[Fedora-ambassadors-list] Ambassador's Purpose

Greg DeKoenigsberg gdk at redhat.com
Fri Mar 10 03:49:36 UTC 2006


My comments inline.

On Thu, 9 Mar 2006, Robert 'Bob' Jensen wrote:

> After 4 months in the ambassador project I have several questions and
> also some opinions. I will answer my own questions so you know where I
> am coming from.
> 
> Why are we ambassadors? 
> 
> I am an ambassador so I can better present Fedora to groups of people
> through Slides and structured content.
> 
> Do small events count?
> 
> I do not think our current format lends itself to discussing general
> ideas of bringing Fedora to the masses. I get the feeling that our
> leadership is of the opinion that large high profile events are the ones
> that count. Everything else is just filler.

Perhaps this is a problem with how we structure the meetings.  It's an 
hour of "talking about upcoming events" and sometimes not much else.  I 
think this is largely a problem of scalability.

> Should ambassadors be members of the marketing list?
> 
> I think they should. Many ideas that have been posted to the PRIVATE
> Ambassadors list should have been posted to the PUBLIC Marketing list
> for greater input. 

I agree.

> What should the ambassadors project and list focus on?
> 
> They should focus on supporting Ambassadors and events no matter how
> small. 

I strongly agree.  This was the initial charter for the Ambassadors
project.

> Where did the Ambassadors project come from?
> 
> For more information on this you will have to look at the Oct 2005
> archives of the marketing list.
>
> What happened to the Marketing project?
> 
> It would seem that leadership lost focus, the Ambassadors project was
> created from this lack of focus as a subproject and the general
> marketing project was allowed to die. 

The Ambassadors project is strongly focused on clear action: get people in
front of other people to talk about Fedora, with the tools required to
do so intelligently.

> Why is the Ambassadors list private?
> 
> The Ambassadors list was made private as I remember to prevent people
> from signing up just to get free stuff and promo items.

Do we need to revisit this?  I honestly don't even remember if the 
archives are public or private.

> What can we do to make things better?
> 
> I think we need to re-ignite the Marketing project as the driving force
> of Fedora Marketing. Bring Marketing Tasks back in to the Public view,
> part of this will be to Focus the Ambassadors project on supporting
> Ambassadors in getting to events and related items including giveaway
> "stuff" and keep Marketing in the marketing list. 

There's a natural bleed-over, and because I'm on both lists, I don't even 
notice when that bleed-over has occured.

Marketing is a good place for generating ideas.  The still-open question: 
is it a good place for generating action?  Not without strong leadership.  
Possibly even fairly autocratic leadership.

The problem with marketing is that "the right path" is usually not nearly 
as clear as in engineering matters.

--g

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Greg DeKoenigsberg || Fedora Project || fedoraproject.org
Be an Ambassador || http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors
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