[fedora-india] FAD Singapore 2015 - day 2

[P J P]

Hello all,

Day-2 of the FAD today was mostly dedicated to more brainstorming
about various issues that are faced across APAC region. Ex missing
leadership, lack of awareness,lack of initiative, divided regional
approach etc.



Day started with an issue of delays in reimbursements. And if it would
make sense to have another Fedora credit card older in the region.
Izhar Firdaus, who is an Ambassador in Malaysia and does reimbursements
for the APAC, explained various processes that he has to follow around
reimbursements, filing monthly expenses and required paperwork etc.
It'd be preferred to have another card holder in India, but we need
a suitable responsible volunteer who is willing to do that. We'd reach
out to the Fedora Council with a request once we have such a candidate
in sight.


Next each participant was asked what they could do to improve community
participation in their region. Each region has ambassadors who have been
inactive for years. Many cases are they became ambassador when they were
students, and since then have been occupied with their jobs or have
lost interest in working for Fedora. But there is nothing much that could
be done about it. We can prod them and wake them up, but beyond that it's
their choice. Once again the DVDs production issue came about, in that,
it'll help to have Alternative Desktop DVDs, wherein user can choose
from a desktop of his/her choice than having just Gnome shell. Also for
conferences like 'conf.kde.in', it'll help to distribute KDE desktop DVDs
than the Gnome ones. User interface could come in the way of Fedora adoption,
we need to experiment with the available options to see which one works the
best.

Next came the missing leadership across APAC region. It is observed that
there is no targeted/planned approach to our activities. It's very ad-hoc
and mostly happens at the 11'th hour. Like organisation of this FAD, or
producing DVDs/Banners/swag when there is a pressing requirement etc.

It is ambassadors' task to take control of it. They need to fill the
leadership positions through initiative. But the major problem is that
not all ambassadors know their responsibilities well. It's their mentors'
failure in mentoring them and is upto them to fix it.

    -> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors


There are other issues like, not all Fedora participants are vocal across
various Fedora channels, mailing lists, etc. Maybe because they don't care
or maybe because there is a feeling that they can not change anything.
It is extremely important that we voice our opinions/views across all
channels.

Another bigger issue is ambassadors don't have a convincing argument
for the audience about - why they should use Fedora. Because in many
environments it doesn't matter which distribution they use.


By this time we were close to the evening, next topic was about the new
governing structure proposed by the Fedora council.

Regional delegates
  -> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Budget.next#Regional_Delegates


Going forward, Fedora is going to be much more methodical and we
need to prepare ourselves towards that.


See more highlights at
  -> http://piratepad.net/FAD-Sngapore-2015


Thank you.

---  -P J P
http://feedmug.com