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

inode0 inode0 at gmail.com
Wed Jun 19 16:18:49 UTC 2013


On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 7:59 AM, Christoph Wickert
<christoph.wickert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 18.06.2013, 11:41 -0500 schrieb John T. Rose:
>> 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.

You don't ever offend me Christoph. I've been sent several mails
already and I've already explained why I can't provide all the
information about what has been spent to date.

>> 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.

If Ruth would provide the details back to FAmNA someone in FAmNA would
probably be willing to do the documenting on the wiki. It is just
impossible for FAmNA to do it all at the moment.

>> 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.

Oh, we have definitely thought of tracking it. In fact we have begun
to try to track it. Here is an example of how this has gone. We
approved some expenses for your fellow FAmSCo member herlo to attend
PyCon. After the event when I was trying to collect what was actually
spent to comply with FAmSCo's request herlo told me he didn't know
what the actual bill was and that I would have to track down someone
in Red Hat to find out. I tried that and was told that the bill was
paid but they didn't know exactly how much it was.

Now if you multiply this by every traveller to every event getting
subsidised I hope you can understand I simply do not have time to
chase theses rabbits around the cabbage patch.

For each event we would like to document the costs on the event wiki
page from which we can aggregate expenses over time combined with
other sources. Here is an example:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/TXLF_2013#Event_Budget

This works well when ambassadors are doing everything and are willing
to report back with the actual expenses even if those are paid by Red
Hat directly. So I think we are making some progress, but we also need
some cooperation from those receiving funding to get it right. I hope
we can continue to improve this in the future. For now there are
holes.

>> 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.

I think you need to tell that to Red Hat rather than to me.

> 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.

>From your perspective you only asked for this and that from us and it
all seems very reasonable. From our perspective you dumped work on us
that we didn't need and that is making being an ambassador less fun.

>> 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.

Really. I attend pretty much every FAmNA meeting and talk with
ambassadors almost every day and I have never heard anything of the
sort. What I hear are questions about how FAmNA benefits (or doesn't)
from FAmSCo and whether we should even bother paying any attention to
FAmSCo. There is a problem between FAmNA and FAmSCo. That much I agree
with.

>> 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?

NA sees little or no benefit from FAmSCo.
NA sees FAmSCo as the source of additional burdens making our work less fun.

I understand there is a bigger picture. But from the normal
ambassador's perspective it doesn't matter where the money comes from
or how it gets accounted for. All the extra baggage around budgeting
is interesting and important to a few people (and I think we are both
included in that group).

> 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.

They provided no feedback to FAmNA and I think you'd have to really
search to find their names in FAmNA meeting logs during this period.
The only times I recall visits to our meetings it was to tell us
FAmSCo wanted us to do something else now.

>> 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?

I didn't say it had anything to do with approval. We can't just go
around appointing people to do work for us. Ben volunteered to try,
let's give him a chance.

>> 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.

I heard they had plenty of money to fund every speaker (and they
accepted every submitted talk). Whether a region wants to fund
attendance at FLOCK is surely up to them. I do not believe FAmNA has
any intention of doing that.

> 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.

Well, you can fix the EMEA problem by showing that what you were given
wasn't enough. That is a separate issue.

> 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.

Yeah, that is nice. I didn't say FAmSCo was grabbing power.

> 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.

I am trying. But hearing the way FAmSCo talks about NA isn't making it
easy for me to be positive.

John


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