ambassadors March 2009

ambassadors@lists.fedoraproject.org

227 participants
174 discussions

LATAM-Meeting: Jueves/thursday 03-04
by María Leandro 06 Apr '09

06 Apr '09

Hi all / Saludos a todos, The next LATAM Ambassador Meeting will be at thursday, April 03th, 2009 [1] La próxima reunión de Embajadores LATAM será el Miércoles 03 de Abril del 2009 [1] Date/Fecha: thursday, April 03th, 2009 / Miércoles 03 de Abril del 2009 Time/Hora: 20:00 UTC Place/Lugar: freenode #fedora-meeting Remember to check UTC time Recuerden revisar sus horarios en relación al UTC usar: date --utc María "tatica" Leandro [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Meeting:Ambassadors_2009-04-01 -- tatica Maria Gracia Leandro http://www.tatica.org http://www.fedora-ve.org http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MariaLeandro LinuxUser= 440285 GPG Public Key: E1CDCC56 "Be yourself... Don't be anyone else"

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Re: Fedora on German television (Re: [Ambassadors] [Fwd: [FOSDEM]FOSDEM 2009 Recordings])
by David Anderson 04 Apr '09

04 Apr '09

It requires Windows Media Player to view, and takes a while if you can get it to load... -david. >2009/3/29 Christoph Wickert <christoph.wickert(a)googlemail.com>: >> Am Sonntag, den 29.03.2009, 14:21 -0400 schrieb Yaakov Nemoy: >>> 2009/3/28 Christoph Wickert <christoph.wickert(a)googlemail.com>: >>> > Am Samstag, den 28.03.2009, 12:43 +0100 schrieb Gerold Kassube: >>> >> FYI >>> > >>> > >>> > BTW: We were also on TV last weekend: >>> > http://www.3sat.de/mediathek/mediathek.php?obj=11913 >>> > >>> > Some scenes of the video were recorded at the Fedora booth, one can see >>> > Jörg Simon and a couple of other ambassadors. I also managed to get 3 >>> > seconds of attention with my talk. Thanks to Fedora for making me a >>> > famous TV star. ;) >>> >>> I can't get it to load. Is this content only available in Germany/EU? >> >> I don't think so, it just takes a while. You could try a different >> format though by changing the settings ("Einstellungen"). Does one of >> these links work you you? >> http://wstreaming.zdf.de/3sat/veryhigh/090315_linux_neues.asx >> http://hstreaming.zdf.de/3sat/veryhigh/090315_linux_neues.mov >> >rtsp://ondemand.quicktime.zdf.newmedia.nacamar.net/zdf/data/quicktime/3sat/… >3/090315_linux_neues_vh.mp4 > >Nope, each of these links just gives me a movie of zero length. It's very >strange. > >-Yaakov > >-- >Fedora-ambassadors-list mailing list >Fedora-ambassadors-list(a)redhat.com >https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list

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Linux Open Week - Event Report
by Ankur Sinha 02 Apr '09

02 Apr '09

hi, Event reports regarding the Linux Open Week that we (LUG Manipal) conducted :: http://dodoincfedora.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/event-report-linux-open-week/ http://dodoincfedora.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/photos-linux-open-week/ The event had Fedora Ambassadors from Manipal : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/India/Regions#Karnataka Suyash Kumar Saahil Dhananjay Singh Ankur Srivastava Ankur Sinha It featured a fedora 10 install fest and a week of hands on workshops on fedora systems. Comments are welcome, regards, Ankur

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Mentors, Sponsors, etc...
by Leam Hall 01 Apr '09

01 Apr '09

As a new member to the Ambassadors mailing list, may I offer the "Outsider moving in" view? In both business and military careers I have seen measurable advantage in providing a new group member a "sponsor". Small problems that can overwhelm the newbie are quickly resolved because the sponsor knows where to find the answer. Joining a group and integrating in can be emotionally exhausting for those of us who are introverts. It is very important to have a 1:1 person we can discuss with and talk to when the 1:700 overwhelms us. Beyond the "how much do I know about Fedora" question you might want to know what I *feel* about it before you send me off to represent it! If an Ambassador is to be a person with some field experience then they probably come with a few opinions as well. Maybe some baggage, too. The FA program might want to ensure the potential representatives are in fact representing Fedora well. There is also a significant advantage in having a Mentor actually find out what I know, or do with my time. For example, if I do some volunteer work it might spark some conversations about how I can introduce Fedora to the non-profit. Or the ham radio group. Or the sports group that needs some scoring software help. Or the adoption service that could use a webserver group. A Mentor might even be useful to find out what latent talents I'd love to develop and hook me up with someone who can help my progress. That way the other person gets an apprentice, Fedora gets a welcome worker, and I get some personal growth. While having some small conversations with David and Joerg neither of them have proposed a requirement to join that really bothers me. The clarity of the process could be improved and Joerg has responded well in that. David has made himself available for local events and put forth a good image for Fedora. In both cases there has been a social exchange based on equality. They listen to me, I listen to them, and I have come to trust their opinions based on the interactions we've had. Both Joerg and David have earned my respect and now are free to provide critique if I need to evaluate some personal behavior before representing Fedora to the world. If there is a process to go through before becoming a full privileged Ambassador, I have no problems doing so. Call me a Diplomat, an Ambassador in Training, or just a flunkey; it doesn't matter. But show me by your willingness to invest in me that I'm important and that by association Fedora is important. You will then get a clear view of what I can provide and have a motivated worker on your team. Leam

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mentorship, sponsorship, etc.
by Max Spevack 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Hi all, I warn you in advance that this is a very long email. There's been a discussion on famsco-list for the last week and a half now, and I volunteered to try to summarize some of that conversation, so that we could move it to fedora-ambassadors-list. The main topics of the discussion center around these three points: * Purging of inactive Ambassadors * Mentoring * Raising the standard for membership === The thread was started by David Nalley, and his initial email brought up the following: The "probation" idea for Fedora Ambassadors is flawed, and can be improved. Improving it will help raise the overall quality and effectiveness of Fedora Ambassadors. In particular, David advocated for the following: 1) Fixed term for probation should go away, and be replaced with a specific set of tasks that need to be achieved. 2) If someone makes no progress in X amount of time, we purge them from the system. If they are making progress, then give as much time as is needed. 3) New Ambassadors should immediately be given a mentor -- a specific name of an Ambassador in their region. 4) Current restrictions on getting resources as an Ambassador while on probation should go away, and be replaced with "at your mentor's discretion". Max's note #1: This begins to lay out what looks like a more formal sponsorship process for Ambassadors, which is similar to the sort of thing that happens in the Fedora Package Maintainers community. Max's note #2: As Fedora Ambassadors continues to grow, a sponsorship process becomes more and more critical, and Package Maintainers has set a good example and precedent. === Francesco Ugolini commented that we want to continue to ensure that resources are managed regionally (which is consistent with David's proposal), and that one important task will be to ensure that *whatever* the requirements are on new people who want to join Ambassadors, it be as clear, and as internationalized, as possible. Max's note #3: In Ambassadors in particular, it's important for us to try to simplify and clarify policy as much as possible. The number of languages on our list and in our sub-project is very large, even compared to other parts of Fedora (perhaps with the exception of Localization). === Thomas Canniot expressed concerns with the mentorship idea. He was not "against" it, but wanted more discussion and some "convincing". Now I'm going to list the three points that Thomas made, as well as some of the conversation that came after each of these points in the email thread. (1) There are two types of Ambassadors -- the already-active Ambassadors around the world who don't need any mentorship, and the Ambassadors who do need mentorship and guidance. David Nalley responded to this point by saying that some of the older Ambassadors didn't have anything like a mentor and had to figure out and build the current structure by trial and error. Now that we have a chance to be more efficient with training and mentorship, shouldn't we take that opportunity? David said that he'd categorize Ambassadors instead as "those who take ownership of something" and "those who don't know that they *can* take ownership of something", and that we want to move people from the second group into the first group. He also went on to say (and I'm adding in a bit of my own thoughts here also) that one of the goals of the Ambassadors project needs to be ensuring that new Ambassadors realize quickly that they play a crucial role in Fedora, and that they have tremendous power to represent Fedora, and that it is also very important that Ambassadors understand and believe in the main principles of Fedora -- the four foundations, for example, and what they mean. (2) We don't need mentorship until the growth of Ambassadors slows down. Max's note #4: I think the rate at which we are getting new Ambassadors clearly demonstrates that mentorship is needed now, because QUALITY is far more important than QUANTITY. I don't want to be signing up new Ambassadors if only 1 in 10 is developing into true stars and leaders in the Ambassadors community. (3) Adding in mentorship and sponsorship suggests that we don't believe people can reach the same level of success as some of the older Ambassadors without help, and that is disappointing. Max's note #5: Personally, I disagree with this. The ability to have a mentor or a sponsor (who serves as a mentor) is a luxury, not a sign of lack-of-confidence. As David Nalley said: "The Ambassadors are representatives of the Fedora Project; They are the spokespeople and the public face for Fedora. What concerns me is that we essentially have these representatives that may know precious little about Fedora and free software, and the penchant for misrepresenting is high. I personally like our low barrier to entry. At the same time I think that it is incumbent upon us (FAmSCo) to provide the background education to the uninitiated if we are serious about our responsibilities the Ambassadors project and plant to continue having a low barrier to entry. As has been noted previously in this email, the Package Maintainers team provides an excellent example of this, as does the Art team. === Joerg Simon responded with an email promoting the virtues of mentoring, with specific examples from his own time in Fedora, both the people who helped to mentor him (Chitlesh & Gerold) as well as the people who he has helped to mentor (Mirlan & Thibault). "Trust and Mentoring is the Key!", says Joerg, and I agree with him. David Nalley notes that we don't want to devalue what it means to be a Fedora Ambassador by not having enough structure. Max adds that it is not simply enough to say "I think Fedora is great!" but rather that Ambassadors serve a specific, and crucial role in our community. We give our Ambassadors tremendous amounts of freedom and trust to be the public face of Fedora, and therefore there is a requirement to provide some level of "quality control" and oversight. In short, Fedora Ambassadors is not a social club. === A specific proposed action by Joerg is to clean up the FAS group for Fedora Ambassadors. David Nalley agreed, saying: "This is an ideal time to do so - with the recent password reset I'd guess that 30% or more of the people in the Ambassador fas group have their fas account inactive due to failing to change their password. I'd argue that we should give them 30 days (~April 6th iirc) and if their account is still inactive in FAS we should jettison them. They clearly aren't active if they haven't had to use their fedora account (or missing the fedora email addy) over a period of 30 days. That's a better indication IMO than any 'I'm here' message." Susmit and Francesco both gave a +1 to this, as did Rodrigo, who went a step further and said that in LATAM, he plans to have a personal conversation with all people who want to be Ambassadors. === A specific proposal for a FAmSCo vote was suggested by David: ""That FAmSCo direct the Ambassador Membership Service to request from Infrastructure a list of all users who are Ambassadors and whose account has remained inactive for a period of greater than 30 days after a password reset, and further that FAmSCo direct the Membership Service to purge said users from the Ambassadors list" Fedora Infrastructure ran a query for us, which showed that of the 772 Ambassadors in FAS, 300 were inactive based on the statement above. Max's note #6: For me, this sets off major alarm bells, and goes back to the idea of quantity versus quality. The Ambassadors numbers grow, but they are inflated because most of the people are joining the group because they want to basically join the Fedora Fan Club, and this is the closest thing that we have to that, but the purpose of Ambassadors is not to be a Fan Club. Thomas Canniot agreed that this set off alarm bells for him to, and conceded that some cleanup of the FAS group is clearly necessary. Susmit notes that a mixture of automated and manual cleanup processes would be the best, to prevent false positives or other mistakes that could lead to hurting the feelings of an important community member. Joerg states that he is in favor of cleaning up inactive accounts, and coupling that with a higher barrier to entry for the Ambassadors project. David agrees, and wonders why we are taking so long to make what seems like an obviously right decision. Francesco notes that a decision is made, but that another opportunity for full discussion among Ambassadors is required, which is what this email that I have been writing attempts to lay out and summarize. === David Nalley notes that Fedora Infrastructure might already be planning some sort of action for people whose accounts remain inactive past a password reset, because there is a potential security issue for having dormant accounts, with various permissions, just sitting around. Perhaps our problem of inactivity will be solved by a larger problem of inactivity across Fedora that needs to be addressed. Max's note #7: Solving the inactivity problem and the mentorship problem are two different things!!! === Max's note #8: It seems to me that the actions on the table for FAmSCo to ultimately deal with are: (1) Dealing with inactive accounts, either within our sub-project itself or within the whole of Fedora Infrastructure. (2) Reforming our barriers-to-entry and sponsorship process to remove time limits, but to require specific actions and a show of progress. (3) Putting together a mentorship/sponsorship system similar to that of Package Maintainers.

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Re: [Ambassadors] mentorship, sponsorship, etc.
by Samuel Iglesias Gonsálvez 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

> Message: 7 > Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:27:35 +0300 > From: Ewan Luca <ewanluca(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [Ambassadors] mentorship, sponsorship, etc. > To: fedora-ambassadors-list(a)redhat.com > -10e1000 > So, with this, problem solved. Everything it's "just fine". Despite the fact > this is the longest thread I saw until now on this mailing list (apart from > the useless "me too"). > If we can't agree on a solution to the problem it doesn't mean the problem > isn't there! Let's just stick out heads on the sand. "Fedora it's going > great!" There is no such thing of Ubuntu (it seems to be tabu to talk about > this), there is no such thing as 40% of the registered ambassadors (this is > almost 1 in 2 of them!) inactive. The activity of the rest of them consists > mainly on asking in vain "what can I do?". I'm sorry but it doesn't seems to > me that things are ok at all. > We have every week a few new ambassadors registred. This is really a good > thing. But how many of them will end up being real contributors? If we > continue like this, we'll have next year 2000 ambassadors (wich looks great > on paper) and the next survey will prove that 90% of them are inactive. We > might as well create 10000 fictive accounts on Fedora ambassadors list and > be proud of our "strenght". > I whant to know that this thread will be closed in N days and the decisions > are XYand Z. Whatever decisions will come up it will be better that ignoring > the problem. > > Ewan Luca Hello, I've applied for being Spanish Fedora Ambassador few weeks ago. I'm newbie in this kind of threads, but I want to explain my opinion. If I understood right, there is one "problem" with inactive Ambassadors. Maybe you want more active ambassadors that share their knowledge, make speech, programming code or similar like that. Everyone wants it. It's true that is better have less ambassadors, but very actives ones, than more people, if 40% are inactive. But don't forget that I can't do something "important" as an ambassador (like an open source event, install party or whatever), but I can show my friends how to install Fedora, I can help them with linux problems or I can talk about the advantages of Fedora to my family, friends, coworkers, etc. How can you measure this kind of work? With the quantity of monthly emails that I send to this list? You can deny my application now, but two weeks later maybe, I'll organize an Free Software Meeting on my city and I'll spread the features of Fedora to hundred people (*). I think we can put a simple condition, write a yearly report with your done things. If you don't put ANYTHING, or don't send your report, you will be denied for being a Fedora Ambassador. It's possible that doing something like that, you can save only real active ambassadors. Meaning "real active" that you are contributing to the Community in some form. Regards, Samuel (*) X Anniversary of AsturLiNUX (LUG from Principado de Asturias, Spain). URL: http://www.asturlinux.org/aniversario -- Samuel Iglesias Gonsálvez <samuel_ig(a)yahoo.es>

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installation problem through yum
by Rohit Gupta 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

I recently installed fedora in our EE HOD (prof. SM) computer and We are having the following problem. I have connected the computer through local mirror and everything gets downloaded, dependencies resolved. It just cannot install the package. [root@satadal satadal]# yum install vlc Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery error: db4 error(-30975) from dbenv->open: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - (-30975) error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in <module> yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True) File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 229, in user_main errcode = main(args) File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 84, in main base.getOptionsConfig(args) File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 184, in getOptionsConfig enabled_plugins=self.optparser._splitArg(opts.enableplugins)) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 192, in _getConfig self._conf = config.readMainConfig(startupconf) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 758, in readMainConfig yumvars['releasever'] = _getsysver(startupconf.installroot, startupconf.distroverpkg) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 828, in _getsysver idx = ts.dbMatch('provides', distroverpkg) TypeError: rpmdb open failed [root@satadal satadal]# I also tried with the simple rpm file. [root@satadal Download]# rpm -Uvh fuse-sshfs-2.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery error: db4 error(-30975) from dbenv->open: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - (-30975) error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm warning: fuse-sshfs-2.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4ebfc273 rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery error: db4 error(-30975) from dbenv->open: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm [root@satadal Download]# Please add CC while replying as : rohit.kgec(a)gmail.com Regards: Rohit Gupta KGEC

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installation problem through yum
by Rohit Gupta 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

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Fedaora Belgium
by Vincent Van der Kussen 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Hi, I don't know feels the need for the following, but i would like to start a belgian fedora site/forum. I've got a small hosting company myself, so i can provide hosting of a VPS for this project. I've no real ideas of how it has to look like or what content it should have. So if someone likes the idea and want to help, let me know. Regards, Vincent.

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Re: mentorship, sponsorship, etc. (Roy Ong)
by Ali R 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

+1 On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 3:32 PM, <fedora-ambassadors-list-request(a)redhat.com > wrote: > mentorship, sponsorship, etc. (Roy Ong) -- Ali Raza President Computer Cell Fedora Ambassador Department of Computer Science & Information Technology NWFP UET skype: ali.uet # +92321-986-2931 http://dejavu87.wordpress.com http://www.twitter.com/dejavu87

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ambassadors March 2009