Local Labs

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Welcome to the Local Sugar Labs Project.

A local Sugar Lab would:

• Adapt the technology and pedagogy to an area's culture and resources (e.g, developing activities and content specific to a region)
• Help translate Sugar to the local language(s)
• Support Sugar deployments in area schools
• Create a local community devoted to the Sugar Labs principles, making Sugar more open and sustainable
• Provide for communication,between the local communities and the global Sugar Labs community
• Develop Local content and software that can be used not only for local purposes but also for the overall community

A distributed project—we chose to name Sugar Labs, plural deliberately—where there is a local sense of ownership and associated entrepreneurship feels like the right course for us as an organization. Sugar Labs "central" is the community itself, which would be responsible for setting clear goals and maintaining any necessary infrastructure needed by the project as a whole, while the regional labs would use the own means to make Sugar relevant to their local communities. But what is the "business model" for a successful Sugar Lab? It seems that some necessary conditions for success would be:

• A university connection as a local human resource
• A local pilot user group from which to learn
• A local passion or sub-goal that provides a rational for the work
• Bi-directional communication with the global Sugar community and other Sugar Labs
• A sustainable and well-defined entrepreneurship model
• A program to reach out to local free-software community and local industry

What are other considerations? And are these initial "conditions" correct? Your input would be of great value to our efforts. Please join the discussion.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Good source of self sustaining revenue.
• Two-way feedback and development of Sugar

Cons

• Would SL directly engaging in work-for-hire cause a conflict of interest with our members and partners

Questions for Sugarlabs

• One consideration is that developing-world governments often give undue weight to credentials. What can Sugar Labs offer in that regard? A formal process to become a "Sugar Labs Associate" might be helpful, even if it consists of tasks which most volunteers perform naturally.