[Ambassadors] Broadening how we empower community action - opening a dialog for change

[inode0]

2011/2/15 Larry Cafiero <larry.cafiero at gmail.com>:
> As a FAmSCo member, I think that FAmSCo's scope can be amended and scaled to
> accomplish what John suggests, especially since it's already been approached
> during David's term in FAmSCo.

The scope of FAmSCo can certainly be expanded but centralizing more
power in FAmSCo I don't think will accomplish what I want because the
contributors who now have concerns about asking FAmSCo will still have
those concerns.

> Whether that would entail just enabling FAmSCo, as it stands now, wider
> authority over funding or whether it would mean restructuring FAmSCo in
> order to avoid crearting a separate funding body -- and believe me, I'm all
> for NOT creating a separate entity -- would probably be the best way to
> proceed, if this is the course of action we take.

Let's think about it from a different angle. How many individual
funding decisions are now made at the FAmSCo level as opposed to at
the regional levels in NA, EMEA, LATAM, or APAC? During all the years
I have been spending money on ambassador activities there has been
only one single occasion that I opened a ticket with FAmSCo, and that
was only because it was an odd request. Normally FAmSCo is not
involved in any way that I am aware of in the funding decisions we
make regionally.

Now we are working to empower even more ambassadors to not need to ask
anyone. We have been steadily pushing the decision making point
farther and farther away from our central governance bodies. This has
tremendous benefits but it does need to be done with some care, so the
funding sources know that money is spent wisely on Fedora activities.

While creating a non-ambassador source of funding for non-ambassador
groups to reach out to for help does involve some duplicated effect
but it allows us to empower and involve more contributors in how the
Fedora Project uses its resources. Initially, this empowerment would
extend to those on the new body but in time, just like as has happened
within the ambassador community, this would branch out as trust
develops to other groups and individuals to make these decisions for
themselves.

That is at least how I envision it working.

John