Summary of previous discussions around FOSCo

[Christoph Wickert]

Hi,

the idea of FOSCo, the Fedora Outreach Steering Committee has been
brought up before, but as there were different assumptions and ideas,
the council asked to summarize the previous discussion.

The general idea behind FOSCo is to strengthen our outreach by
bundling the efforts of the ambassadors, marketing, and the design
team.

You can break down the previous discussion into two groups:
1. Discussion within FAmSCo, see https://fedorahosted.org/famsco/ticket/373
FAmSCo agreed we want FOSCo and we want it to replace FAmSCo, and
extend its scope to other outreach teams such as the design and
marketing teams. I suggest we do not fall back behind this consensus.

2. Discussion started by Matthew, who sent out a message to various
mailing lists, see
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2014-October/022896...
There was no feedback whatsoever on the ambassadors and design team
lists. On the marketing list, the question of eligible voters was
raised. FAmSCo elections were opened to CLA+1 two years ago and as the
new body represents different FAS groups, we certainly want to keep it
this way. The question however is if we elections at all. Having a
more meritocratic approach was one of the ideas behind recent Fedora
governance changes, so just like in the council, we could also have
appointed seats.

This brings us to the question of FOSCo's composition. At this point,
we need to keep two things in mind:
1. The ambassadors are the by far biggest group. This not only means
we need to represent a lot of people but also that they have a big
impact on elections.
2. Unlike the other groups, the ambassadors project is set up in a
very regional manner. The different regions (NA, LATAM, EMEA, APAC)
take care of their own business in terms of event organization, budget
etc. FAmSco only acts as an umbrella.

I think preserving the regional approach is a must. Each region should
appoint one representative. Marketing and design also need to have
representatives to make sure communication and collaboration with the
other teams works. This will give us 6 appointed (or indirectly
elected) seats.

The question is if we also want / need to have some elected seats and
if, how many of them. The council has two, but I think having an
uneven number is always a good idea. Personally I think three is best
but also the maximum because everything > 9 people in total will be
hard to manage.

I take all appointed candidates are eligible to make decisions and
each have one vote. What about the elected ones? Do we need something
like auxiliary seats as we have in the council?

There are still a lot of open questions here, e.g. the objectives,
scope, and policies of the new body. We can borrow a lot from the
council, e.g. the lazy consensus for decision making.

For everything else, I suggest we discuss the questions as they arise,
so unless people disagree, let's first discuss the composition.

Comments, feedback?

Best regards,
Christoph

[Truong Anh Tuan]

----- Original Message -----
>  From: "Christoph Wickert"
> <christoph.wickert(a)gmail.com&gt;
>  To: outreach(a)lists.fedoraproject.org, council-discuss(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2015 1:26:41 AM
>  Subject: Summary of previous discussions around FOSCo 
>  Hi,
>  
>  the idea of FOSCo, the Fedora Outreach Steering Committee has been
>  brought up before, but as there were different assumptions and ideas,
>  the council asked to summarize the previous discussion. 
Thanks Christoph for summarizing all up.

We have discussed a lot within FAmSCo and I personally hope to hear more
ideas from other groups.

>  The general idea behind FOSCo is to strengthen our outreach by
>  bundling the efforts of the ambassadors, marketing, and the design
>  team.
>  
>  You can break down the previous discussion into two groups:
>  1. Discussion within FAmSCo, see https://fedorahosted.org/famsco/ticket/373
>  FAmSCo agreed we want FOSCo and we want it to replace FAmSCo, and
>  extend its scope to other outreach teams such as the design and
>  marketing teams. I suggest we do not fall back behind this consensus. 
+1. We got consensus and it must be a good start.

>  2. Discussion started by Matthew, who sent out a message to various
>  mailing lists, see
>  https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2014-October/022896...
>  There was no feedback whatsoever on the ambassadors and design team
>  lists. On the marketing list, the question of eligible voters was
>  raised. FAmSCo elections were opened to CLA+1 two years ago and as the
>  new body represents different FAS groups, we certainly want to keep it
>  this way. The question however is if we elections at all. Having a
>  more meritocratic approach was one of the ideas behind recent Fedora
>  governance changes, so just like in the council, we could also have
>  appointed seats. 
+1. I agree.

>  This brings us to the question of FOSCo's composition. At this
> point,
>  we need to keep two things in mind:
>  1. The ambassadors are the by far biggest group. This not only means
>  we need to represent a lot of people but also that they have a big
>  impact on elections.
>  2. Unlike the other groups, the ambassadors project is set up in a
>  very regional manner. The different regions (NA, LATAM, EMEA, APAC)
>  take care of their own business in terms of event organization, budget
>  etc. FAmSco only acts as an umbrella.
>  
>  I think preserving the regional approach is a must. Each region should
>  appoint one representative. 
Regional ambassadors are doing well. In fact, they are representatives
for community in each region, AFAICS.

>  Marketing and design also need to have
>  representatives to make sure communication and collaboration with the
>  other teams works. This will give us 6 appointed (or indirectly
>  elected) seats. 
+1. Design and Marketing if two of biggest as well as most active
outreach teams beside ambassadors.
However, how about other *big* teams such as Docs, Translations?

>  The question is if we also want / need to have some elected seats
> and
>  if, how many of them. The council has two, but I think having an
>  uneven number is always a good idea. Personally I think three is best
>  but also the maximum because everything > 9 people in total will be
>  hard to manage. 
+1 for 9 people.

>  I take all appointed candidates are eligible to make decisions and
>  each have one vote. What about the elected ones? Do we need something
>  like auxiliary seats as we have in the council? 
I think it best to make all equal (similar to FAmSCo)

>  There are still a lot of open questions here, e.g. the objectives,
>  scope, and policies of the new body. We can borrow a lot from the
>  council, e.g. the lazy consensus for decision making. 
Do we need to form a team to prepare them?
If we need such a team, I would like to be one of the volunteers.

>  For everything else, I suggest we discuss the questions as they
> arise,
>  so unless people disagree, let's first discuss the composition.
>  
>  Comments, feedback? 
Frankly speaking, FAmSCo is quite inactive now. I think FOSCO should be
present soon to take the chair.

Rgds,
Tuan

[Ankur Sinha]

On Tue, 2015-03-17 at 08:15 +0700, Truong Anh. Tuan wrote:
>  Thanks Christoph for summarizing all up. 
Hi everyone, 

I posted this on the trac ticket
(https://fedorahosted.org/famsco/ticket/373#comment:7) ,but since the
discussion seems to have moved here, I'm posting here too:

So, the problem, as Matthew states in the ticket description is:

"Meanwhile, the project really lacks coordination between various areas
of outreach — Ambassadors, Marketing, Design Team (which is responsible
for branding), and support efforts like Ask Fedora and even
Documentation and Web. This may also include areas of the new
Fedora.next Working Groups which touch on these areas — branding,
marketing, conference attendance in support of a particular product, and
etc. "

I'm slightly at a loss to see how a new body solves this issue - I've
seen the activity on the various lists and tracs and it's not really
clear to me that the goal of FOSCo is to improve the communication
between teams.

For example, I just saw a ticket on the fosco trac that said "Arrange
University install-fests" and another that said "Find pilot university
for Fedora lab deployment" and another that said "FOSS Alternatives
Resource Page". These really appear to be just normal ambassador team
tasks, which they've been doing for quite a long time.

I mean, if you read the problem statement, a simple solution could be:

- regular multi team meets - people from the various teams sit in, say
what's happening, what team A needs from team B, what team C needs from
team A and B and so on?
- if necessary, representatives can be appointed in the various teams,
or we can take turns and so on (this part can be handled by the teams
themselves) 

This still doesn't quite feel like it needs an official new body, with
elections and so on. Each team has active contributors - ambassadors,
which is the largest has famsco + regional leads to spread the word and
co-ordinate them - other teams are much smaller and don't need this
governance model - the simplest solution seems to be to get them to
speak to each other and keep up with each others activities - and this
can be done without major restructuring of
famsco/fosco/ambassadors/other teams.

Also, in the name FOSCo, the word "Outreach" could possibly be
misconstrued as increasing contributors/participation and so on (on the
lines of the gnome outreach programme - ​https://www.gnome.org//opw/).
Is *this* the function of FOSCo? It would explain why the fosco trac has
tickets for install fests and so on it. But, this is completely
different from increasing communication between teams (internal
community outreach vs external outreach?). Even the e-mail that was sent
out with the proposal said:

"The idea is to transform FAmSCo into Fedora Outreach Steering
Committee, representing and coordinating Ambassadors, Marketing, Design
Team (which is responsible for branding), and support efforts like Ask
Fedora and even Documentation and Web. It would also include areas of
the new Fedora.next Working Groups which touch on these areas —
branding, marketing, conference attendance in support of a particular
product, and etc. (Not to _rule_ them, but to coordinate and enable.)"

which doesn't say anything about the gnome style outreach.

So, I guess what I'm wondering is:

-  what is the purpose of FOSCo
-  if it is indeed to increase communication/co-ordination between teams
within the community, do we really need another body?
-  else, if the purpose of FOSCo isn't yet completely clear, we probably
need to take a step back and figure it out before we start working on
things? 

What do you think?

-- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha

[Pete Travis]

On 03/20/2015 11:10 AM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
>  On Tue, 2015-03-17 at 08:15 +0700, Truong Anh. Tuan wrote:
> > Thanks Christoph for summarizing all up.
>  Hi everyone, 
>
>  I posted this on the trac ticket
>  (https://fedorahosted.org/famsco/ticket/373#comment:7) ,but since the
>  discussion seems to have moved here, I'm posting here too:
>
>  So, the problem, as Matthew states in the ticket description is:
>
>  "Meanwhile, the project really lacks coordination between various areas
>  of outreach — Ambassadors, Marketing, Design Team (which is responsible
>  for branding), and support efforts like Ask Fedora and even
>  Documentation and Web. This may also include areas of the new
>  Fedora.next Working Groups which touch on these areas — branding,
>  marketing, conference attendance in support of a particular product, and
>  etc. "
>
>  I'm slightly at a loss to see how a new body solves this issue - I've
>  seen the activity on the various lists and tracs and it's not really
>  clear to me that the goal of FOSCo is to improve the communication
>  between teams.
>
>  For example, I just saw a ticket on the fosco trac that said "Arrange
>  University install-fests" and another that said "Find pilot university
>  for Fedora lab deployment" and another that said "FOSS Alternatives
>  Resource Page". These really appear to be just normal ambassador team
>  tasks, which they've been doing for quite a long time.
>
>  I mean, if you read the problem statement, a simple solution could be:
>
>  - regular multi team meets - people from the various teams sit in, say
>  what's happening, what team A needs from team B, what team C needs from
>  team A and B and so on?
>  - if necessary, representatives can be appointed in the various teams,
>  or we can take turns and so on (this part can be handled by the teams
>  themselves) 
>
>  This still doesn't quite feel like it needs an official new body, with
>  elections and so on. Each team has active contributors - ambassadors,
>  which is the largest has famsco + regional leads to spread the word and
>  co-ordinate them - other teams are much smaller and don't need this
>  governance model - the simplest solution seems to be to get them to
>  speak to each other and keep up with each others activities - and this
>  can be done without major restructuring of
>  famsco/fosco/ambassadors/other teams.
>
>  Also, in the name FOSCo, the word "Outreach" could possibly be
>  misconstrued as increasing contributors/participation and so on (on the
>  lines of the gnome outreach programme - ​https://www.gnome.org//opw/).
>  Is *this* the function of FOSCo? It would explain why the fosco trac has
>  tickets for install fests and so on it. But, this is completely
>  different from increasing communication between teams (internal
>  community outreach vs external outreach?). Even the e-mail that was sent
>  out with the proposal said:
>
>  "The idea is to transform FAmSCo into Fedora Outreach Steering
>  Committee, representing and coordinating Ambassadors, Marketing, Design
>  Team (which is responsible for branding), and support efforts like Ask
>  Fedora and even Documentation and Web. It would also include areas of
>  the new Fedora.next Working Groups which touch on these areas —
>  branding, marketing, conference attendance in support of a particular
>  product, and etc. (Not to _rule_ them, but to coordinate and enable.)"
>
>  which doesn't say anything about the gnome style outreach.
>
>  So, I guess what I'm wondering is:
>
>  -  what is the purpose of FOSCo
>  -  if it is indeed to increase communication/co-ordination between teams
>  within the community, do we really need another body?
>  -  else, if the purpose of FOSCo isn't yet completely clear, we probably
>  need to take a step back and figure it out before we start working on
>  things? 
>
>  What do you think?
>  
I share these concerns.  Initially, I was interpreting the intent of the
Outreach Steering Committee to be collaboration on all user facing
efforts, with representation from any interested groups, SIGs, or
individuals.  This seems like a great idea; I'm concerned that many
community members work diligently in their own space but may not track
efforts in other areas, or give special attention to communicating their
own efforts with the larger community.  Efforts directed towards
improving internal cooperation would make outward-facing efforts more
effective and develop a stronger sense of community.

But, nothing happened here for a while; it was looking like an idea
without a vision. Now, as things start to move forward, the vision of
this group I observe is very different from what I thought we all
shared.  The tickets and list traffic lately reflect a group dedicated
to providing direction and support to ambassadors.  I'm fine with that,
but if that's what is going on, it seems more honest to call it the
Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee, and encourage that group of folks
to work with marketing and design folks on establishing common goals.  A
voting seat on a leadership committee should not be a prerequisite for
communication between groups.

-- 
-- Pete

[White, Langdon]

On Mar 22, 2015 3:19 PM, "Pete Travis" <me(a)petetravis.com&gt; wrote:
>  On 03/20/2015 11:10 AM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
>  > On Tue, 2015-03-17 at 08:15 +0700, Truong Anh. Tuan wrote:
>  >> Thanks Christoph for summarizing all up.
>  > Hi everyone,
>  >
>  > I posted this on the trac ticket
>  > (https://fedorahosted.org/famsco/ticket/373#comment:7) ,but since the
>  > discussion seems to have moved here, I'm posting here too:
>  >
>  > So, the problem, as Matthew states in the ticket description is:
>  >
>  > "Meanwhile, the project really lacks coordination between various areas
>  > of outreach — Ambassadors, Marketing, Design Team (which is responsible
>  > for branding), and support efforts like Ask Fedora and even
>  > Documentation and Web. This may also include areas of the new
>  > Fedora.next Working Groups which touch on these areas — branding,
>  > marketing, conference attendance in support of a particular product, and
>  > etc. "
>  >
>  > I'm slightly at a loss to see how a new body solves this issue - I've
>  > seen the activity on the various lists and tracs and it's not really
>  > clear to me that the goal of FOSCo is to improve the communication
>  > between teams.
>  >
>  > For example, I just saw a ticket on the fosco trac that said "Arrange
>  > University install-fests" and another that said "Find pilot university
>  > for Fedora lab deployment" and another that said "FOSS Alternatives
>  > Resource Page". These really appear to be just normal ambassador team
>  > tasks, which they've been doing for quite a long time.
>  >
>  > I mean, if you read the problem statement, a simple solution could be:
>  >
>  > - regular multi team meets - people from the various teams sit in, say
>  > what's happening, what team A needs from team B, what team C needs from
>  > team A and B and so on?
>  > - if necessary, representatives can be appointed in the various teams,
>  > or we can take turns and so on (this part can be handled by the teams
>  > themselves)
>  >
>  > This still doesn't quite feel like it needs an official new body, with
>  > elections and so on. Each team has active contributors - ambassadors,
>  > which is the largest has famsco + regional leads to spread the word and
>  > co-ordinate them - other teams are much smaller and don't need this
>  > governance model - the simplest solution seems to be to get them to
>  > speak to each other and keep up with each others activities - and this
>  > can be done without major restructuring of
>  > famsco/fosco/ambassadors/other teams.
>  >
>  > Also, in the name FOSCo, the word "Outreach" could possibly be
>  > misconstrued as increasing contributors/participation and so on (on the
>  > lines of the gnome outreach programme - ​https://www.gnome.org//opw/).
>  > Is *this* the function of FOSCo? It would explain why the fosco trac has
>  > tickets for install fests and so on it. But, this is completely
>  > different from increasing communication between teams (internal
>  > community outreach vs external outreach?). Even the e-mail that was sent
>  > out with the proposal said:
>  >
>  > "The idea is to transform FAmSCo into Fedora Outreach Steering
>  > Committee, representing and coordinating Ambassadors, Marketing, Design
>  > Team (which is responsible for branding), and support efforts like Ask
>  > Fedora and even Documentation and Web. It would also include areas of
>  > the new Fedora.next Working Groups which touch on these areas —
>  > branding, marketing, conference attendance in support of a particular
>  > product, and etc. (Not to _rule_ them, but to coordinate and enable.)"
>  >
>  > which doesn't say anything about the gnome style outreach.
>  >
>  > So, I guess what I'm wondering is:
>  >
>  > -  what is the purpose of FOSCo
>  > -  if it is indeed to increase communication/co-ordination between teams
>  > within the community, do we really need another body?
>  > -  else, if the purpose of FOSCo isn't yet completely clear, we probably
>  > need to take a step back and figure it out before we start working on
>  > things?
>  >
>  > What do you think?
>  >
>
>  I share these concerns.  Initially, I was interpreting the intent of the
>  Outreach Steering Committee to be collaboration on all user facing
>  efforts, with representation from any interested groups, SIGs, or
>  individuals.  This seems like a great idea; I'm concerned that many
>  community members work diligently in their own space but may not track
>  efforts in other areas, or give special attention to communicating their
>  own efforts with the larger community.  Efforts directed towards
>  improving internal cooperation would make outward-facing efforts more
>  effective and develop a stronger sense of community.
>
>  But, nothing happened here for a while; it was looking like an idea
>  without a vision. Now, as things start to move forward, the vision of
>  this group I observe is very different from what I thought we all
>  shared.  The tickets and list traffic lately reflect a group dedicated
>  to providing direction and support to ambassadors.  I'm fine with that,
>  but if that's what is going on, it seems more honest to call it the
>  Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee, and encourage that group of folks
>  to work with marketing and design folks on establishing common goals.  A
>  voting seat on a leadership committee should not be a prerequisite for
>  communication between groups.
>
>  --
>  -- Pete
>
>  
On a related note (IMHO),  I think it would be worthwhile to establish
metrics by which the org/team can be considered successful. A few metrics
established before the formation (or not) of the team might simplify the
answers to these questions and show, formally, what the priorities are for
"outreach." Completely off the cuff, perhaps a number of x-team initiatives
per qtr / 6 months, number of install-fests, meetups, surveys (e.g. "what
is fedora" or "website feedback"), etc.

Langdon

>  _______________________________________________
>  outreach mailing list
>  outreach(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://lists.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/outreach
>

[Matthew Miller]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 01:18:46PM -0600, Pete Travis wrote:
>  I share these concerns.  Initially, I was interpreting the intent of
>  the Outreach Steering Committee to be collaboration on all user
>  facing efforts, with representation from any interested groups, SIGs,
>  or individuals. This seems like a great idea; I'm concerned that many
>  community members work diligently in their own space but may not
>  track efforts in other areas, or give special attention to
>  communicating their own efforts with the larger community. Efforts
>  directed towards improving internal cooperation would make
>  outward-facing efforts more effective and develop a stronger sense of
>  community. 
I think that sums up my idea for it fairly nicely, really. What might
we do to bring what's being talked about in line with that? (Is it just
that the immediate concerns of ambassadors are most tangible and
therefore overwhelm higher-level collaboration?)

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
Fedora Project Leader

[Pete Travis]

On 03/23/2015 11:26 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:
>  On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 01:18:46PM -0600, Pete Travis wrote:
> > I share these concerns.  Initially, I was interpreting the intent of
> > the Outreach Steering Committee to be collaboration on all user
> > facing efforts, with representation from any interested groups, SIGs,
> > or individuals. This seems like a great idea; I'm concerned that many
> > community members work diligently in their own space but may not
> > track efforts in other areas, or give special attention to
> > communicating their own efforts with the larger community. Efforts
> > directed towards improving internal cooperation would make
> > outward-facing efforts more effective and develop a stronger sense of
> > community.
>  I think that sums up my idea for it fairly nicely, really. What might
>  we do to bring what's being talked about in line with that? (Is it just
>  that the immediate concerns of ambassadors are most tangible and
>  therefore overwhelm higher-level collaboration?)
>  
My concern at this point is that we have a proposed solution, and now
we're at the point of looking for problems to justify implementing that
solution.

I propose we take another perspective, start with the problems that need
to be solved, and look for the most appropriate solution (which may or
may not be a leadership body.)

For example, the specific concern from the meeting today was
Ambassadors' difficulty in getting deliverables from Marketing.  More
broadly, we can state that it is difficult to know what a given team has
to offer other teams, and how one would go about requesting them.  To
address this, someone could go around creating trac tickets and mailing
list threads to request this from stakeholding teams.  A marketing trac
ticket could say "Marketing, please create a wiki page that explains
what kind of flyers and brochures and such you are willing to produce,
what timeframe and information you would need to fulfill the request,
and ensure you have an internal process for servicing these requests".

If that process needs to be formalized and tracked, it could be done
under the aegis of the Council by an appointed objective lead, an
approach already covered under the Council charter.

If there are other problems to solve, besides getting deliverables from
Marketing, let's start listing them out.

-- 
-- Pete