[Fedora-ambassadors-list] Ambassador's Purpose

Tejas Dinkar tejasdinkar at gmail.com
Fri Mar 10 04:12:31 UTC 2006


On Thu, 2006-03-09 at 21:27 -0600, Robert 'Bob' Jensen wrote:
> Why are we ambassadors? 
> 
> I am an ambassador so I can better present Fedora to groups of people
> through Slides and structured content.

Only partly for me.

Structured content are good to some extent. We mustn't forget bofs,
install fest, and general cheer leading.

> 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.

This is the exact opposite in my eyes.

I was at both foss.in and LinuxAsia. (4k people at the first, IIRC)

Which were major events, and I was at the booth at FOSS.in for all 4
days.

Both were major FOSS events, and, <surprise, surprise> everyone already
knew what Fedora was. In fact, trying to promote fedora at any foss
event (to me) appears redundant.

Yes, it is important that people know the latest and best of what going
around the fedora world, but more important than that is to get people
who use entirely proprietary software in to fedora.

And you don't see such people at large events.

These people usually loaf around college tech-fests... in fact, I've
pulled random people off my college corridors and given them a lecture
on free software, and lent them MY FC4 CDs.

> 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. 

po-tay-to, po-taaa-to.

How difficult is it, really, to get on the ambassadors list?

We set some bare minimum, but actually the only thing you need to get
onto this list is a valid name, and email.

Anyone who wants to get on the ambassadors list needs only to prove that
he has some interest in spreading the freedom, which he will have by
definition if he plans on contributing on the Marketing List. The only
exception being the media, but we can ping the marketing list every time
we reach a benchmark.

<apologies to all the 'she's who are reading this for the use of 'he'>
> What should the ambassadors project and list focus on?
> 
> They should focus on supporting Ambassadors and events no matter how
> small. 

+1000000

> 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. 

Well, in my opinion, the Marketing list is deprecated.

The ambassadors list gives structure to what the marketing list does.

And further more, the Ambassadors project gives everyone a chance to
participate as a PEER in the project.

IMO, the marketing project just lacked that, plus the term is rather
derogatory for those of us who want to be hackers.

> 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. 

Hmmm, I disagree...

Ambassadors should be the front end. Yes, I think marketing shouldn't
die. But I'd really appreciate a specific answer to this question:

`What can Marketing do better than the Ambassadors?`.

better = [faster, more efficient, reach more people].

> I am sure more will come from me later, this will be plenty to talk
> about for now. If anyone has the guts to that is.

I have given flame bait.

Flame away.

Just another core dump of
/dev/peanut (my brain ;)

Gja
--
Tejas Dinkar - tejasdinkar AT gmail DOT com

http://www.gja.in

Freedom of the press is for those who happen to own one.




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