Thanks to whoever made this happen:
Begin forwarded message:
Squeak 4.1 features improved UI The H Version 4.1 of Squeak is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Unix from the project's FTP site. Squeak is released under a combination of ...
- Bert -
On 26.04.2010, at 20:01, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
Thanks to whoever made this happen:
Begin forwarded message:
Squeak 4.1 features improved UI The H Version 4.1 of Squeak is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Unix from the project's FTP site. Squeak is released under a combination of ...
Here's the link as text not HTML (some folks could not make sense of my message):
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Squeak-4-1-features-improved-UI-98652...
- Bert -
Bert,
It is not particularly difficult to have more media coverage provided that one has the right recipe. You already have a press release with main features and a download link and you could update it to include a screenshot (you can use the one I made [1], click on the image to get full screen). A screenshot makes everything more exciting. Then write to journalists in online news websites that you read. Don't forget to provide an email to reach the board for any further media enquiries. They like when everything is prepared for them because it's easy. :)
[1] http://mecenia.blogspot.com/2010/04/history-of-squeak-in-pictures.html
I'd like to additionally suggest to keep a page on the main Squeak website listing press coverage, link to our logo (Tim's PDF is best), screenshots, email for PR, etc.
Ian.
On 26.04.2010, at 20:58, Ian Trudel wrote:
Bert,
It is not particularly difficult to have more media coverage provided that one has the right recipe. You already have a press release with main features and a download link and you could update it to include a screenshot (you can use the one I made [1], click on the image to get full screen). A screenshot makes everything more exciting. Then write to journalists in online news websites that you read. Don't forget to provide an email to reach the board for any further media enquiries. They like when everything is prepared for them because it's easy. :)
[1] http://mecenia.blogspot.com/2010/04/history-of-squeak-in-pictures.html
I'd like to additionally suggest to keep a page on the main Squeak website listing press coverage, link to our logo (Tim's PDF is best), screenshots, email for PR, etc.
Ian.
Right. Would be awesome if someone could join Michael Davies on the news team to get broader coverage. As Ian wrote, it's not "particularly difficult" :)
- Bert -
"Bert" == Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de writes:
Bert> Right. Would be awesome if someone could join Michael Davies on Bert> the news team to get broader coverage. As Ian wrote, it's not Bert> "particularly difficult" :)
And remember, whatever ends up on news.squeak.org also gets read into the Industry Misinterpretations podcast, for an even broader coverage.
2010/4/26 Randal L. Schwartz merlyn@stonehenge.com:
"Bert" == Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de writes:
Bert> Right. Would be awesome if someone could join Michael Davies on Bert> the news team to get broader coverage. As Ian wrote, it's not Bert> "particularly difficult" :)
And remember, whatever ends up on news.squeak.org also gets read into the Industry Misinterpretations podcast, for an even broader coverage.
It's great to know! Randal, is there any additional steps taken to reach people outside Smalltalk communities?
Ian.
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 01:54:02PM -0700, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
"Bert" == Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de writes:
Bert> Right. Would be awesome if someone could join Michael Davies on Bert> the news team to get broader coverage. As Ian wrote, it's not Bert> "particularly difficult" :)
And remember, whatever ends up on news.squeak.org also gets read into the Industry Misinterpretations podcast, for an even broader coverage.
Randal,
I've started listening to these recently, and your "Squeak news" updates are very good. And I think the podcast is well named, there's plenty of misinterpretation going on ;-) Good fun to listen to it.
Dave
On 26 April 2010 22:25, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote:
Right. Would be awesome if someone could join Michael Davies on the news team to get broader coverage. As Ian wrote, it's not "particularly difficult" :)
- Bert -
If anybody is interested in helping out, please do step forward. I try to get one article published a week, but don't always succeed, so any help would be more than welcome, especially to ensure that we keep providing material for our regular slot in Industry Misinterpretations.
There really isn't anything tricky involved. I aim to write the articles so that readers unfamiliar with Squeak can understand what's going on and why it's of interest, and include enough links for them to find out more without too much effort. If an attractive or explanatory screenshot or other relevant image is available, that helps make the article more appealing. If I'm the first to blog about an item of news that should be of wider interest, I also submit it to appropriate news sites to try to drum up more interest.
Really, the activity that takes most time is finding the stories to write about, but if you're interested in Squeak development, that's the fun part!
Cheers, Michael D.
Hi Michael,
You have done very well on http://news.squeak.org/ ! This thread is about reaching a broader audience and especially outside Smalltalk communities.
Your premise is clear: one will find great news about Squeak __if they are interested in Squeak development__. This may exclude other Smalltalk communities and most likely entirely exclude the rest of the world.
Let's bring an hypothesis forth in such effect that most long time smalltalkers (5, 10, 20 years) use one dialect and stick to it. There will be very little compelling reasons for them to switch or contribute to Squeak. They are unlikely to be our target audience.
People who do not know about Smalltalk nor Squeak are unlikely to land on The Weekly Squeak website. Not even the Squeak webiste. As we say here, if people don't come to you, go to them. This is where a press release for the layman (or in the programming world) with screenshots and so on should come. Something to be sent to news site all around the globe. Some reporters will take on the story, some will not, but it's worth the try.
Summary: We need to raise "product awareness" (Squeak) around the world before hoping anybody will read The Weekly News or use Squeak.
Ian.
2010/4/27 Michael Davies mykdavies+squeak@gmail.com:
On 26 April 2010 22:25, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote:
Right. Would be awesome if someone could join Michael Davies on the news team to get broader coverage. As Ian wrote, it's not "particularly difficult" :)
- Bert -
If anybody is interested in helping out, please do step forward. I try to get one article published a week, but don't always succeed, so any help would be more than welcome, especially to ensure that we keep providing material for our regular slot in Industry Misinterpretations.
There really isn't anything tricky involved. I aim to write the articles so that readers unfamiliar with Squeak can understand what's going on and why it's of interest, and include enough links for them to find out more without too much effort. If an attractive or explanatory screenshot or other relevant image is available, that helps make the article more appealing. If I'm the first to blog about an item of news that should be of wider interest, I also submit it to appropriate news sites to try to drum up more interest.
Really, the activity that takes most time is finding the stories to write about, but if you're interested in Squeak development, that's the fun part!
Cheers, Michael D.
On 27 April 2010 22:29, Ian Trudel ian.trudel@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Michael,
You have done very well on http://news.squeak.org/ !
Thank you!
This thread is about reaching a broader audience and especially outside Smalltalk communities.
Your premise is clear: one will find great news about Squeak __if they are interested in Squeak development__. This may exclude other Smalltalk communities and most likely entirely exclude the rest of the world.
I think you have mis-read my post. I mentioned "interest in Squeak
development" as being an important quality for the writer, not for the audience. I tried to be clear that "I aim to write the articles so that readers unfamiliar with Squeak can understand what's going on and why it's of interest".
Let's bring an hypothesis forth in such effect that most long time smalltalkers (5, 10, 20 years) use one dialect and stick to it. There will be very little compelling reasons for them to switch or contribute to Squeak. They are unlikely to be our target audience.
People who do not know about Smalltalk nor Squeak are unlikely to land on The Weekly Squeak website. Not even the Squeak webiste. As we say here, if people don't come to you, go to them. This is where a press release for the layman (or in the programming world) with screenshots and so on should come. Something to be sent to news site all around the globe. Some reporters will take on the story, some will not, but it's worth the try.
Summary: We need to raise "product awareness" (Squeak) around the world before hoping anybody will read The Weekly News or use Squeak.
I absolutely agree with your summary, but I think it's only very infrequently that press releases will be the most productive way to do so.
If you want to promote the use of Squeak, you need to find people with a Squeak-shaped hole in their lives, help them recognise that the hole exists, convince them that Squeak can fill the hole, and make filling that hole as enjoyable as possible [note to self, never use this uncomfortable metaphor again].
To be honest, very little of what happens in Squeak is relevant to a wide audience. Some audiences can be identified though: some work at the VM level is of interest to computer scientists, some of the tools like Seaside can interest other developers, re-licensing discussions always agitate the Free Software community, but there are very few pieces of work like Etoys, Scratch, DrGeo that can excite a wider, less technical audience.
My opinion is that the audience that is easiest to bring to Squeak is the young enthusiastic CS students and developers that populate digg, Reddit, Hacker News, Slashdot, Stack Overflow and a plethora of other sites, and skim-read a hundred different RSS feeds. You don't gain their attention by issuing a press release, but by posting something "cool" that will get re-posted, linked and tweeted, and cause a horde of readers to visit your site. Admittedly most of them will go "huh", and carry on trying to finish reading the internet (though hopefully with a slightly better opinion of Squeak and Smalltalk), but maybe if they're bored and it's made a no-brainer process they'll download Squeak, and learn a bit more about it.
The new UI work and the increasing use of "one-click images" get rid of two of the obstacles that have put many of these casual browsers off trying Squeak; the ongoing work on in-image documentation will make it easier for them to work out what the hell they've just downloaded.
So, the missing piece is to attract this audience to Squeak in the first place - my advice would be "write blog posts". If you've applied an obscure algorithm to allow you to cut 10% off file access times, write a blog post explaining how you arrived at it; if there's a debate about how to implement system-wide menus, write a post describing the alternative approaches; if you've written a great Fizz-Buzz one-liner, blog about it; if you've written a Seaside application that uses the Flickr API to generate an HTML-5 crowd-sourced lolcat mashup, blog about it and watch your server collapse under the load.
And then tweet about it https://twitter.com/#search?q=%23squeak so we can all contribute information and correct misunderstandings in the discussions when it gets picked up on the main sites.
I need to go and lie down now, I've had a rush of Web 2.0 blood to the head.
Michael
On 28.04.2010, at 00:23, Michael Davies wrote:
The new UI work and the increasing use of "one-click images" get rid of two of the obstacles that have put many of these casual browsers off trying Squeak;
That caught my eye. How do people actually develop with "one-click images"? I mean, I came up with that concept in the first place, but it was meant for deploying applications, not for development. You can't even save the image under a different name. So while I see the appeal to people giving it a casual look, do you really think that should be the default download?
- Bert -
On 28 April 2010 01:06, Bert Freudenberg bert@freudenbergs.de wrote:
On 28.04.2010, at 00:23, Michael Davies wrote:
The new UI work and the increasing use of "one-click images" get rid of two of the obstacles that have put many of these casual browsers off trying Squeak;
That caught my eye. How do people actually develop with "one-click images"? I mean, I came up with that concept in the first place, but it was meant for deploying applications, not for development. You can't even save the image under a different name. So while I see the appeal to people giving it a casual look, do you really think that should be the default download?
- Bert -
The great thing about the one-click image is that it's such a powerful way to get people hooked. If you've got, say, a Mandelbrot generator that you want to show to people, it's great to be able to drop it into a one-click image, put it and an appealing image on your blog and say to the world "just download it and run it, it works identically on Windows, OS X and Linux, oh and if you want to understand how it works, the source code's included, oh and it's got a powerful development environment in there as well". People can then get a taste for the Squeak environment and perhaps explore the development tools without even caring that there's an "image" there. Once you've captured their interest and they start thinking about using Squeak themselves, they'll be more willing to put in that little bit of effort to understand what images and sources and changes and FFI and DLLs and VMs and changesets and mczs and packages all mean.
I wouldn't make a one-click image the default download that you're pointed to on squeak.org, but you question did make me think; perhaps there should be a "Taste of Squeak" one-click image based on the 4.1 release, with a few of the more appealing packages pre-installed - a combination of 4.1's un-threatening UI and in-image help, with some of Edgar's FunSqueak ideas could be really attractive.
2010/4/27 Michael Davies mykdavies+squeak@gmail.com:
Hi Michael,
Your premise is clear: one will find great news about Squeak __if they are interested in Squeak development__. This may exclude other Smalltalk communities and most likely entirely exclude the rest of the world.
I think you have mis-read my post. I mentioned "interest in Squeak development" as being an important quality for the writer, not for the audience. I tried to be clear that "I aim to write the articles so that readers unfamiliar with Squeak can understand what's going on and why it's of interest".
Thank you for the clarification. I am trying to figure out what kind of perspective our community has in regard to the outside world. It's difficult not to assume what I wrote when it has been written over and over that our community is self-serving. For the same reason there is little documentation, people rarely document things they have developed for themselves, why would we care about others. Right? ;)
Summary: We need to raise "product awareness" (Squeak) around the world before hoping anybody will read The Weekly News or use Squeak.
I absolutely agree with your summary, but I think it's only very infrequently that press releases will be the most productive way to do so.
What is your assessment based on? Simple solutions are sometimes the most effective. It's not about using press releases for every little thing: we have a shiny new release that can spark interest in a broader audience. The idea is first and foremost raising awareness.
Let's say a businessman reads an article about Squeak wherever he gets his news from. Then he may talk about this to his staff. Or, if his staff talks about Squeak to him, he knows about it. It's much harder to sell technologies to a boss if he doesn't know a thing about it.
I don't expect a miracle from press releases (and distribute it to journalists) and it will take time before it pays back but I don't understand why it would not be implemented - especially when there is already most of the work done, there is already a press release. It needs a little brush up for a wider audience, some screenshots, etc. Voilà.
If you want to promote the use of Squeak, you need to find people with a Squeak-shaped hole in their lives, help them recognise that the hole exists, convince them that Squeak can fill the hole, and make filling that hole as enjoyable as possible [note to self, never use this uncomfortable metaphor again].
Are you a golfer? :)
To be honest, very little of what happens in Squeak is relevant to a wide audience. Some audiences can be identified though: some work at the VM level is of interest to computer scientists, some of the tools like Seaside can interest other developers, re-licensing discussions always agitate the Free Software community, but there are very few pieces of work like Etoys, Scratch, DrGeo that can excite a wider, less technical audience.
This is what I am talking about when it comes to the perspective of our community. It is self-centered and speculative when it comes to the outside world. Everybody wants a killer app but the reality says that we discover an app is a killer app only once it's up and people adopt it. Let's forget about such things. Plus we don't need to advertise other projects (eToys, Scratch, Pharo, etc).
How about we have a great programming environment? It's called Squeak.
Clear and simple. Squeak has its own features. Can't we show them off (screenshots, videos, etc)? Perhaps I don't understand anything you're writing. :)
Ruby is about as old as Squeak but it seems like Ruby has reached the moon. It's waving hello to Squeak. We know that Squeak started off as a far superior programming language and environment. It's important to understand that our community may have overlook certain aspects and perhaps even made major mistakes.
My opinion is that the audience that is easiest to bring to Squeak is the young enthusiastic CS students and developers that populate digg, Reddit, Hacker News, Slashdot, Stack Overflow and a plethora of other sites, and skim-read a hundred different RSS feeds. You don't gain their attention by issuing a press release, but by posting something "cool" that will get re-posted, linked and tweeted, and cause a horde of readers to visit your site. Admittedly most of them will go "huh", and carry on trying to finish reading the internet (though hopefully with a slightly better opinion of Squeak and Smalltalk), but maybe if they're bored and it's made a no-brainer process they'll download Squeak, and learn a bit more about it.
I think it's a good target audience. What kind of efforts have been deployed to reach them on the sites you have mentioned? We are a small community but we could rumble the world if we would work together.
The new UI work and the increasing use of "one-click images" get rid of two of the obstacles that have put many of these casual browsers off trying Squeak; the ongoing work on in-image documentation will make it easier for them to work out what the hell they've just downloaded.
Absolutely. It's positive changes.
So, the missing piece is to attract this audience to Squeak in the first place - my advice would be "write blog posts". If you've applied an obscure algorithm to allow you to cut 10% off file access times, write a blog post explaining how you arrived at it; if there's a debate about how to implement system-wide menus, write a post describing the alternative approaches; if you've written a great Fizz-Buzz one-liner, blog about it; if you've written a Seaside application that uses the Flickr API to generate an HTML-5 crowd-sourced lolcat mashup, blog about it and watch your server collapse under the load.
Blogging about Squeak is a good idea but it may have its shortcomings. For example, Squeak related blogs are unlikely to attract newcomers. Anyway, I wrote a bit about Squeak on my blog and I certainly did my part in that respect. Others reading this should consider writing about Squeak on their blog as well; this is a form of contribution!
And then tweet about it https://twitter.com/#search?q=%23squeak so we can all contribute information and correct misunderstandings in the discussions when it gets picked up on the main sites.
I need to go and lie down now, I've had a rush of Web 2.0 blood to the head.
Michael
Keep us posted, Michael!
Ian.
On 28 April 2010 01:17, Ian Trudel ian.trudel@gmail.com wrote:
[snip]
If you want to promote the use of Squeak, you need to find people with a
Squeak-shaped hole in their lives, help them recognise that the hole
exists,
convince them that Squeak can fill the hole, and make filling that hole
as
enjoyable as possible [note to self, never use this uncomfortable
metaphor
again].
Are you a golfer? :)
No, golf was not what was disturbing me...
[snip]
How about we have a great programming environment? It's called Squeak.
Clear and simple. Squeak has its own features. Can't we show them off (screenshots, videos, etc)? Perhaps I don't understand anything you're writing. :)
No, that's where we're totally in agreement. If people are happy to produce
videos etc, go for it.
[snip, then "Developers"]
I think it's a good target audience. What kind of efforts have been deployed to reach them on the sites you have mentioned?
Whenever I post an article on news.squeak.org, I write it thinking of that wider audience. I include images to help people engage with what's being discussed and the most useful links I can find. If I think it will be of particular interest, I post it to a few of the sites I mentioned. If I see a discussion in one of my RSS feeds that touches on Smalltalk or Squeak, I see if I can contribute to that discussion by adding information and correcting misunderstandings. I recognise a few other names of contributors on some of these sites also making similar efforts, so there's a few of us out there already doing this, but the more of us who do that, the clearer the understanding of Squeak will be.
Blogging about Squeak is a good idea but it may have its shortcomings. For example, Squeak related blogs are unlikely to attract newcomers. Anyway, I wrote a bit about Squeak on my blog and I certainly did my part in that respect. Others reading this should consider writing about Squeak on their blog as well; this is a form of contribution!
Absolutely, I noticed your posts, and look forward to seeing more of them!
Cheers, Michael
That caught my eye. How do people actually develop with "one-click images"? I mean, I came up with that concept in the first place, but it was meant for deploying applications, not for development. You can't even save the image under a different name. So while I see the appeal to people giving it a casual look, do you really think that should be the default download?
- Bert -
Bert, saving an image under a different name in the installed directory will result into opening a dialog box to select an image. There is something to be clear about the whole thing, having to download a VM, an image and source files separately is newcomers unfriendly.
Imagine a newcomer saying to himself...
“Squeak, right... funny name... download page... (click)” “What do I download again? So much text on this page...” “Right, never mind that, I'll take the exe file!” “Gee, there's no exe file! Win32, right, I'll take that. (click)” “What do you mean no source file? (download source file or giving up)” “What do you mean no image file? (download source file or giving up)” ...etc...
Early in my career I was working on eCommerce technologies. There were pretty much nothing alike during these days. Few years later, in 1999, Amazon came up with the 1-Click concept. This was brilliant! It reduced many hurdles people could have to buy products. It went even further because some people are bit compulsive when they buy and if it's easy, they buy it.
Squeak is a product but it just happen to be free-of-charge. Having multiple downloads to get Squeak running and going is a major hurdle for newcomers. It will make the curious go away. Curiosity is often not strong enough to be persistent and go through the hurdles. Then it turns in a no sale.
It may not be the most practical approach but it's a hell of a good thing to get newcomers.
The great thing about the one-click image is that it's such a powerful way to get people hooked. If you've got, say, a Mandelbrot generator that you want to show to people, it's great to be able to drop it into a one-click image, put it and an appealing image on your blog and say to the world "just download it and run it, it works identically on Windows, OS X and Linux, oh and if you want to understand how it works, the source code's included, oh and it's got a powerful development environment in there as well". People can then get a taste for the Squeak environment and perhaps explore the development tools without even caring that there's an "image" there. Once you've captured their interest and they start thinking about using Squeak themselves, they'll be more willing to put in that little bit of effort to understand what images and sources and changes and FFI and DLLs and VMs and changesets and mczs and packages all mean.
I wouldn't make a one-click image the default download that you're pointed to on squeak.org, but you question did make me think; perhaps there should be a "Taste of Squeak" one-click image based on the 4.1 release, with a few of the more appealing packages pre-installed - a combination of 4.1's un-threatening UI and in-image help, with some of Edgar's FunSqueak ideas could be really attractive.
I like the idea. We need to make sure there is no hurdles to use appealing applications within Squeak; if packages don't cut it off at the moment, we could include few interesting apps (without bloating the image too much :P).
However, it's important to put some thoughts in it. What would be the benefits from including a Mandelbrot generator? People will look at it for 5 minutes then what? It sounds directly out of some 90s demos. It's underwhelming and trivial even by 90s standard.
One may argue the benefit from having a Mandelbrot generator is that people can then look into the code. They may or may not. Your guess is as good as mine. Or, for example, we could instead include some games (SameGame, Tetris, etc) along with the famous Laser Game tutorial (at least a link but preferably in HelpSystem).
“Play games, make games!”
2010/4/28 Michael Davies mykdavies+squeak@gmail.com:
If you want to promote the use of Squeak, you need to find people with a Squeak-shaped hole in their lives, help them recognise that the hole exists, convince them that Squeak can fill the hole, and make filling that hole as enjoyable as possible [note to self, never use this uncomfortable metaphor again].
Are you a golfer? :)
No, golf was not what was disturbing me...
All right. I believe I understand what you initially meant. However, educating people in what their “real” needs are is costly, lengthy and difficult. We may not even be the ones who benefit from this education. People may end-up using something else.
I remember reading about this in the book “The Knack : How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn To Handle Whatever Comes Up” (I wrote a bit about it on my blog [1]) written by Norm Brodsky. Brodsky wrote that he'd much rather do business where there is a lot of competition because it costs too much to educate customers. My experience in my area of expertise correlates with his commentary.
[1] http://mecenia.blogspot.com/2010/04/statement-analysis-on-books.html
How about we have a great programming environment? It's called Squeak.
Clear and simple. Squeak has its own features. Can't we show them off (screenshots, videos, etc)? Perhaps I don't understand anything you're writing. :)
No, that's where we're totally in agreement. If people are happy to produce videos etc, go for it.
Great. What would you show in a video? Perhaps, if we share our ideas, it might be easy enough that one of us (or someone else) will just do it. It's much easier when there is some kind of plan. :)
As a side note, I made such a plan before taking screenshots shown in my article “The History of Squeak in Pictures”. I have determined in advance what I wanted to show and what should be present that were pertinent to my goal (convince graphic designers that we need their help).
[snip, then "Developers"]
I think it's a good target audience. What kind of efforts have been deployed to reach them on the sites you have mentioned?
Whenever I post an article on news.squeak.org, I write it thinking of that wider audience. I include images to help people engage with what's being discussed and the most useful links I can find. If I think it will be of particular interest, I post it to a few of the sites I mentioned. If I see a discussion in one of my RSS feeds that touches on Smalltalk or Squeak, I see if I can contribute to that discussion by adding information and correcting misunderstandings. I recognise a few other names of contributors on some of these sites also making similar efforts, so there's a few of us out there already doing this, but the more of us who do that, the clearer the understanding of Squeak will be.
Once again, the articles you post on news.squeak.org are really good. I have noticed that you have spruced the original announcement for the 4.1 release and even included a partial screenshot. I like it better (than the original one). :)
Still – sometimes doing a fine work is not enough. This website is mostly attractive to people already interested in Squeak. It is also equivalent to a blog. As I wrote, blogs have important shortcomings.
For example, I have been writing in-depth articles on my blog for some 2 years (62 articles). Some of my articles are very popular (especially those related to RPG Maker) but I get very few comments (and pretty much from the same person under different names). I do see many other great blogs and they don't get any more active readership than I do. Me, personally, I have chosen to NOT be aggressive or even straightforward in promoting my blog. I however think our community should be a bit more straightforward and try to reach others (since they may not be coming on their own).
Blogging about Squeak is a good idea but it may have its shortcomings. For example, Squeak related blogs are unlikely to attract newcomers. Anyway, I wrote a bit about Squeak on my blog and I certainly did my part in that respect. Others reading this should consider writing about Squeak on their blog as well; this is a form of contribution!
Absolutely, I noticed your posts, and look forward to seeing more of them!
I believe there will be more. I am trying to increase my contributions and Squeak-awareness. :)
Cheers, Michael
Best regards, Ian.
On 29 April 2010 01:05, Ian Trudel ian.trudel@gmail.com wrote:
That caught my eye. How do people actually develop with "one-click images"? I mean, I came up with that concept in the first place, but it was meant for deploying applications, not for development. You can't even save the image under a different name. So while I see the appeal to people giving it a casual look, do you really think that should be the default download?
- Bert -
Bert, saving an image under a different name in the installed directory will result into opening a dialog box to select an image. There is something to be clear about the whole thing, having to download a VM, an image and source files separately is newcomers unfriendly.
Imagine a newcomer saying to himself...
“Squeak, right... funny name... download page... (click)” “What do I download again? So much text on this page...” “Right, never mind that, I'll take the exe file!” “Gee, there's no exe file! Win32, right, I'll take that. (click)” “What do you mean no source file? (download source file or giving up)” “What do you mean no image file? (download source file or giving up)” ...etc...
Early in my career I was working on eCommerce technologies. There were pretty much nothing alike during these days. Few years later, in 1999, Amazon came up with the 1-Click concept. This was brilliant! It reduced many hurdles people could have to buy products. It went even further because some people are bit compulsive when they buy and if it's easy, they buy it.
Squeak is a product but it just happen to be free-of-charge. Having multiple downloads to get Squeak running and going is a major hurdle for newcomers. It will make the curious go away. Curiosity is often not strong enough to be persistent and go through the hurdles. Then it turns in a no sale.
It may not be the most practical approach but it's a hell of a good thing to get newcomers.
Indeed. Easy and fast acquaintance is what a one-click images should serve for. Everything else is secondary and can be explained/uncovered once you hooked in the user.
The great thing about the one-click image is that it's such a powerful way to get people hooked. If you've got, say, a Mandelbrot generator that you want to show to people, it's great to be able to drop it into a one-click image, put it and an appealing image on your blog and say to the world "just download it and run it, it works identically on Windows, OS X and Linux, oh and if you want to understand how it works, the source code's included, oh and it's got a powerful development environment in there as well". People can then get a taste for the Squeak environment and perhaps explore the development tools without even caring that there's an "image" there. Once you've captured their interest and they start thinking about using Squeak themselves, they'll be more willing to put in that little bit of effort to understand what images and sources and changes and FFI and DLLs and VMs and changesets and mczs and packages all mean.
I wouldn't make a one-click image the default download that you're pointed to on squeak.org, but you question did make me think; perhaps there should be a "Taste of Squeak" one-click image based on the 4.1 release, with a few of the more appealing packages pre-installed - a combination of 4.1's un-threatening UI and in-image help, with some of Edgar's FunSqueak ideas could be really attractive.
I like the idea. We need to make sure there is no hurdles to use appealing applications within Squeak; if packages don't cut it off at the moment, we could include few interesting apps (without bloating the image too much :P).
However, it's important to put some thoughts in it. What would be the benefits from including a Mandelbrot generator? People will look at it for 5 minutes then what? It sounds directly out of some 90s demos. It's underwhelming and trivial even by 90s standard.
One may argue the benefit from having a Mandelbrot generator is that people can then look into the code. They may or may not. Your guess is as good as mine. Or, for example, we could instead include some games (SameGame, Tetris, etc) along with the famous Laser Game tutorial (at least a link but preferably in HelpSystem).
“Play games, make games!”
2010/4/28 Michael Davies mykdavies+squeak@gmail.com:
If you want to promote the use of Squeak, you need to find people with a Squeak-shaped hole in their lives, help them recognise that the hole exists, convince them that Squeak can fill the hole, and make filling that hole as enjoyable as possible [note to self, never use this uncomfortable metaphor again].
Are you a golfer? :)
No, golf was not what was disturbing me...
All right. I believe I understand what you initially meant. However, educating people in what their “real” needs are is costly, lengthy and difficult. We may not even be the ones who benefit from this education. People may end-up using something else.
I remember reading about this in the book “The Knack : How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn To Handle Whatever Comes Up” (I wrote a bit about it on my blog [1]) written by Norm Brodsky. Brodsky wrote that he'd much rather do business where there is a lot of competition because it costs too much to educate customers. My experience in my area of expertise correlates with his commentary.
[1] http://mecenia.blogspot.com/2010/04/statement-analysis-on-books.html
How about we have a great programming environment? It's called Squeak.
Clear and simple. Squeak has its own features. Can't we show them off (screenshots, videos, etc)? Perhaps I don't understand anything you're writing. :)
No, that's where we're totally in agreement. If people are happy to produce videos etc, go for it.
Great. What would you show in a video? Perhaps, if we share our ideas, it might be easy enough that one of us (or someone else) will just do it. It's much easier when there is some kind of plan. :)
As a side note, I made such a plan before taking screenshots shown in my article “The History of Squeak in Pictures”. I have determined in advance what I wanted to show and what should be present that were pertinent to my goal (convince graphic designers that we need their help).
[snip, then "Developers"]
I think it's a good target audience. What kind of efforts have been deployed to reach them on the sites you have mentioned?
Whenever I post an article on news.squeak.org, I write it thinking of that wider audience. I include images to help people engage with what's being discussed and the most useful links I can find. If I think it will be of particular interest, I post it to a few of the sites I mentioned. If I see a discussion in one of my RSS feeds that touches on Smalltalk or Squeak, I see if I can contribute to that discussion by adding information and correcting misunderstandings. I recognise a few other names of contributors on some of these sites also making similar efforts, so there's a few of us out there already doing this, but the more of us who do that, the clearer the understanding of Squeak will be.
Once again, the articles you post on news.squeak.org are really good. I have noticed that you have spruced the original announcement for the 4.1 release and even included a partial screenshot. I like it better (than the original one). :)
Still – sometimes doing a fine work is not enough. This website is mostly attractive to people already interested in Squeak. It is also equivalent to a blog. As I wrote, blogs have important shortcomings.
For example, I have been writing in-depth articles on my blog for some 2 years (62 articles). Some of my articles are very popular (especially those related to RPG Maker) but I get very few comments (and pretty much from the same person under different names). I do see many other great blogs and they don't get any more active readership than I do. Me, personally, I have chosen to NOT be aggressive or even straightforward in promoting my blog. I however think our community should be a bit more straightforward and try to reach others (since they may not be coming on their own).
Blogging about Squeak is a good idea but it may have its shortcomings. For example, Squeak related blogs are unlikely to attract newcomers. Anyway, I wrote a bit about Squeak on my blog and I certainly did my part in that respect. Others reading this should consider writing about Squeak on their blog as well; this is a form of contribution!
Absolutely, I noticed your posts, and look forward to seeing more of them!
I believe there will be more. I am trying to increase my contributions and Squeak-awareness. :)
Cheers, Michael
Best regards, Ian. -- http://mecenia.blogspot.com/
On 4/28/2010 3:38 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
On 29 April 2010 01:05, Ian Trudelian.trudel@gmail.com wrote:
Squeak is a product but it just happen to be free-of-charge. Having multiple downloads to get Squeak running and going is a major hurdle for newcomers. It will make the curious go away. Curiosity is often not strong enough to be persistent and go through the hurdles. Then it turns in a no sale.
It may not be the most practical approach but it's a hell of a good thing to get newcomers.
Indeed. Easy and fast acquaintance is what a one-click images should serve for. Everything else is secondary and can be explained/uncovered once you hooked in the user.
Given that everyone seems to agree, can someone take a stab for providing such an installation for 4.1? It'd be easy enough to put up on Squeak.org for first-time users.
Cheers, - Andreas
On 29 April 2010 02:07, Andreas Raab andreas.raab@gmx.de wrote:
On 4/28/2010 3:38 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
On 29 April 2010 01:05, Ian Trudelian.trudel@gmail.com wrote:
Squeak is a product but it just happen to be free-of-charge. Having multiple downloads to get Squeak running and going is a major hurdle for newcomers. It will make the curious go away. Curiosity is often not strong enough to be persistent and go through the hurdles. Then it turns in a no sale.
It may not be the most practical approach but it's a hell of a good thing to get newcomers.
Indeed. Easy and fast acquaintance is what a one-click images should serve for. Everything else is secondary and can be explained/uncovered once you hooked in the user.
Given that everyone seems to agree, can someone take a stab for providing such an installation for 4.1? It'd be easy enough to put up on Squeak.org for first-time users.
But what's wrong with current download link? http://ftp.squeak.org/4.1/win/Squeak-4.1-9957-100417-installer.exe
it installs squeak to specified dir and then just fires up the image. It may be not a one-click, but pretty usual install, which every win-user knows what to do.
Cheers, - Andreas
On 4/28/2010 4:14 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
On 29 April 2010 02:07, Andreas Raabandreas.raab@gmx.de wrote:
On 4/28/2010 3:38 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
On 29 April 2010 01:05, Ian Trudelian.trudel@gmail.com wrote:
Squeak is a product but it just happen to be free-of-charge. Having multiple downloads to get Squeak running and going is a major hurdle for newcomers. It will make the curious go away. Curiosity is often not strong enough to be persistent and go through the hurdles. Then it turns in a no sale.
It may not be the most practical approach but it's a hell of a good thing to get newcomers.
Indeed. Easy and fast acquaintance is what a one-click images should serve for. Everything else is secondary and can be explained/uncovered once you hooked in the user.
Given that everyone seems to agree, can someone take a stab for providing such an installation for 4.1? It'd be easy enough to put up on Squeak.org for first-time users.
But what's wrong with current download link?
I'm missing something here. If we have already what we're looking for, then what is this discussion about? I read it as people saying that we don't have a "one-click-solution" (whatever that's considered to be) and need one. Which is fine by me, just make one and we'll put it up.
Cheers, - Andreas
http://ftp.squeak.org/4.1/win/Squeak-4.1-9957-100417-installer.exe
it installs squeak to specified dir and then just fires up the image. It may be not a one-click, but pretty usual install, which every win-user knows what to do.
Cheers,
- Andreas
2010/4/28 Andreas Raab andreas.raab@gmx.de:
I'm missing something here. If we have already what we're looking for, then what is this discussion about? I read it as people saying that we don't have a "one-click-solution" (whatever that's considered to be) and need one. Which is fine by me, just make one and we'll put it up.
Cheers, - Andreas
I am not sure, Andreas. The discussion came up as how to reach a wider audience. Some parts of it may not have an immediate practical value but it could be useful to have a plan or a sense of direction for upcoming releases. I think our current one-click solution is a step in the right direction and enough to get more press coverage and attract newcomers.
Ian.
On Wed, 2010-04-28 at 17:40 -0700, Andreas Raab wrote:
I'm missing something here. If we have already what we're looking for, then what is this discussion about? I read it as people saying that we don't have a "one-click-solution" (whatever that's considered to be) and need one. Which is fine by me, just make one and we'll put it up.
Having tried the Windows and Linux downloads, I'd call the former one-click and the latter not even close. Some of the confusion may be from different experiences on different platforms. Ross
On 29 April 2010 02:40, Andreas Raab andreas.raab@gmx.de wrote:
I'm missing something here. If we have already what we're looking for, then what is this discussion about? I read it as people saying that we don't have a "one-click-solution" (whatever that's considered to be) and need one. Which is fine by me, just make one and we'll put it up.
I was thinking of the value of "All-in-One" (to adopt Bert's term) files is that they allow you to get something into people's hands very quickly without a page of instructions to follow. Because I know there's some limitations (eg saving new versions), I'm not sure that the base "All-in-One" build should be of interest to anyone except for Squeak developers who want to use it to create their own All-in-One file to demonstrate their code. Perhaps if those problems were overcome, the "All-in-One" could be the default download that new users get directed to?
On 29.04.2010, at 00:05, Ian Trudel wrote:
That caught my eye. How do people actually develop with "one-click images"? I mean, I came up with that concept in the first place, but it was meant for deploying applications, not for development. You can't even save the image under a different name. So while I see the appeal to people giving it a casual look, do you really think that should be the default download?
- Bert -
Bert, saving an image under a different name in the installed directory will result into opening a dialog box to select an image.
Nope. Saving under a different name creates a copy. Next time you run, it will use the former image, the name of which is known to the VM. It's listed in Info.plist for Mac, squeak.ini for Windows, and squeak.sh for Linux/*nix.
There is something to be clear about the whole thing, having to download a VM, an image and source files separately is newcomers unfriendly.
Agreed. Let's build it. But Amazon marketing be damned, please don't call it "1-click". Makes me cringe every time.
Actually ... I just made one. Only tested on Mac and Linux-i686, but chances are it works on Windows, too:
http://ftp.squeak.org/Experiments/Squeak-4.1-All-in-One.zip
- Bert -
Bert Freudenberg wrote:
On 29.04.2010, at 00:05, Ian Trudel wrote:
That caught my eye. How do people actually develop with "one-click images"? I mean, I came up with that concept in the first place, but it was meant for deploying applications, not for development. You can't even save the image under a different name. So while I see the appeal to people giving it a casual look, do you really think that should be the default download?
- Bert -
Bert, saving an image under a different name in the installed directory will result into opening a dialog box to select an image.
Nope. Saving under a different name creates a copy. Next time you run, it will use the former image, the name of which is known to the VM. It's listed in Info.plist for Mac, squeak.ini for Windows, and squeak.sh for Linux/*nix.
There is something to be clear about the whole thing, having to download a VM, an image and source files separately is newcomers unfriendly.
Agreed. Let's build it. But Amazon marketing be damned, please don't call it "1-click". Makes me cringe every time.
Actually ... I just made one. Only tested on Mac and Linux-i686, but chances are it works on Windows, too:
http://ftp.squeak.org/Experiments/Squeak-4.1-All-in-One.zip
- Bert -
This works with Mac OS X and the Pharo 1-click to provide a selection of images kept in the .app directory.
tell application "Finder" set myAlias to folder "Resources" of folder "Contents" of application file "Pharo-1.0.app" of folder "Desktop" of folder "lawsonenglish" of folder "Users" of startup disk open (choose file of type "image" default location myAlias as alias) end tell
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Andreas Raab -
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David T. Lewis -
Ian Trudel -
Igor Stasenko -
Lawson English -
merlyn＠stonehenge.com -
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Ross Boylan