PortugalFAD

[Nelson Marques]

Robyn,

I've placed probably too much information and in a confusing way, let me
take a more clean and objective approach regarding some points:

# media - events made in my University are always subject of a press
release to my university's normal channels. We usually promote around
180 events in average per year in many fields, from Marketing to local
Industry promotion (ex: Marketing workshops, IPAM Fashion, etc). So this
will trigger the possibility of having press visinting us, and we should
be prepared.
 
 From a personal point, I can make things more easy. In the past I've
worked for a company which is now part of GFI Group (France). During
those days we've worked closely with a company that provides SIC local
reporting teams. So yes, I do have a premier channel to call them in.
But this will only happen if there is something I want to share. Since
this is a kick-off for Portuguese Fedora Community, could be nice.

# EMEA - Why I asked EMEA to be present? Because I can't deliver a
passionate message about "becoming an Ambassador". During my several
calls on the community normal channels, none has been answered, so I'm
assuming we don't have active Ambassadors in Portugal, and the only one
who managed this call, as been turned down as Ambassador due to "not
enough work". Well, this is discussable as I'm not sure in what grounds
such statements were made. Having EMEA would provide a more friendly
approach in setting goals and would make things more transparent. My
wishes were that we could stimulate and gather 1 or 2 Ambassadors,
having EMEA to provide them with all the passionate experience of being
an ambassador and take a more friendly approach on them, as they will
become the ramp between Fedora enthusiasts in Portugal and Fedora
Project. This would be something worth for a TV to cover for instance
and press. How something is born. If such happened would be a boost in
Fedora notoriety in Portugal, as we would for sure be promoting one of
our Foundations, FIRST!.

# Workflow - Now a brief about what I pretend to accomplish, this comes
in 3 topics and though they can be extensive and could translate in
probably hundreds of work hours, they are worth it, and we need to start
at some point.

 1. Ambassadors > I would like to see 1 or 2 Ambassadors coming out of
this event and having the goals very well defined. This would be the
premier interface in a bidirectional relation:
 
  Fedora Project > Portuguese Fedora Community
  Portuguese Fedora Community > Fedora Project

 Like I stated before, I don't have the passionate speech to promote
Ambassadorial work. This would produce 1 Document with Goals and a
timeframe to get them accomplished. Medium term goals. Short term goals
are something I believe that from a strategical point of view are not to
be considered at this moment. Maybe within a couple of months/half year.

 2. pt_PT. This is a very important field as we have the majority of our
contributors in this field (from my current knowledge). A self
assessment of the current status should be mandatory in this terms:

  -- How many are we?
  -- Current status of pt_PT workflow.
  -- Possible interfaces to other pt_PT translation units (ex: GNOME,
KDE).

 In this field, I would like to invite someone from ANSOL
(http://www.ansol.org) to be present which could at a higher level help
me in the future to establish contacts with the Academy in order to
provide documentation for Normalized and Standardized Portuguese.
Portuguese was called in past a "dialect", a dialect by definition in
Portugal is a derivation (a fork ?) of the normalized/standardized
language, which in our case is the Portuguese. I would like to provide
Fedora and everyone else a set of documentation by this.
 I would like to get cooperation with ANSOL so that we can establish
contacts in order that ANSOL can provide a way to coordinate all
Portuguese translation teams with information and a eventually get the
cooperation of the Academy through a mailling list where our translators
and everyone else could clear doubts.
 How does this relate to Fedora? Easy and awesome, FIRST once more. If
such happens, we can be proud to say that Fedora provides pt_PT
normalized accepted and working according to the normalized Portuguese.
This will be a key feature to projects like OLPC and others which might
get a very important and relevant role in some African countries. Don't
ignore we lead PALOP's (African Official Portuguese Speaking Countries).
Even in this situation (and those contries like Angola, the most
expanding economy in the world (2009), pt_PT will be important and we
can even provide support for their own translation teams).
 
 From this, I would like to provide a document with clear goals. I am
willing to push this effort forward on behalf of Fedora. If such happens
there is a great chance that Fedora will be the one providing better
pt_PT integration (and through ANSOL, we can assure this integration by
coordinating efforts with other translation teams which are independent,
ex: GNOME).

 This is awesome if it gets covered by the media, as this will provide
the world the goal that FOSS and Fedora care about providing good
contents and efforts at a localized level. This will help increase
Fedora notoriety in Portugal and hopefully bring more people to us.
Combined this with our prime engineering... the possibilities are
encouraging.

 3. Current Portuguese Fedora contributors - In this field I would like
to discuss with the Portuguese contributors in which ways we can relate
our efforts to support each other. A bridge between Marketing and
Trans_PT will be very benefit to the Project, allowing a more powerful
deployment and a more targeted approach. Together we can stimulate more
people to join us, can support more projects and eventually if we have
manpower even get more stuff into Portuguese.
 I would also like to check with the people present a new approach of
having our little group working as a launch ramp to Fedora for new
Portuguese contributors. I understand most teams don't have the time
available to do a more personal approach on new users. I would like to
gather everyone's expertise and try to provide a local solution for this
to new Portuguese contributors. Having the support of a local community
which can provide a more personal approach and help/guide them during
the first steps will provide a better integration and will strengthen
the union of our contributors on the project.

 This has to be analyzed by everyone on the FAD in order for us to see
what we can do. Once more, EMEA could have a great role here.


 

 Other considerations: We are few, but our few share a huge set of
characteristics with Spanish people at all levels: language (orthography
not for sure, but semantics and grammar), culture, ideology and
geographical positions. We also share one thing that is great, Spain at
some point has a huge community that speaks Spanish, and the Portuguese
has a huge community that speaks Portuguese. I would like to see that we
could work together in the future.

 This FAD is more strategical and less operational, but giving the
conditions that we are starting here something, I would consider this to
be mandatory.

 For working, I'm thinking on using Gobby, therefore we can have a place
for remote attendies. I know there are some people from Azores and
Madeira that would like to join our efforts. Though they are not related
to Fedora in a direct way, they are GNOME contributors, and some of them
use Fedora. I met them in #fedora-pt. IRC is also an option for sharing
our thoughts with people. Though we're working on Portuguese, I would
like to keep IRC in english to we can extend this FAD to anyone willing
to join us on this effort.


 Back into the media: If ANSOL is present, their distribution channels
bring people and provide interest. If we can accomplish those spoken
above, this will be important path breaking and will promote all the
Fedora Foundations.

 Freedom > Freedom to share and carve our own destiny within Fedora (no,
this is not to be faced as separatist move, on the contrary, a union of
Portuguese with International community).

 First > we will be exploring a set of possibilities that later on can
be followed by many.

 Features > we will providing new featured approach into the project in
a localized way. Like a start ramp to people who want to get involved in
Portugal.

 Friends > no need to explain.


 I believe that this is objective and something we can achieve, and that
my requests for EMEA to be present is valid, as the investment from
Fedora.

 If this happens and is well accepted, it means one thing: we need to
have a system where others can pick up and replace people when needed
and keep the community in motion, else it will fade and disappear. My
personal approach on this could be the one of "blitzkrieg", swift and
hard towards (no political meaning).
 
 I hope this is more enlightening. If EMEA isnt showing up or ANSOL not
showing up, we can still accomplish the majority and try to stimulate
Ambassadors, but if that is that is what will happen, I am hopping that
EMEA understands the importance of this steps as the start of a
community inside of a international community and gives the correct
relevance and efforts on this.

 We are only counting on things we can do by ourselfs and that we have
time for it and at no point we will deploy extra load on existing fedora
teams, this is a very simple goal.

 I understand that inter-continental stuff is expensive but I would like
to leave an invitation to anyone who would like to be present. Like I
said we are few, but it always starts with a group of few dedicated
people.

 As for segmenting the time, yes, but on the correct time, not now where
everything is still opened and vague.

 nelson.




On Thu, 2010-05-06 at 10:50 -0700, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
> Let me be a little more precise here:  What exactly will you be doing
> while, for instance, people from a television crew are taping you?
> 
> How are you going to make this to be a Fedora Activity Day - where you
> are getting things accomplished - vs. a Press Event where people are
> coming to do interviews?  Or is your plan to just interact with these
> entities to discuss future plans for publicity? 
-- 
Nelson Marques
Evil Clown (http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/evilclown.htm)