Free Media: deeper nexus between ambassadors & mirror admins

[Debarshi Ray]

I keep hearing and reading about the huge amount of open requests in
the Free Media program. I was wondering whether a deeper nexus between
the ambassadors and the mirror administrators would help to improve
the situation.

We can have an arrangement where after every stable release the
mirrors admins send snapshots of their mirrors to some "select"
ambassadors. These ambassadors can then re-distribute the content
further down the tree.

Most amabassadors are volunteers and may be bandwidth constrained. So
it might be cheaper to send a snapshot in 3-4 DVDs via snail mail than
having to do the equivalent amount of downloading. In case the media
request has originated from a place geograhically close to a mirror,
the ambassadors can simply redirect them to the relevant mirror
facility.

Someday one can extend this to the idea of getting seed content for
new mirrors from pre-existing ones.

Comments?

Cheers,
Debarshi

[sankarshan]

Debarshi Ray wrote:
> We can have an arrangement where after every stable release the
> mirrors admins send snapshots of their mirrors to some "select"
> ambassadors. These ambassadors can then re-distribute the content
> further down the tree.

Rahul was discussing this thing the other day and your suggestion 
optimizes one aspect of the availability of OS bits. The other end that 
needs focus is getting the bits from the Ambassadors / participants in 
FreeMedia program to the requestors / users.

I am putting Siddharth in cc: to ensure that he puts in his thoughts on 
this action as well

[Siddharth Upmanyu]

Hi Friends,

I guess we are going in the right direction in organizing Ambassadors,
but a lot of work is still needed. I dont think as of today most of
Ambassadors even in the same city are in regular contact... we need to
improve this situation... timely meetings and communication are the
first step in this action plan.
 As we get more aware of the group easier it gets to act on different Ideas.

Regards
Siddharth

On 5/2/08, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay  wrote:
> Debarshi Ray wrote:
> > We can have an arrangement where after every stable release the
> > mirrors admins send snapshots of their mirrors to some "select"
> > ambassadors. These ambassadors can then re-distribute the content
> > further down the tree.
>
> Rahul was discussing this thing the other day and your suggestion
> optimizes one aspect of the availability of OS bits. The other end that
> needs focus is getting the bits from the Ambassadors / participants in
> FreeMedia program to the requestors / users.
>
> I am putting Siddharth in cc: to ensure that he puts in his thoughts on
> this action as well
>
> --
>
> http://www.gutenberg.net - Fine literature digitally re-published
> http://www.plos.org - Public Library of Science
> http://www.creativecommons.org - Flexible copyright for creative work

[sankarshan]

[e-mail] wrote:
> I guess we are going in the right direction in organizing Ambassadors,
> but a lot of work is still needed. I dont think as of today most of
> Ambassadors even in the same city are in regular contact... we need to
> improve this situation... timely meetings and communication are the
> first step in this action plan.

Agreed. And it would be a good idea if the Ambassadors out of Pune could 
fix up a date to meet at the RHAT offices.

At some point in time during the year, we hope to set in place an event 
by which Ambassadors across India can meet up. It is early days for this 
yet and let's see how this turns out.
> As we get more aware of the group easier it gets to act on different Ideas.

The general idea is to ensure that at any event that happens, there is 
someone who talks / demonstrates something about Fedora. Getting that 
kind of momentum going demands more far reaching efforts than we are 
currently undertaking.