[Ambassadors] What's really needed to be an Ambassador?

[Ryan Lewis]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Igor Pires Soares <igorsoares at gmail.com> wrote:
> Em Ter, 2010-12-14 às 09:53 -0430, María Leandro escreveu:
>
>> So, Do we really have an obligation to accept everyone? if not...
>> Should we keep telling people that we will accept everyone to be
>> Ambassador if we will/won't do it? I think that the Ambassadors
>> admission process need some rules besides the one that has (without be
>> too excesive) to make a filter that can help us, Mentor, to provide a
>> better guidance to those contributors that really deserve and want to
>> be Fedora Ambassadors. So, I will write some few ideas and if you
>> guys/girls are interested on give some feedback would be nice. (If you
>> don't and the topic die here don't feel bad :) )
>>
>>
>> 1.- Applicants must help to one of our 6 top teams [1]
>
> I think that we should use that as recommendation. It is a really good
> topic, but it is not a good idea to enforce ambassadors in that way. For
> instance, a inactive ambassador from Brazil came to me and said that he
> was willing to collaborate again. I stated that we had some needs
> regarding projects such translation and documentation. Then he said that
> he wasn't able to contribute with such projects because they doesn't fit
> his profile, but he also said that he was able to look for some people
> who fit that profile. This still is a great help IMHO. Of course I'd
> rather see he contribute with documentation itself, but since he is
> willing to help in a way he feels that is more appropriated there is no
> problem.
>
>> 2.- Applicants must help their local community, in case his/her city
>> doesn't have a local community, she/he should try to build it.
>
> This seems pretty reasonable to me, but maybe we could expand the idea
> of regional to states or provinces. It really depends on the regional
> context.
>
>> 3.- Applicants should at least attend to one FOSS event per year.
>> (right now in all the country there are events, so this is not so
>> crazy at all)
>
> #3 might work as a recommendation either. Probably there are some
> countries that don't have FOSS events. In addition, in some countries we
> have ambassadors from regions that are distant from medium/big cities
> where those events normally take place, what makes traveling expensive.
> We can address this issue through funding at least for some ambassadors
> in specific events.
>
>> 4.- Applicants should at least organize or help to organize a FOSS
>> event.
>
> Or, in addition, the applicant could help to organize Fedora's
> participation in some FOSS event. That works as well.
>
> --
> Igor Pires Soares
> Fedora I18N/L10N QA
> Fedora Ambassador (Brazil)
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Igor
>
> --
> ambassadors mailing list
> ambassadors at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/ambassadors


You guys realize that you can always talk to people and recommend that
they get involved with something. That is part of being a fedora
socialite. To be frank, I can't tell you how many times I've just not
known about things going on just because it's buried in some mass
e-mail on some listserv. I try and read it all, but it's hard to stay
focused with such a low signal to noise ratio. I think that maybe a
bit more personalizes 1-on-1 communication between people could go
farther than esoteric rules. (Call me a socialist, ha).

I made my location known to the fedora community, if someone wanted or
needed me to help out at a FOSS event, they need only look up my
location and send me a mail/call/irc ping (Although if it's not
anywhere near me, you'd better expect to fund my travel before getting
me to show up).

-rhl