Hi All,
FAMSCO, Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee, members had a meeting
last night, during which we talked about some of our problems, our
analysis and thoughts.
As we believe we should enhance communication across all Fedora
subprojects (all have common goals), we decided opening up this dialog
and exposing our discussion to you all.
Your comments and suggestions are welcome!
PROBLEMS / QUESTIONS:
- Lack of planning, sitting together to talk how we'll be spending
money, what actions we'll do in the next months. It is still all ad-hoc.
- We don't have our stuff together in terms of CONCRETELY what we wanted
- Do we know how to launch FC6? Do we know what we'll be FC6 main
advantages? What' we'll promote the most? How are we using our money?
(we'll do the big homepage on redhat.com again, and we'll figure out
DVDs for fc6; those are the main launch components)
- Are we targeting the desktop?
- We're questioning the current goals of the ambassadors project.
- Now as the Ambassador novelty is wearing off, we also see that the
actual raison d'etre for the ambassadors is becoming less clear
- What is wrong in stating the goal of the ambassadors group as
"end-user evangelizing/conversion"?
- We think that being an English-only organization hinders us in what
should be a goal of globalization
- We might de-centralize everything, but to enable some idea exchange
through the central forum
FACTS + LESSONS FROM FEDORA BRAZILIAN AMBASSADORS
- Translation volunteers group used to be coordinated by David (myself),
then we got very passionate contributors and gave our best to direct
their energy - this is key!
- Continued monitoring their activities for a while and made sure to
correct posture and some actions
- Then let it go. Once one of them seem mature and highly committed to
assume, he took the project leadership (David has no energy left to keep
doing translations, but volunteers do. Now David is totally out of it
and the pt_BR translation project is still going very well (counting
even with po files editing).
- Leadership is key!
- We got www.projetofedora.org which is representing all subprojects we
can possibly localize in Brazil. Could we replicate this
internationally? (talking about free media distro, docs, trans, events,
etc). Ambassadors actually contribute in some different ways.
- They are recognized as ambassadors as long as they are involved in one
or more of the local sub-projects
- The ambassadors we see aren't picking up the slack. But clearly the
Brazilians *have* been picking up the slack; in fact, they've been among
the most active and professional
- Brazil is blessed with great leaders who are motivated
- They truly love FC, believe on the project and can definitely see the
difference their work is making
SOME QUESTIONS AND ANALYSIS
- The charter for translations is (1) clear and (2) extremely
user-focused by its very nature
- The behaviors that have created success in Fedora Translations are,
IMHO, necessary but not sufficient to make a successful Ambassadors project
- The translation project started with *corporate guidance and community
vision*
- Is the "charter" of Ambassadors too vague? Not interesting enough to
drive participation? Do the Ubuntu folks have the right idea by focusing
on local teams? The general success of the .br community would seem to
indicate this.
- 1) It's not easy to be an ambassador (CLA, etc) 2) We don't view them
as the real users 3) Need to provide them with the right infrastructure
for them to contribute more freely
- The current barrier to participation is way too high with our
too-liberal application of the CLA
- We also miss the question of incentive (the incentive for translators
is *extremely* clear: have useful software in your own language)
- Giving them the appropriate tools thus is a clear win
- What's the clear incentive? Perhaps there *is* an incentive to the
user, but I don't think it's a surefire winner like translations is
- Extras, definitely. Translations, definitely. Docs, somewhat less
clear, with fewer participants. Ambassadors, less and less clear.
- We're certainly not seeing much of the leadership on a regular basis...
- Should we give ambassadors some more authonomy to decide stuff
locally? So this will be *their project*...
- How do we find those leaders elsewhere?
- Thinking out loud... perhaps we should be focusing on turning the
ambassadors project into a meeting of local leaders, but we need to
nurture leaders for that
- How do we make sure we attract leaders to the Ambassadors project?
People capable of organizing a local initiative, like in BR?
- Volunteer work is limited to achieve timely goals. Do we need paid
employees to be leaders?
- Maybe we should showcase what has been done so far and make decision
makers understand how important FC projects are for RH's commercial success
- Key motivation: making things happen, quicker than in the corporate world
- Should we open up participations for other characters other than
technical? Motivate these folks to come on board? How?
- Should we approach the volunteers, know them better, understand their
skills, then redirect them accordingly? Volunteers only do what they like!
- Fedora Project could be THA PLACE where they can make it happen in
many different areas
- By giving them money, some leadership training, some org skills,
**infrastructure**
- We gotta be able to offer them varied tools so they can practice their
skills working for Fedora
Thanks for reading these!
My best,
begin:vcard
fn:David Barzilay
n:Barzilay;David
org:Red Hat Brasil
adr;quoted-printable;quoted-printable:;;Av. Ang=C3=A9lica, 2.503 - 8o andar;S=C3=A3o Paulo;SP;01227-200;Brasil
email;internet:barzilay@xxxxxxxxxx
title:Marketing and Community Manager
tel;work:(+5511) 3124 6000
tel;home:(+5511) 3259 6212
url:http://www.br.redhat.com
version:2.1
end:vcard
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