[Ambassadors] Mentoring process

[Clint Savage]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 9:49 AM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 7:43 AM, Fabian Affolter <fab at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> I would like to give you a heads up about the discussion
>> yesterday during the Ambassadors Barcamp session.
>>
>> We discussed two points extensively: Mentoring and level of activity
>> (again). I will only cover the first point because the latter one we
>> discussed in the past to death with no real solution.
>>
>> A couple of weeks ago Jörg (kital) Simon stepped back from FAMA
>> (Fedora Ambassadors Membership Administration). Now Clint is in
>> charge. This means that Clint is handling the administrative part.
>
> Thanks again to kital for all the years of doing the work of FAMA and
> all the improvements he made to the process over those years. I am
> curious to see what ideas herlo has for improvement on the FAMA end of
> this after he gets in the groove of processing applications.
>
>> In EMEA we are missing mentors. This will be fixed soon. Right now we
>> nominated four additional people to become mentors. Those people were
>> not selected randomly, they agreed to do the mentoring.
>
> This is good I think. Mentoring is challenging at times now and people
> do need to take breaks from it. Having some additional good mentors in
> the pool can only help.
>
>> An other issue regarding the mentoring is the process. As far as I
>> know people apply in FAS for the Ambassadors groups. This generates a
>> mail to all sponsors of the ambassadors group and then a ticket in the
>> FAMA trac instance is manually created. Then some foo (like suscribing
>> to the mailing list, search a mentor, etc.) comes and at the end the
>> person gets sponsored. After that this person is an ambassador.
>
> I think some important steps are omitted in the above description.
> FAMA does some preliminary work with the trac and mailing list, sends
> important information to the applicant about first steps that must be
> completed. Once those are finished then the applicant must choose a
> mentor (and the mentor must agree). Once the mentor approves the
> application then FAMA cleans things up and we have a new ambassador. A
> candidate now needs to do quite a lot more than randomly apply for the
> group in FAS.
>
>> One idea is to do it similar to the Packager group. This means that
>> people have to apply for their membership in the FAMA trac instance
>> first (perhaps fill out a template or similar) instead of the Fedora
>> Account System and the ambassadors groups become an "invite-only"
>> group. Then the process starts and at the end they are added to the
>> ambassadors group. I think that this will filter out all the people
>> how just apply for any random group in FAS. The barrier to become an
>> ambassador will not be elevated but people have to show some
>> commitment first by filling out the trac ticket.
>
> I'm confused by the "invite-only" part of this. If anyone can open
> such a trac ticket how is that "invite-only?"
>
> Before an applicant gets to a mentor there are now several things they
> must do to demonstrate some commitment. They must create a wiki page
> for example. They must seek out a mentor and convince that mentor to
> work with them. Those are hurdles that "protect" the mentors from most
> whim applications now.
>
> FAMA on the other hand does have to deal with those who join the group
> in FAS and then disappear almost immediately without doing any or only
> a few additional steps. If the goal is to improve the FAMA experience
> then I'm sort of inclined to wait for herlo to get some experience
> with it and propose or change it to work well for him. Since I'm not
> in the FAMA trenches I really don't know how onerous the process is to
> FAMA. It does not seem overly onerous to me as a mentor currently.
>
>> If you want to add more details, other thoughts (please only about
>> mentoring and its process), or if you have a ultimate solution for the
>> mentoring please speak up. Thanks.
>
> While I'm not quite sure what is meant here by "invite-only" I do want
> to say that my instincts are that the ambassadors group even giving
> the impression that it is a group formed by invitation only is a bad
> idea. There is some overhead to dealing with people not well-suited to
> be ambassadors trying to join, there are also costs to not having an
> open membership process too.
>
> Things I often hear that just seem at odds with invitation only group
> membership:
>
> * Anyone can join the Fedora Project.
> * Anyone can contribute, we'll help you find a place to help.
> * You don't need to ask permission - just go do it.
>
> All of that big talk loses its punch when coming from a group you
> can't join except by invitation.
>
> Many of the recent ambassadors I have mentored who I believe to be
> tremendous assets to the project I met for the first time when they
> contacted me to request that I mentor them. I would not have invited
> them since I did not even know them at the time. While an open
> membership process surely gets some random people just trying to join
> everything it also makes it easy for really good people to introduce
> themselves to us and show us that they are interested in being
> ambassadors.
>
> John
> --
> ambassadors mailing list
> ambassadors at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/ambassadors

I'd like to reply here specifically about the process, so it's clear
what is being done and why it's being done. I would have loved to be
involved with the FUDCon Paris discussion, but it sure sounds like
some good things came out of there. I'm sure there will be a good bit
of improvements to FAMA and mentoring because of these discussions.

To the questions that have been asked about the process, I'd like to
agree with John here. Specifically, when an ambassador applies to the
'ambassadors' FAS group, sponsors get an email and I manually file a
ticket (which now happens weekly on Sundays). I've currently removed
the ability for just anyone to create a ticket and only TRAC_ADMINS
can do so for the time being. The reason for this manual process is a
bit of a mystery to me, but I'll address that in a moment below.
Suffice it to say, when the ticket is created, the process is laid out
to the potential ambassador and they must show some initiative to
complete the process.

If we were to first let the potential ambassador file a trac ticket,
it would possibly mean more work for FAMA and the mentors alike. In
that those tickets would not necessarily be routed properly, the
potential ambassador would possibly not get instructions if they
mistyped their email address, etc. To that end, I think the value of
what is currently happening works.

Additionally, I've been working on some software that works with
fedmsg[1] and trac to automate the trac ticket filing process. Once
the software is completed, when a potential ambassador applies a
ticket is automatically filed with trac. Other improvements I've been
considering are when a mentor gives a thumbs up, have the sponsorship
automated when FAMA approves the ticket to SPONSORED. There are quite
a few other features I could think of, and would love to have any
suggestions here.

So I'd like to hold off on the adjustment of the process until this
software gets in place as I think it will help immensely. I'm also
aware that many mentors might have questions or concerns about the
process and want to tweak/document it properly. I know there are some
documents out there floating around, but I'd like to solidify that as
well. Thus, I'm going to propose a FUDCon NA session for Ambassador
Mentors and FAMA to discuss these things. I should have that on the
FUDCon wiki within a few days.

Thank you all for this awesome discussion, I love to hear all of the
improvements and would love to get this process working even more
smoothly.

Cheers,

Clint

1 - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Messaging_SIG