[fab] FAMSCO: open dialog

David Barzilay barzilay at redhat.com
Tue Aug 22 15:31:27 UTC 2006


Hi All,

FAMSCO, Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee, members had a meeting 
last night, during which we talked about some of our problems, our 
analysis and thoughts.

As we believe we should enhance communication across all Fedora 
subprojects (all have common goals), we decided opening up this dialog 
and exposing our discussion to you all.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome!

PROBLEMS / QUESTIONS:
- Lack of planning, sitting together to talk how we'll be spending 
money, what actions we'll do in the next months. It is still all ad-hoc.
- We don't have our stuff together in terms of CONCRETELY what we wanted
- Do we know how to launch FC6? Do we know what we'll be FC6 main 
advantages? What' we'll promote the most? How are we using our money? 
(we'll do the big homepage on redhat.com again, and we'll figure out 
DVDs for fc6; those are the main launch components)
- Are we targeting the desktop?
- We're questioning the current goals of the ambassadors project.
- Now as the Ambassador novelty is wearing off, we also see that the 
actual raison d'etre for the ambassadors is becoming less clear
-  What is wrong in stating the goal of the ambassadors group as 
"end-user evangelizing/conversion"?
- We think that being an English-only organization hinders us in what 
should be a goal of globalization
- We might de-centralize everything, but to enable some idea exchange 
through the central forum

FACTS + LESSONS FROM FEDORA BRAZILIAN AMBASSADORS
- Translation volunteers group used to be coordinated by David (myself), 
then we got very passionate contributors and gave our best to direct 
their energy - this is key!
- Continued monitoring their activities for a while and made sure to 
correct posture and some actions
- Then let it go. Once one of them seem mature and highly committed to 
assume, he took the project leadership (David has no energy left to keep 
doing translations, but volunteers do. Now David is totally out of it 
and the pt_BR translation project is still going very well (counting 
even with po files editing).
- Leadership is key!
- We got www.projetofedora.org which is representing all subprojects we 
can possibly localize in Brazil. Could we replicate this 
internationally? (talking about free media distro, docs, trans, events, 
etc). Ambassadors actually contribute in some different ways.
- They are recognized as ambassadors as long as they are involved in one 
or more of the local sub-projects
- The ambassadors we see aren't picking up the slack. But clearly the 
Brazilians *have* been picking up the slack; in fact, they've been among 
the most active and professional
- Brazil is blessed with great leaders who are motivated
- They truly love FC, believe on the project and can definitely see the 
difference their work is making

SOME QUESTIONS AND ANALYSIS
- The charter for translations is (1) clear and (2) extremely 
user-focused by its very nature
- The behaviors that have created success in Fedora Translations are, 
IMHO, necessary but not sufficient to make a successful Ambassadors project
- The translation project started with *corporate guidance and community 
vision*
- Is the "charter" of Ambassadors too vague? Not interesting enough to 
drive participation? Do the Ubuntu folks have the right idea by focusing 
on local teams? The general success of the .br community would seem to 
indicate this.
- 1) It's not easy to be an ambassador (CLA, etc) 2) We don't view them 
as the real users 3) Need to provide them with the right infrastructure 
for them to contribute more freely
- The current barrier to participation is way too high with our 
too-liberal application of the CLA
- We also miss the question of incentive (the incentive for translators 
is *extremely* clear: have useful software in your own language)
- Giving them the appropriate tools thus is a clear win
- What's the clear incentive?  Perhaps there *is* an incentive to the 
user, but I don't think it's a surefire winner like translations is
- Extras, definitely.  Translations, definitely. Docs, somewhat less 
clear, with fewer participants. Ambassadors, less and less clear.
- We're certainly not seeing much of the leadership on a regular basis...
- Should we give ambassadors some more authonomy to decide stuff 
locally? So this will be *their project*...
- How do we find those leaders elsewhere?
- Thinking out loud... perhaps we should be focusing on turning the 
ambassadors project into a meeting of local leaders, but we need to
nurture leaders for that
- How do we make sure we attract leaders to the Ambassadors project? 
People capable of organizing a local initiative, like in BR?
- Volunteer work is limited to achieve timely goals. Do we need paid 
employees to be leaders?
- Maybe we should showcase what has been done so far and make decision 
makers understand how important FC projects are for RH's commercial success
- Key motivation: making things happen, quicker than in the corporate world
- Should we open up participations for other characters other than 
technical? Motivate these folks to come on board? How?
- Should we approach the volunteers, know them better, understand their 
skills, then redirect them accordingly? Volunteers only do what they like!
- Fedora Project could be THA PLACE where they can make it happen in 
many different areas
- By giving them money, some leadership training, some org skills, 
**infrastructure**
- We gotta be able to offer them varied tools so they can practice their 
skills working for Fedora

Thanks for reading these!

My best,
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