[Ambassadors] FAmSCo Townhall Meeting

Gerard Braad gbraad at fedoraproject.org
Mon Nov 22 13:22:47 UTC 2010


2010/11/21 Larry Cafiero <larry.cafiero at gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Gerard Braad <gbraad at fedoraproject.org>
>> I was unable to arrive in time to attend the townhall and really
>> regret not being able to answer the questions.
> took the questions from the log and answered them on the
> mailing list (I did that in 2008 or 2009 when I was running for something).

Here are my belated answer to the townhall meeting. I have not read
the other candidates responses to remain as uninfluenced as possible.


In response to:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016184.html

Q: What do each of our candidates think the biggest challenges are in
growing the Ambassador program, and how would you tackle these?
A: From experience the awareness of what ambassador are and what they
mean to the project. We do not train them to be mindless slave to the
distribution, but ambassador are representatives of how we do the
distribution/community. In quaid's words 'the open source way'. I
don't mind if they also assist other distro users or help those users
to contribute to another distro, as long as they relay the message why
we do it upstream. People and motives can change, so does our
distribution and the community. It can happen an ambassador moves
on... But they will keep this message.

In response to:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016243.html

Q: What is the first thing you are going to change if you are elected?
A: I don't think forcing a change is good after you started. Ease in
and tackle issues and challenges you meet along the way.

I'd rather propose and work on the resources. One of those is the
regional awareness of ambassasors and user groups. Fedora Community
plays an important role. I have spoken about this with Mel and would
like to see community hosting which can ease the process for the
advisory board to get a hostname, but also create awareness/easier way
to find a regional user group or mailinglist.

Q: Should we be willing to expand our idea of contributors to
*testers* and get more contributors that way? (let's talk about
ambassadors here)
A: The 'low hanging fruits' are a nice way to get new contributors.
Ambassadors play a role in introducing newcomers to Fedora. But
translation is also a way to get new contributors. I would say that
FAD (Activity Day) could help with this or a smaller local event like
an installfest. Ambassadors can cease these opportunities to promote
our views. Showing how we create the distribution or how people can
contribute can get people motivated to work on our project... it is
not just code we do?!

Q: We have seen a drop in FAmSCo activity after first few
months...what will you do, as a team, not to repeat that?
A: It would be ideal to find out why this happened and learn from
mistakes we might have made. The easiest would be to figure out long
term and short-term goals. For instance we should promote activities
in 'unexplored' territory. Asia is certainly one of the areas that
could see more activity. This does not mean we will solely focus on
this area, but assist with co-operation between the Western and Asian
communities. As I mentioned on
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F15_elections_questionnaire/FAmSCo_questionnaire
I think we should align the efforts between Marketing and the
Ambassadors. This way we prepare activities and assist local
initiatives where needed.


I hope my answers help you make a better decision. But if you still
have questions, please do not hesitate to ask me.

Greets,


Gerard

-- 
Gerard Braad — 吉拉德
   Project-lead Fedora-MIPS
   Regional mentor for APAC/China
   http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:gbraad



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