://www.google.com/grants/ to run an AdWords campaign (currently blocked on Conservancy);
• to provide access to the Pratham StoryWeaver books (See thread "Re: [UKids] Fwd: [IAEP] StoryWeaverp");
• to make a Sugar-branded enclosure for Raspberry Pi 3, distributed through the RPi partner network;
• to clean up Sugar Labs/Teams;
• to list consultancies that can offer commercial support, as recommended by http://lwn.net/Articles/689596/;
• to list critiques of OLPC and Sugar Labs and summarise the actionable recommendations;
  • https://www.scribd.com/document/33505402/Has-the-non-profit-business-model-adopted-by-One-Laptop-Per-Child-hindered-its-success;
  • [list more here];
• to move from IRC (and perhaps the mailing lists) to a mattermost instance;
• to set up https://botbot.me/irc-guide/ in the sugar-meeting channel
• [your goal here]