The day after (Help LiveCode to go back to school!)

[Mariasole]

I like your proposal, and if you haven't submitted it in email to the company directly I would encourage you to do so. I still believe there's much that can be done to expand LC's reach in the world.

Dear Richard...
I am preparing a open letter for Kevin.... it's taking me a while because of my acclaimed dullness in writing in the English language !
Ah! If only I could write to him in Italian! I could convince him right away!!!
Joking aside... does the big boss have an official email or should I write to support? Anyway I will publish it here.
What I think is that, however, I think he follows the forum too, and if he hasn't responded at all I don't think he has grasped the seriousness of the "do nothing" decision regarding the schools...
But we are not giving up!

I would get parents to sign disclaimers re video-ing their squabs and
(and this would involve a small amount of money) get someone along to
film my Summer class this July.

Wow! Dear Richmond,
couldn't you film it, somehow, and distribute it on your Facebook channel or, even better, on Youtube ?
There is a great need for courses done by people who can teach...I know you understand me!

Anyone reading this message...get in touch! Everyone tell Kevin (the Big Boss and Soul of LC) that we need a stripped-down, totally free version of LC to learn how to program (see the appeal at the beginning of the thread). All of you are/were students, don't miss the opportunity to do a good deed!

Let's sing along:
Help LiveCode to go back to school!
(If you do it you will be more cool)

Come on, a little entuasion friends! All together (chorus)

Love!!!


(='.'=)
Mariasole

[richmond62]

couldn't you

I'll do my best. But that will not be until July.

[FourthWorld]

Dear Richard...
I am preparing a open letter for Kevin.... it's taking me a while because of my acclaimed dullness in writing in the English language !
Ah! If only I could write to him in Italian! I could convince him right away!!!
Joking aside... does the big boss have an official email or should I write to support? Anyway I will publish it here.
What I think is that, however, I think he follows the forum too, and if he hasn't responded at all I don't think he has grasped the seriousness of the "do nothing" decision regarding the schools...
But we are not giving up!

You can write to Kevin by sending an email to support AT livecode.com, and include a request at the top that it be forwarded. That's their preferred email contact method, and I've had good success reaching folks that way.

I would encourage you to consider a personal conversation with Kevin. There's always time for more public chat later on, but one-to-one allows for a free-flowing candor that understandably isn't possible in any public discussion with any organization leader.

In public any organizational leader must take into account all possible audiences and their various agendas, now and in the future who may come across it. In personal conversation ideas can flow freely because each understands where the other is coming from. Kevin's likeable and productive in conversation. Should you speak with him I suspect you'll find the time well spent.

If nothing else, this conversation is already public and has not yielded desired outcomes. Trying the option not yet tried seems worthwhile if seeking an outcome not yet seen.

Any meaningful outcomes will of course find public expression soon enough. But with business owners as with just about everything else from national leaders to family members, sometimes a little one-on-one goes a long way to building rapport which can lead to fresh approaches.

[richmond62]

Here's a lovely picture from the English department of education:
-

[dunbarx]

Richmond.

Yipes. Were they trying to be helpful? To show how pre-organizing your ideas can help in the actual building process?

I have only made one flowchart in my entire xTalk career, and after I did that, I referred to it maybe twice. I am sure this is not the best approach, but I cannot wait to start authoring, having no taste for planning.

Craig

[richmond62]

You are more than welcome to interpret my use of the word lovely in any way you choose.

HOWEVER, my experience after about 35 years of this type of thing is that 'experts' tend to
make things extremely over complicated.

And I know why I am using the quotes round the word experts.

Apart from anything else, I feel that if that is meant to be "seduction" I can see a lovers' tiff on the horizon bigtime.

Frankly, my bag of potatoes and a basket that I use with children look:

1. Like a safer bet.

2. Like they don't need a load of waffly theoretical justification.

[Mariasole]

Hello everyone!
I have written to Kevin Miller, as was suggested. I wrote to the support email.
The email came through, but no one, least of all Kevin, ever responded to me.

I find this behavior very offensive and unfriendly to me and to those who have supported for years (as they could) this company and its (hypocritical, at this point) philosophy.

There was a great man of the theater, in Italy, whose name was Gigi Proietti. He used to do a long sketch based on a guy, called Toto, who was recognized by others when he paid, while he was ignored when he did not pay.

Here, Kevin treats us like Toto: we are a big family who participate for great ideals when he asks the community for some one-time money to make "our" LiveCode better and faster, when instead he is asked for an interest for the little ones in the community to whom he asks for money, the community simply doesn't exist and doesn't even deserve an answer.

I would have expected from a company, say, a standard letter like: "thanks, you're great, but for now we're not interested", but instead nothing.

What I'm going to do now is to keep teaching with the LC Community Edition as long as it holds up (because it's not fair that Miller's niet - or rather "ignorabimus" - should be at the expense of kids), and to help OpenXTalks [openxtalk.org] as much as I can to free this language for teaching.

I would like to add that LiveCode's management suffers from a great political-strategic short-sightedness and, sincerely, I suggest to change their attitude, also considering the collapse of posts on the forum.

For the record, my letter was titled:

Kevin Miller can you help little Kevin Millers to become Kevin Miller?

and here it is:

Dear Kevin,
I am Mariasole and I am writing to you regarding my appeal published in the LiveCode forum.

I must say that it is very difficult for me to express myself in another language and I apologize in advance for the mistakes and for the poor language.

So don't ever think that what I say to you is harsh, but always full of joy and enthusiasm, even if with the strength and determination of a lioness who must preserve her cubs and that of the other lionesses (and lions with a heart of butter) who have lost hope.

For me, the battle is not lost. You're a good guy Kevin and you're sure to find out, even by maybe seeing "Back to the Future" again, that you can't betray who you were, because in the end, you also know that deep down, you're still the same. Maybe even better, right?

I am writing to you directly because I have been advised to do so, publicly and privately, by friends of the forum.

First of all I would like you to read (or re-read) my appeal [https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=36671].

There is everything there, from possible proposals for economic sustainability, to the damage that unfortunately, this disappearance of LiveCode CE from schools, is doing to us teachers and especially to the brightest students [https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.p ... 71#p212175].

It's pointless to explain it all again, please read the post carefully, with an open mind and an open heart.
You'll read that I gave up your kind help in terms of "free licenses" for my little students (I think that was the help, in fact) because this is not the right way, in the opinion of me and my colleagues, to solve the problem of the enthusiasm we (we teachers and students) have for Livecode. And it's not the right way, even on a marketing level, humbly said (but it's vox populi) to close the LiveCode Community experience in the world of school and education!

So instead of closing "brutally" with the world of education (goodbye Community Edition and its community), or with the "furry charity", a picturesque Italian expression that I do not know how to translate into English (something like "interested charity" - that is, with free licenses -), it would be better to start with a reduced version of LiveCode to learn the basics.

We need a special edition of LiveCode for schools that is completely free and freely distributable, to teach kids how to bring out their art and identity on the essential medium that is the computer.

As you can reed I didn't write you "to learn LC", if LC was a nice development environment for Pyton or Java I wouldn't be writing you.

With LC and its language we teachers can not only teach computer science to our students, but to make the computer a medium for their creativity. As I wrote on the forum thread, "They program robots, they didn't become robots.".
After LC community was shut down, there is a need for this project.

Please think about it in honor of Hypercard, that, free as it was, allowed you to be what you are; do it also for the communication of your company that always describes you as a kid in front of your mac; do it for all those little Kevin Miller that dream with intensity of their future starting from a computer.

Every major company contributes charitable strategies to society, this educational app could be your contribution!
There is a whole host of teachers and students who will work for their and your future.

So, in summary, dear Kevin Miller can you help little Kevin Millers to become Kevin Miller?

Don't let us down!

Con amicizia e stima...

Mariasole

-------------------------------------------------

Naively I had also recommended myself to Heather:

Dear Heather,
could you please forward this email to Kevin Miller? I thank you so much and, if you can, talk to him about our needs as well!

Un bacio e grazie,
Mariasole

--------------------------------------------------

I mean, I was really hurt, but really hurt.
Or maybe it's because you can't understand what I'm saying in English...

Grazie amici del forum!

Mariasole

(='.'=)
Mariasole

[dunbarx]

Mariasole.

I bet that the team is not as heartless as you think. Let's wait and see what comes of the further adventures of this forum thread.

Know that LC is pretty busy right now with the conference. When did you post your letter to Kevin?

Craig

[stam]

I think it's fully understandable if requests like these aren't immediately answered.

It's clear the team have their hands quite full with the conference for the next few days. But more than that, having seen Kevin's keynote, it's also very clear LC are in the midst of a massive transformation and the road map Kevin showed is really quite ambitious.

In fact i was very impressed by the scope of changes coming, many of these addressing the many comments that have been mentioned frequently in the forums. I'd like to think this is at least in part driven by feedback from these forums, but that's probably fanciful

Kevin did make it clear that they will continue to have a commitment to education, but i suspect this will take a different form from previously...

[jacque]

Heather is very good about responding, and since she specifically asked you to contact her I'm positive she will answer. However, as said, the conference is in progress this week and she has her hands full, and the preparations began weeks ago. When it is done she also has follow up work and will be busy for at least the rest of this week.

Please wait until next week and then send her a short question asking if she has a moment to respond to your previous email. Because her work load is so heavy right now, a short note is more likely to get a quicker response.

[Mariasole]

Dear Craig, stam and Jacque,
thank you for your interest and participation in our school battle!

"When did you post your letter to Kevin?"

Dear Craig, the letter is dated March 30, 2022, but my appeal to Kevin, since the forum administrator is Kevin himself, is as late as January 20!

"I think it's fully understandable if requests like these aren't immediately answered. "

Dear stam, Craig's response applies. I'm still impressed by your optimism but I don't know if Kevin follows the suggestions of the forum... otherwise he would have answered me in January!
To underline also that this battle of mine is not "mine" but of all that community that has been orphaned of a tool used in schools to teach computer science in a "humanistic" way.

Heather is very good about responding

Dear Jacque, you are right. Heather is really good, in fact she had told me to contact her I think to get free licenses or a discount. But, if you read the thread, I didn't want anything for me/us, but a focus on the world of education that Kevin had made himself (once upon a time...) a paladin of.

I hope that sooner or later Kevin Miller will respond to my humble appeal....

grazie a tutti!

(='.'=)
Mariasole

[passaas3]

Thanks to you too, Stam, for trying to make me understand some things that, however, I don't quite understand... since, when there's a change like that in company policy, there should always be certainties, not "fuzzy logic" certainties (a little black, a little white) , even if it's a tech company!

[richmond62]

a focus on the world of education that Kevin had made himself (once upon a time...) a paladin of

Quite possibly . . . but have no reason to believe it . . . I have been banging on about LC's educational strengths for at least 20
years . . .

[FourthWorld]

FWIW Xojo offers a free educational package, and when they promote it on Twitter they flatter LC by including #LiveCode among the tags, e.g.:
https://twitter.com/xojo/status/1521808 ... RtNLQ&s=19

And they tweet. Often. Very active with the social media component of their content strategy.

[Mariasole]

FWIW Xojo offers a free educational package, and when they promote it on Twitter they flatter LC by including #LiveCode among the tags, e.g.:
https://twitter.com/xojo/status/1521808 ... RtNLQ&s=19

And they tweet. Often. Very active with the social media component of their content strategy.

Thanks for the information Richard... a parasitic marketing strategy!
But "every void is always filled," so if LC's new course (Richmond says it well! ) is to repudiate the past looking at education, Xojo or whoever will fill it. A real disappointment for all of us who felt part of the "family".

Meanwhile, an update: after 153 days, 2 hours, 16 minutes and 7 seconds since the opening of this thread and after 65 days, 2 hours, 17 minutes and 37 seconds since my email to the Big Boss, no response has come.

So all possible excuses about pressing commitments have fallen away.

I do not understand why I cannot have a response to my email which, moreover, is not in the least provocative, but is meant to be a contribution to development and survival in LC schools!

Thanks again to everyone!

(='.'=)
Mariasole