Hello all,
Day-2 of the FAD today was mostly dedicated to more brainstorming about various issues that are faced across APAC region. Ex missing leadership, lack of awareness,lack of initiative, divided regional approach etc.
Day started with an issue of delays in reimbursements. And if it would make sense to have another Fedora credit card older in the region. Izhar Firdaus, who is an Ambassador in Malaysia and does reimbursements for the APAC, explained various processes that he has to follow around reimbursements, filing monthly expenses and required paperwork etc. It'd be preferred to have another card holder in India, but we need a suitable responsible volunteer who is willing to do that. We'd reach out to the Fedora Council with a request once we have such a candidate in sight.
Next each participant was asked what they could do to improve community participation in their region. Each region has ambassadors who have been inactive for years. Many cases are they became ambassador when they were students, and since then have been occupied with their jobs or have lost interest in working for Fedora. But there is nothing much that could be done about it. We can prod them and wake them up, but beyond that it's their choice. Once again the DVDs production issue came about, in that, it'll help to have Alternative Desktop DVDs, wherein user can choose from a desktop of his/her choice than having just Gnome shell. Also for conferences like 'conf.kde.in', it'll help to distribute KDE desktop DVDs than the Gnome ones. User interface could come in the way of Fedora adoption, we need to experiment with the available options to see which one works the best.
Next came the missing leadership across APAC region. It is observed that there is no targeted/planned approach to our activities. It's very ad-hoc and mostly happens at the 11'th hour. Like organisation of this FAD, or producing DVDs/Banners/swag when there is a pressing requirement etc.
It is ambassadors' task to take control of it. They need to fill the leadership positions through initiative. But the major problem is that not all ambassadors know their responsibilities well. It's their mentors' failure in mentoring them and is upto them to fix it.
-> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors
There are other issues like, not all Fedora participants are vocal across various Fedora channels, mailing lists, etc. Maybe because they don't care or maybe because there is a feeling that they can not change anything. It is extremely important that we voice our opinions/views across all channels.
Another bigger issue is ambassadors don't have a convincing argument for the audience about - why they should use Fedora. Because in many environments it doesn't matter which distribution they use.
By this time we were close to the evening, next topic was about the new governing structure proposed by the Fedora council.
Regional delegates -> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Budget.next#Regional_Delegates
Going forward, Fedora is going to be much more methodical and we need to prepare ourselves towards that.
See more highlights at -> http://piratepad.net/FAD-Sngapore-2015
Thank you.
--- -P J P http://feedmug.com
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P J P