[FAmSCo] [Ambassadors] FAmSCo meeting minutes 2013-06-17

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Dienstag, den 18.06.2013, 11:41 -0500 schrieb John T. Rose:
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Jiri Eischmann <eischmann at redhat.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > we had another FAmSCo meeting today. Only 3 members attended, so we
> > didn't reach the quorum, but we managed to discuss several topics. You
> > can find more in meeting minutes:
> 
> 17:20:41 <sesivany> another issue is the budget report from NA. I
> wrote inode0 about it (famsco mailing list cc'ed), but no response
> yet.
> 17:21:06 <sesivany> I have absolutely no idea what's going on there budget-wise.
> 17:21:38 <sesivany> and since they've got by far the biggest budget,
> it's the biggest risk for our overall budget...
> 
> Ben should be able to provide something soon.
> 
> 17:23:46 <cwickert> I think it's on the wiki
> 17:23:57 <cwickert> at least what inode0 paid
> 17:24:21 <cwickert>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Inode0/community_credit_card_report
> ...
> 17:25:43 <sesivany> yeah, but it's just a part of it, a lot is paid
> directly by Red Hat (rsuehle).
> 
> Not just rsuehle, but yes, what I pay directly is only a small part of
> the NA spending.
> 
> ...
> 17:26:57 <cwickert> as for NA, I have no idea
> 17:27:09 <cwickert> other than to nag rsuehle and inode0 again
> 
> Nagging me to provide details I don't have won't help anyone.

Please don't take this as an offense. My statement was based on the
information that you offered to provide numbers and the assumption you
had some. Even if we don't have all the numbers, it would already be
very helpful if someone would collect all the numbers that are our there
*somewhere* in the wiki, trac and meeting logs.

> ...
> 17:27:31 <cwickert> actually I think rsuehle is the one to do the report
> 
> I agree, all our spending gets approved there and the totals should be
> easily trackable there.

Good to hear we agree.

> 17:28:00 <cwickert> inode0 already is doing quite a lot, let somebody
> else do the report
> 17:28:12 <cwickert> he should only held responsible for his CC report
> 17:28:31 <sesivany> cwickert: yeah, I agree. inode0 even told me they
> had no idea what other payments in NA had been done... which doesn't
> sound very transparently.
> 17:29:10 <cwickert> one more thing to discuss at FLOCK
> 17:29:27 <cwickert> frankly speaking I am a bit shocked what is going on in NA
> 17:29:41 <cwickert> I mean, they were one of the most active communities
> 
> What are you shocked by?
> 
> This fiscal year we have represented Fedora at events including:
> 
> PyCon US in Santa Clara, CA
> Northeast LinuxFest in Boston, MA
> LinuxFest Northwest in Bellingham, WA
> Texas LinuxFest in Austin, TX
> Southeast LinuxFest in Charlotte, NC
> Red Hat Summit in Boston, MA
> 
> We've been busy.

I am surprised by the lack of structure. I'm not questioning the NA
ambassadors have been busy, but from an outsiders point of view,
everything looks very unstructured and hard to understand, not to think
of tracking this.

> 17:29:41 <sesivany> cwickert: and that's exactly the problem with
> having no regional treasurer, one person responsible for the budget.
> 
> We never had a treasurer so the lack of one can't be related to any
> perceived reduction in activity.
> 
> 17:29:53 <cwickert> and I thought they had good workflows for everything
> 17:30:02 <cwickert> but apparently they have not
> 
> We had good workflows that worked well for years. They might not fit
> in with the workflows you want us to have now.

The question is not what FAmSCo wants the NA ambassadors to do but what
we *need* them to do.

Back in the old days we had Max, who was both active in the (NA)
ambassadors and keeping track of the budget. He was not only the
treasurer or bookkeeper, he also was the budget owner and within his
budget, he was completely free to make decisions. We always could
approach him with our requests, he would consider them as possible and
make a decision.

But times have changed. Max no longer works at Red Hat and Red Hat is
not the company it used to be 5 years ago. It has grown like crazy and
recently restructured their community engagement. A lot of things are in
flux and some are just messed up. Even the FPL is not in the position to
make decisions for anything more than > USD 2000. Instead, she is needs
everything signed by her manager and she is doing her best to make sure
we get what we need.

As there is nobody who has budget power of Red Hat *and* is active in
the community, things got split up: Red Hat still has the budget power
and granted us a good chunk of it. We need to take care of that money
ourselves. This is both a big chance and a burden, but I think we make
the best of it.

> 17:30:21 <sesivany> because in EMEA, I put all kinds of expenses
> together (kitals, other cards, direct payments)  and put them in the
> budget.
> 
> You are lucky you know about direct payments. Perhaps working at Red
> Hat helps in that regard.

It sure helps, but I think it shouldn't matter. Our budget should be
transparent, this means it should be easy to figure out who approved and
paid what, when and to whom. Even if something gets paid by Red Hat
directly, it should be documented somewhere.

Looking at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/EMEA/Budget it
seems that all the numbers are based on information available to the
public and not to Red Hatters only.

> 17:31:12 <sesivany> it's definitely something we should discuss at FLock.
> 17:32:26 <sesivany> cwickert: I think they have had almost no
> processes so far which probably suited them, but if you want to do
> some budgeting, planning etc., it's a nightmare.
> 17:32:54 <cwickert> yes
> 17:33:16 <cwickert> it worked for years, but it strongly depended on
> certain people
> 17:33:33 <cwickert> nobody else had a clue and there is no documentation
> 17:34:03 <cwickert> but on the bright side, we now have more reasons
> to establish more process there :)
> 
> Great, we love looking forward to more processes foisted on us from FAmSCo.

What did we foist on you so far? AFAIR all regions were to define their
own processes in terms of limits, approval and tracking. Some regions
didn't have workflows, NA obviously did. We only asked to document what
you have done in the past in the wiki.

> 17:34:17 <sesivany> cwickert: yeah, and our budget amount was
> declining because no one made sure we spent what we were able to...
> because no one had a clue.
> 17:34:30 <cwickert> I mean, in the past they always told is "No, don't
> force your rules on us, we get alone very well"
> 17:34:40 <cwickert> obviously they are not
> 
> Are you hearing NA complain about anything? We are in fact getting
> along fine with respect to finances.

I hear NA ambassadors asking FAMSCo candidates what they plan to do to
get the NA community more involved. To me this sounds like there is a
problem. And then NA fails to report their spending, that not only
sounds like a problem, it is one.

> 17:35:00 <cwickert> ok, lets kick b*tts at FLOCK
> 17:35:23 <cwickert> or should we bring this up on the list now?
> 17:35:44 <sesivany> we should also set some general communication
> between NA and FAmSCo. We won't have any NA members in FAmSCo which
> will be a bit challenging.
> 
> There is probably a reason no one from NA wants to be on FAmSCo. Think about it.

Such as?

Frankly speaking I doubt it has anything to do with FAmSCo. We had two
representatives of NA in FAmSCo. They provided valuable feedback and
supported our decisions.

> 17:36:40 <sesivany> cwickert: frankly, it's an issue I'd like to
> discuss rather in person.
> 17:37:19 <cwickert> ack
> 17:37:23 <cwickert> +1
> 17:37:31 <aeperezt> sesivany, since there will not be any NA members
> at famsco we have a reason to have some one responsable for budget
> 17:38:33 <aeperezt> and we can request that NA apoint someone for this task
> 
> You can ask but we don't have appointment power and unless Red Hat
> shares their payment information with us that person would be wasting
> his time.

What does approval have to do with appointing a treasurer? You are not
supposed to appoint somebody to be the budget overlord who can approve
everything but to appoint somebody who keeps track of what was spent.
You could just appoint somebody from Red Hat and be done with it. Or you
appoint somebody from the community and work *with* FAmSCo and Red Hat
to make the processes more transparent. Wouldn't it be great if all the
information was available publicly and in one place, so everybody can
just look it up at any given point in time?

> 17:39:26 <sesivany> and I think there will be one very good motivation
> for regions to take care of their budgets. We should base the next
> year's regional budgets on how much they managed to spend this year.
> This year, we didn't have an idea, but we will have it after this
> year.
> 
> We can all spend what we are allocated so you don't cut our budgets
> next year but that isn't really being responsible. We should request
> budget based on our perceived needs and expectations for the coming
> year. And we should spend or not spend allocations based on existing
> needs.
> 
> It is way too early in the year to get in a panic about not spending enough.

I'm sure we want to spend the budget wisely. Of course we can just burn
it on swag at the end of the year but I would rather use it to support
support events and travel. I want our ambassadors to get money when they
need it most and not when we have something left. This requires at least
a rough overview.

We have FLOCK coming up and it's budget is very tight. If we have money
left we can use to sponsor attendees, but we need to know now and not in
December. There is not much activity in the last quarter anyway, no
release and only little events, so lets not wait until it's too late. 

Our budget has been declining year after year and this was mainly caused
by us not spending it because we did not could not track it. As a
result, we got even less money. EMEA currently has a problem because we
received almost -30% than we had planned. I want to break out of this
vicious circle and tracking our spending right and transparent is an
important part in that.

It has absolutely nothing to do with FAmSCo gaining more power, I don't
know why you have this impression. We don't want to limit the freedom of
the CC owners or the regional communities, in fact, we want the
opposite.

I think our goals are the same, we only disagree how to get there. So
let's discuss it and all work together and make the best of it.

Kind regards,
Christoph