[Ambassadors] [EMEA] - Cheat Cube decission was Re: EMEA ambassadors meeting 2011-03-23 minutes

[Gerold]

> Disclaimer: I am not speaking for the French guys, since I'm not with
> them any more, having moved much further east.
>
> On Thu, 2011-03-24 at 10:08 +0100, Christoph Wickert wrote:
>> Am Donnerstag, den 24.03.2011, 09:21 +0100 schrieb Joerg Simon:
>> >  and that we should decide together where to invest
>> > money, i have to say that with the situation right now in EMEA the
>> > shipping of centralized SWAG is no optimal. And therefore we encourage
>> > the people to produce SWAG localy and get reimbursed or payed by
>> PayPal
>> > this is the working way right now.
>>
>> I feel the opposite is true: Swag should be centralized, because with
>> the local approach causes more work and higher shipping costs.
>>
>> Imagine you are doing an event and need media, shirts, buttons and
>> cheatcubes. You have to write mails to 4 different ambassadors.
>> I then send media from Germany and you send shirts from Germany, too.
>> Pierros sends buttons from Greece and Zoltan cheatcubes from Hungary - 4
>> people have work and pay shipping.
>
> Why would you ask Zoltan for a German event? What Joerg is saying is
> that you should produce cheatcubes for Germany instead.
>
> With a centralized approach, you run the risk of receiving the swag very
> late, much later than if you produce them locally.
^^
not correct, if you have a stock of SWAG which will be hosted by a single
person or (as we had the idea when we had an NPO) in a dedicated WEBSTORE
like the cools stuff store from red Hat [1] you will be more than
effective and fast.
problems here:
- single person ==
individual [who is not employeed by Red Hat],
high time factor,
high financial risk (since reimbursement is not cleared),

- Webshop
is dead because of not "getting the shit done" depends on the Trademark
issue by a legal department located in the US (never got a feedback) and
so the owner steped back when he saw, how rudimentary we have to work and
act ;-)


>
> Why do you think we produce our swag in France? Because (for example)
> that's the only way we could have Fedora 13 media in time for our
> release party.
>
> Another example, you just received some Fedora 14 media, but Fedora 15
> is about to be released. How is that useful?
^^
This issue was also adressed by me yesterday in the meeting; please see
the logs ....

>
> We have usually received our media within two weeks after GA. I remember
> the EMEA media for Fedora 13 were received almost a month after we had
> started distributing ours. And that was only the first central
> recipient, who then had to ship them over EMEA, adding more delay before
> people can have their swag.
>
> This is not efficient.
^^
Indeed Mathieu, I totally agree with you and I asked also yesterday for
rethinking about the process to get medias. Imho, Medias must be available
at the GA or not later than one week after; so there must be definitly a
change of process. But to be honest, as long as other issues
(Media-Wrangler, money, shipment, storage of medias, quantity etc.) is
fixed, this is also nonsense.
We discuss and discuss and again discuss, but nothing happens in many
cases .-(

> Sure, doing everything locally costs a bit more money (or not, one has
> to consider the shipping costs that don't exist if you produce locally,
> and the fact that it can be cheaper in some countries than others), but
> that is the only sane way to have swag to distribute in a reasonable
> delay (i.e as soon as possible after GA)
>
>> > Decissions by FAmSCo are done by quorum and every FAmSCo Member has
>> the
>> > same rights if it is comes to making decissions. But there is a
>> > agreement with CommArch that FAmSCo Members can decide and agree a
>> > ammount of budget themselves if it is under a fixed ammount - 400?.
>> This
>> > happened here and Zoltan had every right to take care for his region.
>> > And Pierros had the right to decide without asking FAmSCo because the
>> > ammount was low enough.
>>
>> Thanks for your clarification Jörg, but I still don't understand. One
>> the one hand you say that decisions are done by a FAmSOc quorum, on the
>> other you say that individual FAmSCo members can make a decision.
>>
>>       * What happens if the quorum does not agree?
>
> Indeed, I was wondering the same after reading Joerg's email.
^^
I guess this is only to try to explain; ...
... that both partys (Zoltan and Pierros) has trhe poweer and allowance to
order and did nothing incorrect. I'm fine with the explanation (because it
also shows a little of the innercircle problems).

>
>>       * What happen if the ambassadors do not agree?
>
> Ambassadors have voted and elected FAmSCo for that. We can't hold a
> referendum for each and every decision. If you don't like the decisions
> made by FAmSCo members, get them out by not voting for them next time
> (just like with any elected body).
^^
+1


>
>>       * Why are we discussing voting on things in the regional meetings
>>         if a single FAmSCo member can make a different decision?
>>       * Does that mean that FAmSCo can make different decisions than the
>>         local groups?
>
> We can decide whatever we want in local groups, but when it comes to
> budget, FAmSCo will have the final word anyway.
^^
Ohhhhhhhh no! How can you decide of somebodys other money???? E.g. how can
my children decide, what I do with my money?? Where now "my children" can
be seen as "FAmSCo" and me can be seen as "Community Architecture money
from Red Hat" which will be (maybe) promised by the Leader of that
Department.
Just to be friendly, have you ever thought about, what happens, if Max (as
the actual person) will get a new job or he is not longer available for
that budget? No, no, no .... I don't want to blame somebody or point with
fingers to someone. Only my experience at least in EMEA shows me what
happened when Max left the area ...
... there was a damned big whole, which is not filled since two years.


>
> So why couldn't FAmSCo "make different decisions than the local groups"?
>
Just my five cents (if you want them)

Gerold

[1] http://redhat.brandfuelstores.com/