[Ambassadors] Formal request for approval of the multi-desktop DVD (Re: Board meeting recap, 2010 10-18)

[Robyn Bergeron]

On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 11:15:28AM -0700, Jesse Keating wrote:
>> On 10/21/10 6:12 AM, Christoph Wickert wrote:
>> > As I already said to Jesse: It seems the board is setting way higher
>> > standards for testing or QA and has way more concerns for artwork or
>> > infrastructure than for any other spin that was ever approved. To me and
>> > many other ambassadors this looks as if the board is trying to
>> > anticipate our volunteer work.
>>
>> Completely incorrect.
>>
>> A) Every other spin has to be proposed and approved prior to the Feature
>> Freeze of a release.  We're well past that for this.
>>
>> B) This is not a normal spin.  Normal spins are generated by well
>> understood tools already in the Fedora distribution with established
>> usage knowledge, and are produced nightly for testing, and at each
>> milestone.  This is not.
>
> It seems to me this isn't the first time people have felt the need to
> turn away a very late-breaking change, even though everyone's got all
> the best intentions in trying to do something cool.  Can we use this
> as an opportunity to figure out what we as a project could do better,
> in terms of our schedule, to let contributors know points after which
> changes (beyond packages or features) should be deferred to the next
> release?  I know we have schedules for spins, rel-eng, and
> development, but what could we do better to make sure groups like
> Ambassadors are aware of them and not laboring hard at the last minute
> only to be told "no"?
>
> Perhaps we should add specific schedule items to the Ambassadors
> schedule?  Or is it more appropriate to ask that changes like this be
> worked through on specific topical lists like rel-eng or devel?

There are some items to this effect on the Ambassadors schedule.

http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-14/f-14-ambassadors-tasks.html

However, the line items wrt media have more to do with coordinating
what spins / media are desired in each region, so that appropriate
artwork can be coordinated in a timely fashion, allowing design-team
time to create whatever artwork is needed, as well as figure out
budget availability for selected media.  The date for this process
kicks off ~5 weeks after spins freeze.  If regional Ambassador teams
are anticipating wanting to create new custom spins for their
respective regions each cycle, we certainly should notate the spins
submission and freeze dates on the Ambassadors' schedule, at a bare
minimum.

Beyond that, as far as education, I have seen Ambassadors asking
about, "Can I do X, Y, or Z with $media" - perhaps some simple
sessions, either in an IRC classroom, FUDCon, or pre-recorded video
might be helpful. ie: "Want to know the differences between a Beta
Change Deadline, Feature Freeze, Software String Freeze,
Infrastructure Freeze, and Spins Freeze, and how they affect what you
want to do?"  And I don't think that usefulness would be limited to
Ambassadors - I think it would certainly be helpful for new
developers, packagers, community folks in general.

>
> --
> Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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