Sugar Labs/Volunteer Funnel

The Volunteer Pathway

We believe that new volunteers typically follow a path similar to the following:

Become aware of Sugar
Find Sugar
Try and successfully use Sugar
Decide that Sugar is "sweet", i.e., valuable for education, interesting, etc.
Understand that Sugar is a Community Project supported by volunteers
Have an initial engagement with the Community
Want to help, or at least, Be There for Sugar
Become part of a Task/Team/Group or get a mentor
Successfully complete a task
Contribute ideas, take more responsibility, provide leadership, help others, etc.

Examples of contributing ideas, taking responsibility, and providing leadership include:

Edit the wiki
Test an Activity
Pilot at a school
Mentor a student
Maintain an Activity
Develop core software
Create lesson plans and align with standards
Create training materials and manuals
Coordinate Sugar presence at conferences or running Sugar Camps
Write blogs, press releases, or articles about Sugar
Write grant proposals

How to improve at each step

Become Aware of Sugar and Finding Sugar

Our Marketing Team is working on this with press releases, etc.

Try and successfully use Sugar

Our Development Team is working on this by making Sugar on a Stick more robust. We also need to keep working on installation instructions and different and every easier ways to get it working on different hardware platforms.

Decide Sugar is Sweet

Our goal is to have story telling work, video and main website should all support people understanding how Sugar is used in education and why its different and better for 5-12 year old learners.

A concrete action is to add the Help Activity back into Sugar on a Stick so that people can easily find the manual etc.

Understand that Sugar is a Community Project supported by volunteers

It is probably not obvious to first time Sugar users that its not another commercial project. We want to add info the Help Activity to let people know its a Community Project.