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

[inode0]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 11:23 PM, Neville A. Cross <neville at taygon.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-02-17 at 11:54 +0800, Heherson Pagcaliwagan wrote:
> <snip>
>> Two things comes to mind though, how will the pie be sliced and who
>> will do the slicing?
>
> I think that allways that you do divisions, there will be some one
> wanting a bigger slice.

True and this is a problem either way so not really a problem I am
trying to solve now. The Red Hat Community Architecture team does the
high level pie slicing and I don't see that changing either way unless
they delegate it to whatever group they choose.

> I fully understand concerns about asking an unrelated body. But creating
> a finnancial body will create new concerns abouth: Who are they? Why
> they? To whom they respond? Why they divide the pie like that?

These aren't new concerns. These are concerns that exist right now.

> Giving the responsability of finnacial affairs to one
> team/unit/department or creating a new one does not stop the concerns.

It stops one concern, why am I asking FAmSCo which is a body with
elections that I am not even eligible to vote in? This is a question
that I have been asked and that as an ambassador I cannot answer
because it makes no sense to me either.

> We should focus on create more internal bridges.

Exactly what I am trying to do.

> I do not remmember who said this on Tempe, but it was something on the
> lines of ... "If there is an non technical event where art is being
> discused, we (as Fedora) should sponsor some people of desing team to
> go. We (as FAmSCo) should leave to the team to select the best person
> for attending." And then the idea was reinforced with other
> participation: "We need to all people to gave feed back on what new
> events we shold be making presence."

I have been saying this for years and I have lobbied to divert funding
from ambassador events (the traditional events ambassadors attend) to
make it happen. But as we move forward I am certain it would be better
for the design group to be able to make arrangements like these
themselves.

> What I feel is that due personal preferences and location, no body can
> have the whole picture on events schedules where we can look for new
> contributors. But as a community we can have a better sense of that.
> FAmSCo wants to empower people from other teams to do things for
> reaching new contributors.

I want to empower them to do more than reach new contributors. I want
to empower them to not only participate directly in the communities
where work in their fields happens but to be able to use funds for
other purposes that allow them to achieve goals currently not
possible. Doing these things allows for recruiting new contributors
from communities where their interests and the interests of Fedora
intersect but it also can enables them to develop professionally to be
better contributors themselves and to acquire other resources
(hardware in some obvious cases) that enable them to achieve their
goals.

> We also have to keep in mind that there is a delay, from when a
> initiative is taken, until the rest of people is aware of it, nad that
> may be bigger than the time to implement it. Let see the LATAM budget
> example, there has been a full cicle of FAmSCo trying to push budget to
> the front line, and still people is not aware of that.

Yes, I agree things take time. FADs are another good example of
something that takes time to penetrate the thinking and planning of
groups that aren't used to having access to that resource.

> As a very personal view, I have a degree in business management, and if
> my contribution converge with my job, I will be bored, burn out or both
> very easily. So what will happen if we hire some one for this? It is not
> Max's job already?

Max will have to speak to this but I don't think this effort can work
if there is a single person bottleneck in the process.

> In a more cool-head view ... I think that will be more esay to try and
> see if FAmSCo can do so, than create a new team only in charge of
> finnances.

That was my feeling one year ago too. I no longer think FAmSCo can do
it and that is through no fault of FAmSCo. While I didn't talk about
anything beyond finances I did make an allusion to the fact that I
think this new group might be charged with more than finances. I just
didn't want to lead the conversation in 50 different directions from
the beginning and wanted to focus on how best to empower the
non-ambassador groups to be effectively engaged in this process and
not just as consumers of resources, also as decision makers.

> But let's hear more opinions.

Thanks for your thoughts Neville. Exactly what I had hoped to get when
I started this discussion.

John