[Ambassadors] Fedora-Fr vs The World (Was: Re: [EMEA] - Cheat Cube decission was Re: EMEA ambassadors meeting 2011-03-23 minutes)

[Kévin Raymond]

Interesting thread. Yeah, we should define a way to organize our swag
production/shipping.
But that has to be done region specific. While one region could
centralize it, an other one could have to better produce in two
different countries (mainly depending of the production price).

Here we are discussing about EMEA.
As explained, the problem for last releases was the time to decide
quantities and products.
Guys, to be efficient, we should already know during the alpha stage
*exactly* what we would request. We should decide ASAP where to
produce and who will receive CDs.
Like that FAmSCo could agree quickly.
The company could also send CDs directly to some countries and then
been shipped again depending of events.
Once the budget is approved, we can confirm it to the company and then
send them the first gold iso at GA time.

The more wishes we have, the more time we spend discussing.
In France, we choose to have only one type of media because it is cheaper.
That way we only have to discuss about price (which company) and
quantity. Using Live CD we could install it under x86 and 64 bit
architectures. During events, we propose to make Live USB in order to
have an x86_64 OS or spins. I am not telling that we should not
produce many types of media, but we could reduce the time spent while
choosing which one we will produce. That could also simplify the
FAmSCo approval.



On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 3:09 AM, Mathieu Bridon
<bochecha at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Changing the subject temporarily, hoping this doesn't create a monster
> sub-thread.
>
> On Thu, 2011-03-24 at 23:48 +0100, Christoph Wickert wrote:
>> Am Donnerstag, den 24.03.2011, 20:32 +0800 schrieb Mathieu Bridon:
>> > On Thu, 2011-03-24 at 13:17 +0100, Christoph Wickert wrote:
>> > > Am Donnerstag, den 24.03.2011, 17:59 +0800 schrieb Mathieu Bridon:
>> > > > 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.
>> > >
>> > > Yes, because you (=the French ambassadors) are doing it on your own
>> >
>> > As I said somewhere else, I personally sent media to Kosovo because EMEA
>> > couldn't do it yet.
>> >
>> > So no, we are not trying to do it on our own as in "we are the only ones
>> > who matter".
>>
>> This doesn't really belong here
>
> Indeed, but I'll try to answer anyway.
>
>> but now that you mention it: Sometimes I
>> feel there is a "We don't care about the rest of the world"-attitude in
>> the French community.
>
> That's something we have been working on fixing for the past two years,
> though.
>
> So I'll assume good faith and take your message as a friendly « you
> failed, try harder » :)
>
>>  The french ambassadors have their own meetings
>
> The meeting is more about the French team than the French ambassadors.
> The discussions are about the NPO, the community website/forums, etc.
>
> And of course, we discuss ambassadorial topics. But most of the meeting
> attendees are not ambassadors.
>
> One thing worth noting: out of the current 9 members of the board of the
> NPO, only 4 are also ambassadors. All are Fedora contributors though.
>
>> and
>> I don't recall seeing any of them in the EMEA meetings.
>
> I have been attending those meetings every time I could for the past
> year at least. I wasn't always participating actively, but I was at least
> there following the discussion, and I would read all the logs of meetings
> I didn't participate in.
> Obviously, I haven't attended any since I left EMEA (the geographical
> region). I don't know if someone is following on, however.

Few French ambassador speak English. As Mathieu said, our meetings are
about our local community (forums, website, events).
Mathieu was one on the more involved in the EMEA region, but he is not
in this region anymore. But he was not alone.
Even if we where not speaking, we followed many meetings.

I personally read every meeting agenda. The last one was an important
one but unfortunately I am in a really busy period, I was not able to
make it. That does not mean that I don't read logs.
I am wondering why the reminder is not sent on the Wednesday morning ?
I confess that I've already missed the meeting only because I had
forgotten it (even if it is written in my agenda).

btw, the EMEA meeting page should be removed or at least updated....
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/EMEA/Africa/Meetings
This one also
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/EMEA


>> I don't think
>> this is only a problem of the language.
>
> Probably not the only one, but it is a real problem. Lots of people in
> France don't speak English at all, but they are still eager to
> contribute.
>
> Fedora-Fr provides them a structure. Sure, they end up contributing to
> Fedora-Fr instead of Fedora per se. But in turn, they enable other
> people to contribute back to Fedora.
>
> Now I will gladly recognize that sometimes, we stop at the « contribute
> to Fedora-Fr » and it has always been a pet peeve of mine when I was on
> the NPO board.
>
> I guess I didn't do enough (did I actually do anything? :), but I'm hopeful
> that the new board members will do better in steering the local community
> closer to its global (may I say upstream? :P) project.

Yeah, even if we are not so visible, here we are!
Our next step is to change our NPO name to be able to receive founds
and be able to handle things for the EMEA region.

>
>> > > , you don't care about approval from the board
>> >
>> > What approval do we need? We are only producing already approved media.
>>
>> I was told that in the past the French ambassadors also handed out
>> updated respins and these were not approved.
>
> Not that I remember.
>
> I'm not saying it never happened (I have only been with the NPO for the last
> three years), but we have not done it during my mandate at least. The subject
> has never even been discussed as far as I can tell.
>
>> > Note that it's why we have always asked for budget annually instead of
>> > quarterly.
>>
>> Whom have you asked? Red Hat?
>
> We've asked FAmSCo.
>
> And until 2010 FAmSCo members have accepted our budget requests (well, they
> accepted it for 2010 as well, but for certain reasons that you are well aware of
> we never received the funding ;).
>
> Sorry for making the thread digress towards the French team as this was not my intent.
>
> All I wanted to say was "hey guys, we've been doing things that way for years and
> it's been working great. Maybe some of that can apply to other local communities?"
>
> Thanks for having kept the tone of your email friendly though, it would have been very
> easy to make it an inflammatory pamphlet. :)
>
> Please continue to assume good faith: we have been trying hard to act less insularly,
> and the next team will no doubt go on doing so. If you see areas where they are
> lacking, say so. If you have ideas on how to improve things, express them.

Exactly !
We had many (ok, at least some) plans for the EMEA region, but they
are not feasible with our current status (renaming).



> Cheers,
>
>
> --
> Mathieu
>


-- 
Kévin Raymond
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