[Ambassadors] Ambassador NA meeting minutes

[Max Spevack]

> 19:17 < lxmaier_home> inode0: red hat in emea hardly goes to 
> local/regional events -- i am not even sure they were at linuxTag

Red Hat "corporate" had a small presence at LinuxTag -- one person from 
HR and one person from Marketing, and they paid 2,000 EUR for the Fedora 
Booth, which the HR person took a little corner of for her resume-drop 
meetings.

Aside from that, it was the Blue Man Group.

> 19:23 < ke4qqq> lxmaier_home: I'd agree - but RHNA is already sending 
> out the stuff - I have asked Greg and Max and FAMSCO to send stuff for 
> events and it gets sent to me every time. It seems like we waste more 
> time going through the appropriations process than anything else.

I'm glad it always gets to you, though as the guy who did the "send swag 
all over North America" requests for about 2 years, I'd love to see it 
get more automated.  The truth, from my perspective:  It was easier to 
take 30-60 minutes every week, and just do it all manually than to spend 
all the time it would take to finish up a turnkey solution.  Maybe 
that's wrong/lazy, but in my own day to day functions the last couple 
years, that just ended up being reality.

> 19:24 * herlo actually thinks that it'd be nice just to *have* the 
> stuff on hand.  No event necessary

We tend to mass-produce swag and horde it at RH and wait for 
events/requests to come in.  This model doesn't scale too well, though.

For a while we had the "swag packs" on the brand fuel store, and the "we 
give them an address and they ship it out" method worked well, but the 
price was just insane.

> 19:28 < ke4qqq> gregdek: based on how things operate - I'd say RH owns 
> NA Ambassadors - we are too dependent on them. Famsco to a lesser 
> degree - but really we see precious little of them.

Hopefully, the place you are seeing FAMSCo is in the Budget Allocation 
process for events worldwide.  We followed a pretty strict set of 
guidelines for "getting your event funded" in Q2, and it worked really 
well all over the world.  Every event on the FedoraEvents page has 
budget and support from FAMSCo.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/SteeringCommittee/Budget

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-July/msg00152.html

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-April/msg00005.html

> 19:29 < gregdek> a. Ambassadors are more invested when they can 
> operate autonomously, and RH should give funding, but *not* 
> necessarily schwag;

This is the model we use in EMEA, and are sort of moving to in NA, by 
virtue of the fact that in recent months, an Ambassador's support has 
been in the form of PayPal'd money, and it's up to them to take it from 
there.

> 19:29 < gregdek> b. FAMSCO is a broken concept that does not take 
> regional needs into account.

> 19:29 < gregdek> Well, perhaps it was useful for its time, but as 
> ambassadors around the world get up and run, it's outliving its 
> usefulness.

I think I disagree with you there, Greg.  See below...

> 19:29 < herlo> I need to ask a simple question about a.  To whom does 
> RH give the funding? 19:30 < gregdek> Good question. 19:30 < gregdek> 
> In EMEA, we give it to various folks to help make things happen. 19:30 
> < herlo> is it direct to NA ambassadors? Or to FAMSCo or some such 
> 19:30 < herlo> because to be honest, I personally don't want money, I 
> want the swag 19:30 < gregdek> In LATAM, we give almost all of it to 
> Rodrigo Padula da Oliveira in Brazil, and he makes things happen.

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree that FAMSCo is broken.  FAMSCo has a 
membership that includes people worldwide.  Here is the workflow:

FAMSCo is given a budget.  This budget comes from Red Hat, and it is a 
sub-section of the larger Community Architecture budget.  This FAMSCo 
budget is for the quarter, and FAMSCo as a body is *fully empowered* to 
disburse those funds worldwide as they see best.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CommunityArchitecture/Expenses

In Q1, FAMSCo spent almost $20,000, spread out pretty well across the 
globe:

     * North America -- $5,250
     * Europe, Middle East, Africa -- $3,030
     * India, Asia, Australia -- $1,975
     * South America -- $1,000
     * Fedora 9 CDs and DVDs for FreeMedia and North America -- $8,175

In Q2 (with 6 weeks left) FAMSCo has spent about $7k (with another $8k 
still to be spent), and the balance worldwide is even better:

 	* North America -- $2,720
 	* Europe, Middle East, Africa -- $2,525
 	* India, Asia, Australia -- $0
 	* South America -- $2,000

Keep in mind that these numbers do *not* include things like FISL in 
Brazil in Q1 which had its own budget, or the $8k in funding from Red 
Hat that is being spent directly on community-building activities in 
India.

Point being, I think FAMSCo continues to serve a purpose, and is 
empowered with seeing to it that Ambassadors get funds worldwide.  If 
you have received money for an event this year, that came from FAMSCo.

Simply put, the role of FAMSCo is to make sure that when Red Hat says 
"community, you have $X for events worldwide" that regions get what they 
need.  That doesn't mean every region has to get exactly the same amount 
of money (this isn't summer camp where everyone gets exactly the same 
number of cookies), but it's meant to ensure that no one starves due to 
neglect.

That is why the event funding process I have set up allows the 
FedoraEvents page to rule.  If you get your event on that page by the 
deadline (as laid out in my emails to Ambassadors list, linked to 
above), you will get *some sort of funding*.  The better your rep as an 
event organizer and the larger your event, the more you'll get.

In EMEA, FAMSCo is able to hand money directly to Fedora EMEA e.V., the 
non-profit set up to handle stuff locally.  In South America, like Greg 
says, it's basically Rodrigo.  In North America, we hand small amounts 
of money to individuals, because *Red Hat* has always filled that niche 
as "central organizer of swag and stuff".

> 19:35 < herlo> the stated process doesn't even work right now.  It 
> says you must fill out a form that isn't available atm

I don't about any forms.  In my opinion, the process is what I stated 
above.  An Ambassador goes through the "get my event on the Events page 
by the deadline.  FAMSCo will allocate me budget, and then the FAMSCo 
treasurer (who happens to be Max) will contact me and ask me if I just 
want cash, or if I want Red Hat to order me swag, or whatever."

Maybe we need someone to delete all the old "process stuff" that has, 
truthfully, been routed around.

> 19:42 < lxmaier_home> i do strongly lean towards the "you want to run 
> an event, you get the money payPaled to you and off you go!"

This is pretty much the way it has been moving to...

> 19:47 < ke4qqq> lxmaier_home: that doesn't scale well - if you need to 
> order 10,000 CDs and then get reimbursed thats a painful reimbursement 
> scheme.

That's where it breaks completely.  As the guy who actually deals with 
the money, I can tell you that once you hit about $1,000, people want 
the money up front, and can't float it.

> 19:49 < gregdek> Here's another thing: we chose a crappy vendor, and
> we're stuck with them.

Well, we fired Brand Fuel (if that's who you're talking about) for the 
CDs a long time ago, after Fedora 5.  We continue to use them for NA 
swag mainly because it's convenient.  We email them and say "we need a 
couple hundred shirts and stickes, here are 3 addresses and a deadline" 
and they hit it.  Then we pay, and "charge" those events from the budget 
that FAMSCo gave them, if that makes sense.

It works ok-ish, but I don't love the process.  We're not getting 
nearly as much for our money as we could be.

> 19:51 < gregdek> If I trust the people, I don't want to manage them.

Agreed.  I want to put money directly into the hands of trusted 
community members.  But it has to be done in a way that the accounting 
still works!  Fortunately, RH's finance folks will reimburse off of 
Paypal, which is why we've been moving to a "you got a budget of $X, and 
here it is, go nuts" model.  With EVENT REPORTS as the "proof" that the 
money was well spent, or else the trust level is broken.

> 19:57 < gregdek> * Max orders a ton of DVDs/CDs from BrandFuel.

Not brand fuel, but yeah...

I've already told Paul and Mo that I will no longer have anything to do 
with CD/DVD production other than making sure the budget exists, and the 
bills get paid.  If we want to use Karlie for CDs and DVDs in North 
America, then the most important thing to do is get our Art Team working 
with her Art people on color matching, starting RIGHT NOW.

> 19:58 < ke4qqq> lxmaier_home: it takes WEEKS after the release before
> media is available.
> 19:58 < herlo> lxmaier_home: is that based upon some sort of metric?
> 19:59 < lxmaier_home> nope, just crappy vendor
> 19:59 < ke4qqq> and we are on a 6-month release cycle.

With F9, the artwork was ready before the bits went GOLD, but the GOLD 
bits are only available 2 days before release.  It's impossible to get a 
1 week turnaround time on thousands of DVDs/CDs *for the budget we 
have*.

> 20:01 < gregdek> We produced about 2500 CDs/DVDs for NA for Fedora 9.
> 20:01 < gregdek> Is that a good number?  A bad number?  No idea.  We
> pulled it right out of our ass with what budget we had left.
> 20:02 < lxmaier_home> that cost us what? 3000?

No, that's wrong.  We produced 3,000 Live CDs and 2,000 DVDs.  5,000 
total media for $8,175.  It was not fantastic.  This company did a great 
job for F8, but their prices went up and their quality went down for F9, 
so that's that.

Here's my problem -- in Q3, people in North America are going to want 
media again.  If we spend $8,000 on media for NA out of a total FAMSCo 
budget of $12-15k, then what the heck is the rest of the world going to 
do?  And how will we have money for subsidizing travel and actually 
getting people to shows?

My take: no more mass production of media.  The artwork for each release 
needs to be on the wiki, and when an Ambassador gets $1,000 of budget 
for his event, he should be able to go to Karlie (or someone) and say 
"send me $400 worth of media".

> 20:03  * gregdek wonders whatever happened to Fedora Unity's non-profit...

Nothing ever happened to it.  It's a non-starter.

> 20:07 < herlo> did you say how much the budget was? 20:07 < herlo> I 
> assume it depends, but 20:07 < gregdek> Sometimes RH people come to 
> beg us for money to send some engineer, and we will if we think it's a 
> good deal, but we try to reserve that money for non-RH folks. 20:07 < 
> gregdek> It's anywhere from $5k to $25k a quarter for NA.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CommunityArchitecture/Expenses

We spend more money in North America than anywhere in the world.

> 20:09  * herlo wonders if 1) FUDCon could get its own budget and 2)
> Each Ambassador group could get a piece of that to send certain folks

FUDCon and other "target" shows worldwide do get their own budget, as 
the link above shows.

> 20:42 < ke4qqq> gregdek: whats to become of famsco? and by whose hand?
> 20:42 < herlo> I can
> 20:42 < herlo> gregdek: that was for the list
> 20:42 < gregdek> ke4qqq: a fair question, and one I'm not ready to answer yet.
> 20:43 < herlo> f-am-l right?
> 20:43 < gregdek> But I think the writing's on the wall.
> 20:43 < gregdek> herlo: yes.
> 20:43 < herlo> I'll send it out shortly
> 20:43 < ke4qqq> yeah I feel reticent to depose elected people - but
> divestiture of power is already occurring. Perhaps fedboard or
> something. or it gets reshaped as something else.
> 20:44 < gregdek> Governance models reshape themselves all the time.
> 20:44 < gregdek> If FAMSCO is serving its constituents, it will prosper.
> 20:44 < gregdek> If not, it will die.

I don't understand.  The model you guys are talking about is the same 
one that FAMSCo is trying to promote, IMHO.  FAMSCo exists to push 
responsibility into local regions, to make the budget decisions, and to 
resolve disputes (which seem to be limited to "what should we do with 
spammers").  You folks might think that I make those calls myself -- I 
don't.  FAMSCo makes them.  All I do is give FAMSCo the parameters and 
see to it that the numbers add up in the end.

     * RodrigoPadula
     * ThomasCanniot
     * FrancescoUgolini (Chair)
     * FabianAffolter (Vice-Chair)
     * JeffreyTadlock
     * AndreasRau
     * JohnBabich

That's your FAMSCo membership.  You'll notice that it is quite global, 
and that not a single one of those people works for Red Hat?  You're 
ready to throw them out, why, exactly?  I submit to you that the FAMSCo 
model is working pretty darn well outside of the US, and that everything 
you are talking about in this meeting fits DIRECTLY into the larger 
goals of what FAMSCo hopes the Ambassadors group can be.

--Max