I agree with Neville here, and for the same reasons. I, too, am not (much of) a programmer -- but I'm working on it -- and my skills around media, as in "news media," make being an Ambassador (and working in Marketing, which I don't do enough of, I confess) the best fit for me. And I think it's a good practice for Ambassadors and Mentors -- especially Mentors -- to guide those who may have a special talent or interest to match the Ambassador with the department in Fedora that best suits him or her.

One thing that hasn't been discussed -- or I missed it -- is that many people who want to participate in Fedora and don' t know where to start usually start in Ambassadors and make their way to QA or other departments on the programming/engineering side because they do have the skill set. While we end up "losing" them in Ambassadors, they usually find a home in some other part of Fedora, and that's a win for us.

Larry Cafiero

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 6:30 PM, Neville A. Cross <neville@taygon.com> wrote:
On Fri, 2011-02-11 at 11:21 -0800, Jesús Franco wrote:
<snip>
> IMHO, every Ambassador should be first at all, contributor in another
> Fedora project.
>
<snip>

I fully understand why may be useful for an ambassador to start
somewhere else as fedora contributor and later become ambassador. There
are several reason for that I agree with the statement. What I like to
sugest is not make it a rule. My only reason for saying so, it because
otherwise I wouldn't be here. I am not a programer, I am not a designer,
and I wanted to spread Fedora so I joined Ambassadors. I am not ashamed
of my starts on the project just as a "talk-giver" and event organizer.

It is a difficult balance to keep easy to get onboard of the project and
still keep up quality. I adhere to this as a guideline, but as a rules
is a bit too hard.

I feel that my role as ambassador is to direct people to contribute with
fedora where their talents may be more useful. What sometime is not as
easy, as people some times want to do things that are not their best.
(Let's hope is because of the learning experience and not because of
sturburness). Ambassador role is about undersatnding the project as a
whole, and about soft skills dealing with people.  You may gain some
insight on the project joining one team, but that will be not enough. It
is a ongoing task for every day.

So, let's help people to help us. Let's direct people to different parts
of the project. But please don't discard people that may be useful on
ambassador team just because they haven't been able to engage in other
tasks.




--
Neville
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Yn1v
Linux User # 473217