"What is the Fedora Project?"

[John Poelstra]

Gregory Zysk said the following on 10/12/2009 06:55 AM Pacific Time:
 > Dear F-a-b,
 >
 > Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Gregory Zysk and I am a new
 > member to the Fedora community who is interested in the strategic
 > management/leadership of Fedora. Please take the time to view my wiki 
here:
 >
 > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Gmzysk

Welcome to Fedora!

 > As I am quite new, I am not sure about the prior work that has been done
 > to define the question of "What is the Fedora Project?" but from my
 > personal experiences so far every user and contributor view this
 > question in their own way (i.e People person vs. packager/developer, etc)
 >
 > I believe in order to truly form a strategy for growth and target a
 > specific user segment, we need apply some research internally and
 > externally. If not applied already, as a form of Organizational
 > Development, one can start with measuring the needs and values of a
 > contributor through sampling. We can reciprocate this process for all
 > positions within Fedora and then move to the outside of the organization
 > to sample a group of "external" users. For instance, those who use other
 > open source distros, proprietary OS's and the like (This can be
 > accomplished through surveys or focus groups on-line or off-line at for
 > example Fedora events). Once we gain this data, we can begin to measure
 > these needs and values to that of Fedora's needs and values (at a
 > management/leadership level) to see if they are in alignment. One can
 > also view this as aligned resources for strategic fit.

Long term I think these could be useful things to do, many of which 
could be done in parallel with our ongoing releases.  Short term we find 
ourselves a month away from releasing the 12th release of Fedora with 
work on the 13th release already starting.  There isn't really time to 
freeze everything to research these things nor a lot of people with 
background or experience doing what you have suggested.  Some work has 
been done by the marketing team so that could be a good place to work on 
these things.

 > I believe once we get some solid data, then we can start to forecast and
 > plan for strategic development which in turn can be used to steer the
 > marketing team and the ambassadors in the way we would like to position
 > ourselves at events, as well as the open source market.
 >
 > Once again, since I am new, I am not sure if this has been brought up
 > before, but nonetheless, I believe I can help a great deal in regards to
 > this topic and overall organizational management, development and
 > planning.  I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions.
 >

You might want to subscribe to "logistics"[1] list and watch the "F12 
Beta Release Readiness" meeting tomorrow at 19:00 UTC in 
#fedora-meeting.  The overall organizational management and planning is 
fairly informal and works better than most people think at first glance :)

John

[1] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/logistics