[FAmSCo] Lessons learned from one just left Ambassadors program

Fri May 17 16:20:09 UTC 2013

I know we will discus this on the meetings, and this blog post is
causing lot of noise on Brazil list.

To give you a bit of background on the situation.

Sergio join ambassadors on Brazil and got disappointing with the state
of Brazil community, he found 3 or 4 working ambassadors out of 40, he
talk to me and I asking him for help on the brazil track do to the
language barrier, when he started to look at the track there were many
tickets asking for polo ambassadors. 
He call for a meeting and 4 or 6 ambassadors shows up, and some of the
ask for the same.

We keep working and with new ambassadors and afew old ones. We started
to work, he was the media wangler and the situation started to improve
we have FLISOL and we send media to all that requested and give them
support as we they needed, we work out fisl.

Fisl is the biggest free software event on Latam and this year we plan a
budget for it, (last year they did a FAD to bring people to FISL, but as
a FAD did not accomplish anything that I know). So I did not wanted to
do that this year, if it is the biggest event on latam we needed Fedora
people there.
So with the help of Itamar we created separated the budget, as many
other years many people wanted to go and Brazil travel can be expensive,
we were thinking that we may end with too many tickets and that decision
will take place depending on there recent work.

Tickets where open and people added their tickets. After reviewing the
tickets and reduce price by getting a hostal instead of a hotel (if we
pay an hotel the budget will be spend on only 2 or 3 people) we were on
budget, to bring all people that ask for it. 

Three cases, show up Daniel Bruno ex Famsco with no much activity as
ambassador lately but work as Mentor, he was asking only for room, so it
was not much to think about. Wolnie he is an old ambassador but he is
also a fedora tester and I seem some bug reports on Fedora 19, so he is
contributing to Fedora, but not as ambassador. Sergio did not like that
he was not asking as devel but as ambassador and he was not contributing
as ambassador. 
Since I have read this discussion before why we cannot take devel to
events I did not see any reason to object, plus we have the budget.
The other ticket was a new ambassador, it maybe a un proveen ambassador,
but he support his request and once again we are on the budget. 
Other tickets were from ambassadors that have been working on the
community in the last year.

There were not debate on who deserve to go or who has the best proposal
because we have the budget to bring all of them.

Sergio did not like it and the other stuff that was bugging him about
the Brazil community so he decide to separate instead of keep working to
change things. 

Personally it is sad to me he was a great support, specially since
Brazil as a community has been decreasing he did bring new stamina to
regain new users and ambassadors. 

I have talk to him after his post and he say he will be a part from the
community for a moment and that later he will come back, as he is also
overwhelmed with work. Plus there is another new ambassador who probably
will take charge of Brazil and with his help we keep developing the
community there.

Fanny part I was going to propose Sergio as candidate for this new
Fasmco elections. 

To mee the issue here is why do we have 45 ambassador on Brazil and only
10 at the most really do ambassadors work. Bazil is a huge country with
many areas to be cover, but it does not make sense to have all this much
ambassadors that are not doing anything to help Fedora. 

The log on the meeting can be read must of it on English.
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-latam/2013-05-08/latam.2013-05-08-22.31.log.html
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-latam/2013-05-15/fedora-latam.2013-05-15-23.18.log.html

El vie, 17-05-2013 a las 17:02 +0200, Jiri Eischmann escribió:
> Truong Anh. Tuan píše v Pá 17. 05. 2013 v 11:52 +0700:
> > Dear my friends,
> > 
> > Thing happened in LATAM [1]. It could be good or bad, depending on your
> > views, but I think there are some good lessons learned from here.
> > 
> > It has not been happened in APAC yet because we usually discuss this kind
> > of stuff straightforward. If I see something not logical, I will feel free
> > to pop them up to discuss; others also do the same.
> > 
> > I think, we should update reimbursement guidelines in each region to cover
> > these similar cases. Any ideas?
> > 
> > [1] http://blog.sergiodj.net/post/2013-05-16-so-long-ambassadors/
> 
> Tuan,
> thank you for bringing this up. It's definitely one of the issues that
> is appropriate to discuss in FAmSCo.
> 
> I read that article yesterday. I wanted to reply, but there didn't seem
> to be any comments allowed.
> 
> First of all, I'd like to point out that we don't have such issues in
> EMEA. People just don't become ambassadors to get stuff like t-shirts
> etc. So I don't really have experience dealing with such issues.
> 
> If I understood it correctly the core problem is that some people get
> tickets approved and he thinks they shouldn't because they haven't been
> active for some time.
> 
> First, I don't know if his accusations are valid. The fact that people
> don't show up at meetings or mailing lists doesn't necessarily mean that
> they're inactive. Although I encourage ambassadors to communicate with
> others and take an active role in decision making, I know about
> ambassadors who are not visible at meetings and mailing lists, but who
> are still active locally and help spread the word about Fedora. I have
> no problem to send them swag if they ask for it once a while.
> 
> Second, if you have enough money to satisfy all requests what's so wrong
> doing so as long as the purpose is beneficial to Fedora and receivers
> prove achieved goals (event reports, photos,...)? I think our community
> financial or material support is mainly to enable people to work for
> Fedora (promote, get new contributors), not reward them. So if I have
> enough resources to satisfy all requests, I don't see a problem to give
> support to someone who hasn't been active for some time if he/she has a
> good plan how to use the support. If you don't have sufficient funds for
> everyone, then you have to prioritize and that's where active
> ambassadors and most beneficial activities should be preferred.
> 
> So IMHO the ideal solution for this situation is to increase the
> regional activity so that there are enough activities to pick from. What
> he did (giving up) is exactly the opposite.
> 
> To the "only +1's" complain: it's usual in EMEA, too. We've got some
> guidelines and there is a process set up, also most expenses are already
> planned in the budget. This all usually assures that requests are good
> and valid. Although we discuss them, we don't fight over them. I haven't
> seen "-1" for a long time. And I don't think it's an unhealthy
> situation. In EMEA, approving is more like a safety-catch that makes
> sure the system is not abused, rather than a filter.
> 
> Just my 2c,
> Jiri
> 
> 
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