Re: [IAEP] SoaS install instructions on wiki
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 19:30, Dennis Danielsdennisgdani...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not the target market for SoaS but I am a teacher and I know a little Linux and run Fedora11 and Ubuntu9.04 and XP. I hope to one day build a networked SoaS lab from used computers and teach Scratch and etc to my students. Install instructions for SoaS are a bit of a mess. Here is a page I wrote trying to follow installation instructions exactly from Ubuntu 9.04, with screencasts: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/One_tester%27s_attempt_at_installing_SoaS I spent 90 minutes doing my best to do as instructed but ended with failure. Teachers normally don't put in that kind of effort on strange technologies. I was not successful in my attempt to install SoaS on a USB stick even with support from the Sugar irc (which most users of Sugar/teachers don't use). This makes clears instructions on installation pages on the wiki all the more valuable. My request is simple: Sugar people please review the SoaS installation instructions for your distro on the Sugar labs wiki and try to follow the instructions exactly as written, as I did, to install Sugar on a USB stick and rewrite/clarify/document where possible. As my efforts to install failed, I'm not the best person to write about how it's done. I agree that the instructions need to be reduced to a minimum that works in as many situations as possible. Other linux distros have this same problem and we can see how they expose the main path and then the secondary ones. Comments/ corrections/criticism welcome. With thanks to all for the generous support of the past and future! Dennis p.s. I would recommend that the Sugar project make a little more effort to get Ubuntu users who represent 4x as many users as Fedora (http://counter.li.org/reports/machines.php). Getting Ubuntu people to play more with Sugar would seem to be good for the project and for development. I do know that Sugar has a very close relationship with Fedora. Well, it's more that the Sugar project is composed by whoever does stuff with Sugar and to date the members of the Ubuntu community have been more interested in using Sugar than supporting it in their distro. That said, some members of the Sugar community have bitten the bullet and done packages that allow Sugar run on Ubuntu. Aleksey's packages: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Community/Distributions/Ubuntu#Using_sugar_PPAs And I also have heard of some other people working on this same problem. I would love to hear the status of those other efforts. Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Possible introductory lab
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 21:51, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Just want to bring two groups together for a quick idea. The two groups are Sugar Labs[1] and teaching open source[2]. On the TOS list we have seen a little bit of traffic about a course and co-op program the Rochester Institute of Technology offered last fall and will offer again this spring. One of the ideas that I have been trying to wrap my head around is how to provide a meaningful experience working with 'the community' in a very brief 10 week course. The first challenge is how to engage the students in the community. This doesn't look too hard. There appear to be several assignments or labs which can break the ice. The harder challenge is how to engage the community with the students. As a general rule in organizations which are volunteer based, it can be hard to get the attention of existing community members until one has something useful to offer. _Many_ newbie questions go unanswered. I have been looking at bug reporting as the initial communication channel. Once existing community members see a couple of high quality bug coming from someone they are much more willing to listen and help. But, filling good bug reports takes skill, practice, and experience. I think it's also important to note that questions can be well put and wrongly put. I use to ignore questions that indicates that the person is not putting as much effort in formulating the question as it requires for me to answer, because that usually ends up with me losing lots of time and the other person not getting what expected. Might be a good idea pointing them to here from the start: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html Since watching a Sugar on a Stick[3] release meeting this morning, I have been wondering about using a smoke test[4] as an introduction to a specific project. I am using OLPC and Sugar as examples, but any other project would work just as well. The idea would be for students to immerse themselves in a project by running through and reporting on a number of standard smoke test. For example when working with Sugar Labs a student might run through a series of tests which include: 1. Following a list of steps to create a SoaS USB key. 2. Boot their computer from the stick. 3. Log into sugar. 4. Test one or two activities. 5. Connect to server. 6. Test collaboration. 7. Provide feedback on 1-6 As a result of the session, the student would have a general understanding of a particular project, they would have interacted with 'the community' via established channels, and they would have started building their reputation as contributors. This sounds like a good idea to me. Regards, Tomeu david 1. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Welcome_to_the_Sugar_Labs_wiki 2. http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Main_Page 3. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick 4. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/1_hour_smoke_test ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Assessment in Karma
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 3:14 AM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: We mostly assess that which can easily be measured rather than that which relates to the important education outcomes. Yes. We mostly assess that which can be easily measured _by humans_. Imagine how it goes when we narrow that to the paltry bit that computers can assess... and computers spit out cute, glowing 3D rendered numbers. Bad practice is already entrenched in national curricula, does automating bad practice (lower order assessment) mean that it can be done in less time, leaving more time for good practice, or does it further entrench bad practice? That seems to be the central point in this discussion. I don't have an answer, but for me, automating lower order assessments would be a low priority project. I agree with your take on the discussion. But we don't automate bad practice, we make it narrower, hence worse. What we can automate is so narrow that the big numbers that come out of a tiny slice of it will overshadow everything. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Assessment in Karma
Hello Tony, thanks a lot for your comment which is definitely some more great food for thought (on top of Martin's earlier comments). I'll have to spend more time thinking about this issue and, more importantly, talking to the educational folks here at OLE Nepal before I can start to wrap my head around this... Thanks, Christoph fors...@ozonline.com.au schrieb: Hi We mostly assess that which can easily be measured rather than that which relates to the important education outcomes. Lower order skills as defined in Blooms Taxonomy, simple recall, rather than understanding and creating. So far its OK, an understandable response to the realities. We then measure the effectiveness of education by these assessments. Teachers and students then concentrate on the learning which is more easily assessable. From generation to generation we are all embedded in this system and come to believe that that which is assessed is the goal of education. Bad practice is already entrenched in national curricula, does automating bad practice (lower order assessment) mean that it can be done in less time, leaving more time for good practice, or does it further entrench bad practice? That seems to be the central point in this discussion. I don't have an answer, but for me, automating lower order assessments would be a low priority project. Tony On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 3:58 AM, Bryan Berrybr...@olenepal.org wrote: I agree that automatic assessment is no magic cure-all but it does free teachers from a lot of drudgery in grading worksheets. I understand your point, and respect your good intentions. I worry -- quite a bit -- about the outcome however... Teachers should be grading student essays not arithmetic exercises or vocabulary exercises. What I worry is that once we automated arithmetic exercises, they'll focus on that... as you say We especially need automatic assessment for contexts where teachers don't have time to grade homework, like Nepal, India, Pakistan, etc. So they don't have time for either. We automate one, and the fact that we provide easy to get, easy to use grades takes over. They still don't have time for essays. [ The sad thing I find is that they *will* find time to make pretty graphs of the paltry numbers they get. The graphs make the teacher look good and in control. ] I think that Karma is approaching from a much different vantage point than teachers in the developed world do. We are not looking to capture excellence but rather diagnose if kids are having trouble with basic skills and give kids instant feedback rather than make them wait a week to get their graded homework back, if it ever comes back. John Hattie, in pretty developed NZ, has done a lot of work on that exact track (early diagnosis of kids falling behind on basics and instant feedback). Hence Asttle. Maybe I am a luddite and it'll happen anyway. Hmmm. m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep _ This mail has been virus scanned by Australia On Line see http://www.australiaonline.net.au/mailscanning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Christoph Derndorfer co-editor, olpcnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: christ...@olpcnews.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] organisational task list
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 3:52 AM, Tomeu Vizosoto...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 04:22, Walter Benderwalter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe a slobs meeting a week from Friday? Is that next friday? the 28th, at 14:00 UTC? Regards, Tomeu -walter On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 4:02 PM, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hey all, I am heading back home after my vacation and am trying to plan the next couple of months. As such, I would appreciate help identifying and prioritising organisational tasks. 1. Slobs elections. 2. Trademark policy. 3. Establish engineering steering committee. 4. SugarCamp. 5. Deployment Team outreach. david ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ SLOBs mailing list sl...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/slobs -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] organisational task list
+1 On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Walter Benderwalter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 3:52 AM, Tomeu Vizosoto...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 04:22, Walter Benderwalter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe a slobs meeting a week from Friday? Is that next friday? the 28th, at 14:00 UTC? Regards, Tomeu -walter On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 4:02 PM, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hey all, I am heading back home after my vacation and am trying to plan the next couple of months. As such, I would appreciate help identifying and prioritising organisational tasks. 1. Slobs elections. 2. Trademark policy. 3. Establish engineering steering committee. 4. SugarCamp. 5. Deployment Team outreach. david ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ SLOBs mailing list sl...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/slobs -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] newspapers
An interesting advance from our friends at FLOSS Manuals On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 2:34 AM, adam hydea...@flossmanuals.net wrote: hey just a heads up...fm has now got a beta objavi (new as of a few days ago) that supports multi-column output for newspaper printing...we are testing it now, but i thought maybe it could be interesting as a target output of the forthcoming sugar sprint u guys are organising - newsprint is very cheap to print and can be done locally wherever a press exists so that there is no need to ship books etc...could be good format for textbooks... In January we got some requests about printing the Sugar and XO manuals on newsprint by local presses. Looks like FM is make steady progress in that direction. david ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS as a Sugar Labs project.
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 11:22 PM, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Eclipse and Apache both have criteria for becoming a official Note that Apache's reason to run this Apache Projects is to _extend the legal protection shield to other projects_. If doesn't care one zot about what the resulting software _does_. And they only looked into that once they had their main mission (the webserver) pretty much cooked. I've advised several projects that wanted to do like apache, and once they understood what apache does, they did not want to do like apache no more :-) And also... and completely from the outside... I'll apologise in advance for saying something I know might be controversial. I worry that SL seems to have -- for a external party like me -- more bureaucracy than it has people doing. IMHExperience, the projects I enjoy working on, and that I see being productive have a much lower procedure/label/committe : contributor ratio. Boards, subprojects and such are good things to remember to do when a project gets big and tensions surface (aside from some specific things you want right from the start -- license, etc). This comment is not meant as a trolling attempt (though I fear it'll end up in tears). The core of what I am trying to say is: doing these things too early has some risks -- just off the top of my head - The FOSS version of being top-heavy, the distraction - Newcomers reading all these big names (board, procedures, the board blessing the SIG) and getting the wrong idea about the project -- this can discourage the go-getters that like get-it-done environments. - Fostering armchair quarterbackers (like yours truly right now :-/ ) and endless bickering (hmm! debian-legal) -- these are attracted to big name and big infra projects. I really like GregDek's line: I would avoid elections for as long as possible. Vote with your work. Time for me to shut up. From now on I assume you know about these risks, and won't mention the topic in polite company no more. After all, I am not working my ass off on SL, you are. Thanks for your patience :-) m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS as a Sugar Labs project.
I agree that there is a tension between trying to set everything up the way it should be when its fully grown and setting up the expectation that there is more reality there then there is. I worry a lot about over promising and setting too high of expectations for Sugar on a Stick currently. I worry about making it too complicated for people who want to get involved. I wonder what the harm would be in waiting 6 months to do this. But I also worry about getting distracted from the huge amount of work I need to do to get ready for school by bureaucracy. So basically I'm not going to fight you on this. If those of you who have time to think about it really want to do this I'm not going to put any energy into fighting it and I'll deal with whatever happens. On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.comwrote: On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 11:22 PM, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Eclipse and Apache both have criteria for becoming a official Note that Apache's reason to run this Apache Projects is to _extend the legal protection shield to other projects_. If doesn't care one zot about what the resulting software _does_. And they only looked into that once they had their main mission (the webserver) pretty much cooked. I've advised several projects that wanted to do like apache, and once they understood what apache does, they did not want to do like apache no more :-) And also... and completely from the outside... I'll apologise in advance for saying something I know might be controversial. I worry that SL seems to have -- for a external party like me -- more bureaucracy than it has people doing. IMHExperience, the projects I enjoy working on, and that I see being productive have a much lower procedure/label/committe : contributor ratio. Boards, subprojects and such are good things to remember to do when a project gets big and tensions surface (aside from some specific things you want right from the start -- license, etc). This comment is not meant as a trolling attempt (though I fear it'll end up in tears). The core of what I am trying to say is: doing these things too early has some risks -- just off the top of my head - The FOSS version of being top-heavy, the distraction - Newcomers reading all these big names (board, procedures, the board blessing the SIG) and getting the wrong idea about the project -- this can discourage the go-getters that like get-it-done environments. - Fostering armchair quarterbackers (like yours truly right now :-/ ) and endless bickering (hmm! debian-legal) -- these are attracted to big name and big infra projects. I really like GregDek's line: I would avoid elections for as long as possible. Vote with your work. Time for me to shut up. From now on I assume you know about these risks, and won't mention the topic in polite company no more. After all, I am not working my ass off on SL, you are. Thanks for your patience :-) m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS as a Sugar Labs project.
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 20:58, Martin Langhoffmartin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 11:22 PM, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Eclipse and Apache both have criteria for becoming a official Note that Apache's reason to run this Apache Projects is to _extend the legal protection shield to other projects_. If doesn't care one zot about what the resulting software _does_. And they only looked into that once they had their main mission (the webserver) pretty much cooked. I've advised several projects that wanted to do like apache, and once they understood what apache does, they did not want to do like apache no more :-) And also... and completely from the outside... I'll apologise in advance for saying something I know might be controversial. I worry that SL seems to have -- for a external party like me -- more bureaucracy than it has people doing. IMHExperience, the projects I enjoy working on, and that I see being productive have a much lower procedure/label/committe : contributor ratio. Boards, subprojects and such are good things to remember to do when a project gets big and tensions surface (aside from some specific things you want right from the start -- license, etc). This comment is not meant as a trolling attempt (though I fear it'll end up in tears). The core of what I am trying to say is: doing these things too early has some risks -- just off the top of my head - The FOSS version of being top-heavy, the distraction - Newcomers reading all these big names (board, procedures, the board blessing the SIG) and getting the wrong idea about the project -- this can discourage the go-getters that like get-it-done environments. - Fostering armchair quarterbackers (like yours truly right now :-/ ) and endless bickering (hmm! debian-legal) -- these are attracted to big name and big infra projects. I really like GregDek's line: I would avoid elections for as long as possible. Vote with your work. Time for me to shut up. From now on I assume you know about these risks, and won't mention the topic in polite company no more. After all, I am not working my ass off on SL, you are. Thanks for your patience :-) I think your concerns are reasonable, but as long as we keep being an organization where people who want to do things are enabled to get them done, I don't think we are in such a bad position. If it comes the day when talkers remove power from doers, we'll need to worry about what you warn, but fortunately I don't see that coming any time soon. I see these discussions about what you call bureaucracy as actually fostering the doers, by giving their area of interest a concrete visibility and telling them to chose their tools, procedures and identity so they can better do their thing. Regards, Tomeu m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] What to report where - Was Re: Sugar on a Stick switches to a new Bug Tracker
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 17:38, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.comwrote: One question I have is how do I get alerted about Question and bug activity? I didn't see anywhere to set my email alerts. Well, you can subscribe to individual bugs and questions. For questions, we can set an answer contact (a group or individiual, usually the former) who will get mails about all new questions. For bugs, you can visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/soas/+subscribe (that's linked from the main soas bugs page as subscribe). For answers, you can visit https://answers.launchpad.net/soas/+answer-contact (that's linked from the main soas bug page as set answer contact) Re answers, I actually had to ask in #launchpad to find out, and the developers acknowledged that's completely unobvious and an awful name for such an option. They'll fix that and unify those options in 3.0. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS as a Sugar Labs project.
Hmmm, maybe I'm missing something, but isn't the idea of creating subprojects and projects an organisational thing that benefits everyone? I don't really see it being too beaurocratic unless it starts to become about tedious definitions. But if we are just saying, SoaS, Karma, and say Physics are all to become subprojects for organisational reasons... that seems fine, and might attract the doers as they will know what exactly is being worked on from a big picture perspective. I can imagine using subdomains for this stuff like: karma.sugarlabs.org or soas.sugarlabs.org These quicklinks could be great entry paths for eager devs or eager users. my 2 cents... David Van Assche On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 2:00 AM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.orgwrote: On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Tomeu Vizosoto...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 20:58, Martin Langhoffmartin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 11:22 PM, David Farningdfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Eclipse and Apache both have criteria for becoming a official Note that Apache's reason to run this Apache Projects is to _extend the legal protection shield to other projects_. If doesn't care one zot about what the resulting software _does_. And they only looked into that once they had their main mission (the webserver) pretty much cooked. I've advised several projects that wanted to do like apache, and once they understood what apache does, they did not want to do like apache no more :-) And also... and completely from the outside... I'll apologise in advance for saying something I know might be controversial. I worry that SL seems to have -- for a external party like me -- more bureaucracy than it has people doing. IMHExperience, the projects I enjoy working on, and that I see being productive have a much lower procedure/label/committe : contributor ratio. Boards, subprojects and such are good things to remember to do when a project gets big and tensions surface (aside from some specific things you want right from the start -- license, etc). This comment is not meant as a trolling attempt (though I fear it'll end up in tears). The core of what I am trying to say is: doing these things too early has some risks -- just off the top of my head - The FOSS version of being top-heavy, the distraction - Newcomers reading all these big names (board, procedures, the board blessing the SIG) and getting the wrong idea about the project -- this can discourage the go-getters that like get-it-done environments. - Fostering armchair quarterbackers (like yours truly right now :-/ ) and endless bickering (hmm! debian-legal) -- these are attracted to big name and big infra projects. I really like GregDek's line: I would avoid elections for as long as possible. Vote with your work. Time for me to shut up. From now on I assume you know about these risks, and won't mention the topic in polite company no more. After all, I am not working my ass off on SL, you are. Thanks for your patience :-) I think your concerns are reasonable, but as long as we keep being an organization where people who want to do things are enabled to get them done, I don't think we are in such a bad position. If it comes the day when talkers remove power from doers, we'll need to worry about what you warn, but fortunately I don't see that coming any time soon. FWIW, I do realize that for better or worse I am the biggest bureaucrat in the project. That is why I am not running for the oversight board this year. The control _should_ be in the hands of the doers; the deployers, translators, designers, developers If we continue to do our jobs correctly, this time next year the number of teachers, and content authors will start to outweigh the designers and developers. I see these discussions about what you call bureaucracy as actually fostering the doers, by giving their area of interest a concrete visibility and telling them to chose their tools, procedures and identity so they can better do their thing. This is the goal. But as Martin correctly points out, policies and rules come at a non-zero price, thus we must be careful that the benefits outweigh the costs. Why now? Usually I harp on focus and deliverable. But, just this once:) I urge you to take a break and unfocus. The current growth trajectory for Sugar Labs is pretty humbling. david ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Samuel Goldwynhttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/samuel_goldwyn.html - I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
