[Ambassadors] calling for backup

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 03:10:46PM -0400, Mel Chua wrote:
>  > So from an outsiders perspective, I infer that there must a lot of
>  > internal wrangling that occurs, especially for the larger events such
>  > as FUDcon.
> <snip>
>  > That leads
>  > me to believe that this internal wrangling has a learning curve that
>  > is non-trivial, and that repeating it would be a waste of time and
>  > resources. If it takes a month to get someone up to speed, having to
>  > repeat it for each FUDcon sounds likely to be an excercise in
>  > frustration.
> 
> I'll chime in here because FUDCon Toronto was my 2nd-ever FUDCon and the 
> first one I helped organize (as a small portion of my $dayjob, so I 
> think that if there was "internal wrangling" that occurred I would have 
> had to see it).
> 
> I learned everything on the fly, right before I needed it; it wasn't 
> difficult, it was just constant keeping-up-with-communications. I 
> learned by asking questions of prior FUDCon organizers (Paul and Max) or 
> by making something up if there wasn't an existing process. For this 
> reason, I'd suggest at least a 2-FUDCon term for the position - do a 
> FUDCon (while being mentored), mentor someone else to do a FUDCon.
> 
> Stuff the community can do:
> 
> * Finding and negotiating contracts with hotels, venues, food vendors, 
> etc (actually, Chris Tyler did basically all of this, and ended up just 
> telling me and Paul "hey guys, is this ok? Yes? Great, here's the 
> invoice, you take care of payment.")

Right, this was really what started us down the path of having FUDCon
run on a lightweight bid process.  We wanted to extend this model, so
global Fedora events won't hinge on just one person in Red Hat doing
everything.

> * How to run the sponsorship process, which is now documented at 
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sponsoring_event_attendees. Again, this 
> can very much be a "we have decided these people need $X - hey 
> $person_with_pursestrings, please take care of <invoice>" sort of thing.
> 
> * How to announce FUDCon news to the Fedora community - there's nothing 
> special about this, it's all sending mails to list and posting on Planet 
> and poking individuals on IRC to register, plan hackfests, get their 
> sponsorship apps in, etc. There is no secret magic sauce beyond Lots Of 
> Communication.

I agree!

> * Basically, everything at 
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_organization_process.
> 
> Stuff that's harder for the community to do:
> 
> * Red Hat expense reports and reimbursements (a.k.a. "I paypalled these 
> people the money we owe them, and now I need to submit everyone's 
> receipts to the Red Hat system so that Max can tell Finance to give me 
> back my money.")
> 
> In other words, as far as I can tell, the only "internal" stuff that's 
> needed is "Step N: actually apply the Red Hat credit card and pay for 
> things"[0] - the rest of it is documented at 
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_organization_process.
> 
> --Mel
> 
> [0] and if there was a portion of the bill someone else wanted to pick 
> up - for instance, I recall OLPC sponsored... I think it was FUDPub, 
> back in the January 2009 FUDCon in Boston - there's no "internal Red 
> Hat" stuff needed at all.

We should continue to look for sponsorship opportunities for FUDCon
where we can do similar partnerships.  Those sponsorships increase
when FUDCon results in some tangible gain, be it code or otherwise,
that's of interest to a sponsor.  If the planning group for a FUDCon
event builds an objective for something deliverable like that, the
potential's much greater for substantial sponsorship.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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