Fedora events in 2009

[Max Spevack]

Hi all,

I'd like to share some thoughts and proposals w/ the larger Fedora 
community for feedback.

One of the things that the Community Architecture team is responsible 
for is, for lack of a better term, Fedora's discretionary budget.  A 
large chunk of that budget is used for events (including travel and 
lodging subsidies), marketing, cd production, swag, etc.

I'm going to talk first about how things are currently organized, and 
then mention what should stay the same, as well as the changes that I'd 
like to propose for 2009.


THE WAY THINGS ARE:

Currently, budget is divided into "FUDCon money" and "global events & 
swag" money.

The FUDCon money is self-explanatory.  One of the successes we had this 
past year was finally bringing FUDCon back outside North America, with a 
very successful event in Brno.  Continued global growth of 
Fedora-centric events is an important goal for the future as well.

The "global events and swag" money is managed by the Fedora Ambassadors 
Steering Committee (with my guidance), and spread among the local 
Ambassadors leaders around the world, who further allocate it based on 
the Fedora Events schedule, and based on tangible needs, like CDs, 
stickers, posters, shirts, etc.  This local accountability model is 
working well around the world, and the hiring of Rodrigo Padula by Red 
Hat LATAM to (among other things) organize and lead the Fedora community 
in that region of the world will help even more.

One of the other types of events that has grown and expanded this past 
year is the "Fedora Ambassador Day", first conceived by Gerold Kassube 
back in 2006.  More on this later.


WHAT NEEDS TO STAY THE SAME:

The general method for distributing and spending the "global events and 
swag" is working well, and should continue, in my opinion.


WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE:

In our quest for globalization, I don't want to fall into a trap of 
saying "there are four quarters in the year, and therefore we should do 
one FUDCon per quarter in a different region of the world".

There are a few resons why I dont like this idea, including:
  * If a particular region of the world only gets one "premier" Fedora 
event each year, it puts a huge amount of pressure on that event to be 
everything to everyone.  For instance, the event has to satisfy local 
Red Hat needs, it has to be at a time and place that maximizes local 
attendance.
  * The event risks being spread too thin.  It trieds to address all of 
Fedora's many parts, and risks not getting sufficient depth in any of 
them.
  * It doesn't give a region a chance to build momentum, and string 
events together, creating stronger personal relationship, stronger 
community, and better results that directly benefit Fedora.
  * It allows only one "premier" Fedora event to be held per quarter.

I think we can be more efficient than that.

As such, I would like to do two things:

(1) Think of the "FUDCon money" in the Fedora budget not as "FUDCon 
money", but rather as "money for premier, Fedora-centric events".

(2) Create a second kind of Fedora-centric event that can complement 
FUDCons, and allow folks like me, Paul, or regional Ambassador leaders 
to create the sorts of events that are most useful to their region.

To that end, I would like to re-brand the idea of "Fedora Ambassador 
Day" to "Fedora Activity Day" (still keeping the FAD acronym).  The idea 
of the new FAD is to bring smaller groups of people in a region (I'm 
picturing 5-20) together for day-long or weekend-long sessions that 
focus on one or two specific Fedora topics, and also include some sort 
of social event, or interesting location.

I'm picturing bringing a bunch of packagers together for a weekend and 
giving them the resources they need to knock one or two things off their 
agenda, or bringing a couple of people who are working on a particular 
feature to the same place and enabling them to have a code sprint. 
Little "Fedora summits", all over the place, focusing on whatever piece 
of Fedora is interesting to a group of contributors who want to come 
together.  The model the Fedora Ambassadors have been using -- bringing 
the regional leaders together for a weekend to plan the next 6-12 month 
strategy -- is also a good example.

Smaller, contributor-focused events that have specific goals, and can be 
organized by whoever is interested in putting them together, wherever 
they are in the world.  These events complement FUDCons, and allow us to 
mix FUDCons and FADs together in different regions of the world with 
more flexibility and modularity.

Because everything still comes out of one quarterly budget, finances 
remain clear and simple.  There is a sum we cannot exceed, but we can 
subdivide that sum each quarter into whatever mixture of FUDCons and 
FADs we like.

Maybe this even gives us an opportunity to remember the "U" in FUDCon, 
and organize events that are more user-centric.  It also enables us to 
take some of the hackfest ideas that are worked on at FUDCons and 
replicate them in different locations and with greater frequency.

All we need to do is figure out a way of tagging FADs as "proposed" and 
"approved" so that as groups of people get their act together, we can be 
sure that (a) the value of the event makes sense and (b) budget for the 
event exists.

The people who take ownership of FADs will be responsible for setting 
and achieving goals to demonstrate the value of the event, so that 
everyone has proper expectations.  Goals might include N bugs triaged or 
N packages reviewed, translation sprints, or focused testing on a piece 
of the application stack of interest to that group.

Interested to hear whatever comments the rest of f-a-b has.

--Max