- Embrace Support as explicit strategy
More than an afterthought, more than usability hunches, and rather in
the footsteps of Greg Smith and the 200+ support volunteers I decided
to recruit starting in December 2007. Let's expand the mandate of Sugar
Labs into the treacherous world of supportive support, and friendly
documentation -- where Quality feeds on itself, when users and volunteers
are all tired of being users -- and help each other get back to learning.
- Crack Open Volunteerism & Mentoring
Far beyond Sugar's existing developer constituency, eg:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program
We must all Renew Our Message, and focus on people who are natural
"connectors" building a Community Projects Platform that invites gradual
engagement and commitment -- and avoid scaring away our most loyal &
resourceful grandparents unfamiliar with irc! Participatory
communities need sunlight, water and modern tools; a majestic forest
will come. Organized Community Mentoring within OLPC Contributors
Program (which I overhauled earlier this year thanks to a dedicated
team of volunteers) has proved instrumental to this end.
Vividly illustrating how learning with Sugar might make their jobs
easier, building lifelong Bricolage dreams in their kids, eg:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ClassActs/Resources
I will work with the Red Hat-inspired http://teachingopensource.org
initiative (join me for Toronto's Summit Oct 29-30) to match techie
teachers with non-techie teachers to establish this critical social fabric.
Building a movement around diverse Grassroots Innovation means learning
from our failures. While I prefer the word Adoption to Deployment,
XO/Sugar supporters spontaneously came together with me Sept 6-11
in Washington DC (with zero funding) to prove This Can Work!
- Bring Budgetary Authority to Sugar Labs from OLPC, and Others
Our business is kids but our management must be adult if scalability is
to be realized. Credibility does not come overnight, and is even
harder to establish in the funding battles of the non-profit world--
but the time is now...
- Build Relationships around our Human Mission
Nurtured by the expressivity of the telephone and the facetime of
local groups, when digital immigrants need months to learn wiki/irc
culture. Community leadership means reducing "male" conflict,
and increasing "female" active listening -- greatly deepening our
culture of free speech and critique. Not a testosterone culture
of "free screech" scaring away earnest contributors. But a genuinely
Free and Open tolerance, marching forward into globalization every
day, driven by more quiet consciences than will ever send us email.
- Cross-fertilize Sugar/OLPC Local Labs
Gratuitous travel exhausts our earth's vanishing resources. But I
paid for several trips around North America and Europe over the
past 2 years for a reason -- to lay these seeds. Now we can move
our community-building beyond cultivating hobbyists into a learning
organization, willing to both negotiate large contracts and
decentralize delegated empowerment, accept other learning cultures
with different curricular construction kits. Washington DC is a
perfect example: building Sugar/XO synergies with deployment
expertise, physical XO libraries, a grassroots repair shop, monthly
talks and a sophisticated network of nearby computer clubhouses.
Similarly, I will be working hard with Mike Lee to seed a multitalented
Sugar/OLPC group this fall in NY City, starting October 18th if
you can hopefully join! EG. The volunteer repair centers
I coordinate worldwide for OLPC can now grow into a much stronger
network with proper Care And Feeding.
- Now is the time to build a Broad-Based 21st Century Learning Movement
I will substantially widen the spectrum of communications between
Sugars Labs and OLPC to help pave the way for Sustainability over
the coming decade, open to all meaningful partnerships, while always
protecting our organic grassroots. This will not be easy, but the
lifelong friends I've made over the last 2 years in the OLPC/Sugar
community will make this possible. Kids need healthy families to
explore their worlds, not tabloid divorces, to advocate for
1 billion small-but-growing brains on this planet. Sugar Labs and
OLPC owe it to the world's children to similarly mature into
responsible, playful, lifelong parents! Even if not always loved :)