[Ambassadors] How do you enforce someone to work on something?

[Max Spevack]

On Sun, 16 Nov 2008, Yuan Yijun wrote:

> Finally, what is the suggested organization of ambassadors? Susmit 
> mentioned coordinator which is new to me. What resource does a 
> coordinator have, and how it works? How to you train your new 
> ambassadors, or assign jobs, where can I find live samples, if not on 
> this list?

Hi,

Allow me to share a few general principles that I use when building 
community, and you can generalize them for your specific needs.

First of all, don't try to build just a Fedora *Ambassador* community, 
but rather think about building the entire Fedora community in your 
area.  That means people who are users, developers, ambassadors, or who 
serve in more than one role.

The job of Ambassadors is key because they are the people who bring 
together the rest of the community face to face.  Having personal 
meetings at events is one of the fastest and most efficient ways to not 
only build teamwork, but also to achieve results.  An hour spent 
discussing something face to face is worth 2 or 3 days of time spent on 
an email thread.

The best thing to do is reach out to all of the Fedora folks local to 
your community and first make sure that everyone is working towards the 
same goals, in the same place.  Make sure your local conversations are 
taking place on one mailing list, or one one IRC channel, or on one wiki 
page.

Keep a simple task list of the goals that the local team is working 
towards.  Each task should have a short description, and also an "owner" 
who is the person responsible for the task.

When you have your meetings, it gives you a chance for each person to 
give a small update, and for people to move around ownership of 
different tasks as needed.

It is *critical* that you create a culture of sharing work, and not a 
culture of people being afraid to say "I am busy" or "someone else needs 
to do this".  The Fedora communities that function best are ones in 
which people are willing to step in and help out a friend who doesn't 
have enough time to get something done.  Especially when most Fedora 
contributors are volunteers, this is essential.

Finally, as you begin to organize events in your region, FAmSCo can help 
you to get resources and budget.  FAmSCo will allocate budget for 
events, and your main point of contact within Red Hat for getting budget 
in Asia is Harish Pillay.

You'll want to make sure that you are familiar with the FedoraEvents 
page on the wiki, and also with the "event report" guidelines that are 
linked on the top of that page.

That's just a little bit of advice.  Feel free to ask more questions, 
and thanks for your efforts.

--Max