Followups from Council phone call monday — Budget discussion for this year and beyond

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 12:41:51PM -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > We definitely need some higher-level metrics (and Remy's working on
> > it), but also, I'd like to encourage ambasssadors, event planners,
> > etc., to really focus on how you can measure and demonstrate impact at
> > the base level.
> So speaking as a (minor) event planner for Flock, I can tell you right
> now that Flock will not have a measurable impact in terms of user or
> contributor _growth_.  Which is kind of concerning when you think
> about it.  A refresher on what Flock is:

In order fulfill our mission, user and contributor growth is necessary,
but aren't sufficient. Not everything we spend money on has to go to
that specific goal, and in fact not everything should. I focused on it
here because it's a core goal of the Fedora Ambassadors subproject.
Flock has huge value in a different way. (As you say, so I'm trimming
that part from my reply.)

> [1]  Frankly, I'd like to get rid of the talks.  Or if not remove them
> entirely, make them extremely focused on problems that need to be
> solved in Fedora rather than just "here is some cool software I'm
> working on".  The audience of the talks seems to still be the
> traditional "introductory/new user" set, and that set isn't even
> present at Flock.

I think the talks - particularly, prepared talks - can provide good
focus, and can be a useful way of communicating. So I'd advocate for
the second approach, of making them more specifically focused on
contributors, problem solving, project needs and direction, and
similar.

I also agree that moving Flock away from user outreach leaves a vacuum
there in NA and EMEA.

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader