Ambassadors/SteeringCommittee/Meetings/2006-05-15

FAmSCo Meeting Minutes: 2006-05-15

Meeting Time

• 2006-05-15 23:00 UTC

Attending

• lxmaier: AlexMaier
• mspevack_hm: MaxSpevack
• gregdek_home: GregDeKoenigsberg
• rwhetsel: RobertWhetsel
• tchung: ThomasChung

Regrets

• BobJensen

Meeting Summary

• See Meetings page for current agenda

Budget

• mspevack_hm reports:
• working on getting a PO for the video contest stuff, that should be done tonight/tomorrow once i have time to breathe
• other thing that's a big TODO for me is to update the budget table and figure out where we actually are money-wise. I'd like to do that for the next meeting
• i need to have the finance guys run the numbers on the cost center and see how much money we've spent
• lxmaier: I have a question on budget (table) http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/SteeringCommittee/Budget
• why did we subtract the cost of DVDs and shipment from the budget? i thought the DVD portion of the budget was separate ?
• mspevack_hm: well that update to the page wasn't me, but I agree with it. "DVD budget" is the cost of creating and delivering DVDs to people who need them" it's not like we have a separate shipping budget
• mspevack_hm: this is why we have such an incentive to get local production of stuff into place

Jack research on Issues

• mspevack_hm:
• JackAboutboul started his summer internship today. I've asked him to directly work on this problem, as per the proposal that I talked about several meetings ago
• http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/SteeringCommittee/Meetings/2006-05-01
• he's researching, thinking about our issues, etc.
• he's going to put together a plan for how we can solve these problems within the next 2 weeks I'd say, and that will be presented to famsco/ambassadors
• tchung: I'm sorry specially what issues he's doing research on?
• mspevack_hm: couple things:
• 1 - getting the equivalent of "cool stuff" stores setup in different geos worldwide
• 2 - figuring out a process around which we can maybe use worldwide RHAT offices of hubs for swag
• 3 - following up on some leads for sponsored media that I haven't had time to track down, and working with you - tchung - on that
• 4 - finalizing the guidelines for self-sustaining events, etc as discussed previously
• 5 - presenting his plans to me/famsco for review and then implementing them

Member Services

• tchung reports:
• Since last report, we have 2 more new ambassadors.
• See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Projects/WeeklyReports/2006-05-08 for their names.
• As of 2006-05-15, we now have 70 approved (signed CLA and joined) ambassadors officially.
• See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/MembershipService/Approved for their names.
• lxmaier: how many total?
• tchung: based on fedora-ambasadors-list, we have 116 memebers in total.

How are we doing?

• mspevack_hm:
• i'm wondring if FAMSCO is doing everything that it can to make the most of our ambassadors.
• I'm wondering if we can figure out which ambassadors are the most active, and I'm wondering what sort of measurable activities we can ask ambassadors to do other than run events
• i'm aware that we have a variety of "ambassadors mission statements" but i just have a sense that we could be doing even more
• i'm wondring if ambassadors are feeling as integrated as they could
• gregdek_home:
• It's clearly time to ask the ambassadors this question.
• tchung:
• just a comment.
• it seems very quiet lately (in the ambassadors-list)
• and the reason seems to be that it's the final week for most schools.
• mspevack_hm:
• i have an interesting example
• i've been pinged a bunch of times by some people who want the Fedora Project to contribute an article for some tech magazine
• basically we can write 1800 words on Fedora
• whatever we want and they'll print it
• I'd love to be able to farm that out to a couple of community people
• people who aren't the biggest names in fedora and let them come up with a draft
• that seems ambassador-ish and could lead to a whole Fedora PR team
• gregdek_home:
• Here's the thing:
• Ambassadors can only do as much as we empower them to do.
• Unfortunately...I think we've made some choices that have made that difficult.
• The branding/logo issue is one.
• The schwag centralization is another.
• We say to ambassadors, "go have a show..."
• "...but ask us for permission for this and that."
• I think that slows us down a bit...
• ...and I'm glad that Jack is working on some of it.
• So we'll see how that helps, I think.
• But it's also time to ask:
• "Ambassadors, what do you need to spread the word?"
• lxmaier:
• please also consider that writing an article is something out of realm of possible for most of them--writing takes skill, ask Jopp, so even though we had the "writing" and other more creative things were in the "ideas for ambassadors" the events are the easiest to do.
• http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/HowTo
• mspevack_hm:
• i'm not saying they all have to do it. I'm saying that it's something I'd love to get community help with.
• I don't care if the person helping calls themself an "ambassador" or something else.
• It is the chance to empower someone in the community
• I'd love to see a subset of people -- and forget naming for a moment --
• who are good enough speakers/communicators that we can send them forth to *seek out interviews* and actively spread the fedora word that way
• lxmaier:
• i am all for it, it's just that each time i see us ask the community for concrete deeds, an spirited discussion ensues, but hardly more
• mspevack_hm:
• people who can write, speak, and persuade people about fedora
• so let's ask them for single things, that are concrete, as they come up
• and see who volunteers and delivers
• and then you remember who it was :-)

FAMSCO track on Action Items

• lxmaier:
• so if our own famsco members are so slow on the uptake, what do you expect from the rank-and-file ambassadors
• gregdek_home:
• A couple of things:
• 1. Are ambassadors actually going out and kicking (behind) and not closing the loop, do we think?
• 2. These things that whomever volunteered to do -- where are they tracked?
• whetsel:
• we track by going back and reviewing our meetings or make a note
• I have many projects and on my list is Fedora
• I get some done and others get pushed back
• my guess we all have jobs that keep us a bit off track
• tchung: Please note we have Meeting Agenda wiki page specifically designed for tracking.
• mspevack_hm:
• I just think ambassadors needs a bit of a kick in the (behind).
• It needs to be quicker to do stuff, and it needs to present tasks in a way that make them easily done. Putting on an event is hard
• and it's not something you do often
• we help with that, but we could do *way* better
• with permission of rest of FAMSCO
• i'd like to start just tossing smaller one-off marketingish type things to amabassadors list
• seeing if anyone bites and mentoring them through it
• like a summer of code for marketing

Follow up LinuxTag and two initiatives

• lxmaier: so yeah, gregdek_home, do you mind following up with florian and gerold? kinda post-mortem for LT?
• tchung: yes, we need a report for LinuxTag.
• lxmaier: i will follow up with evilbob about his two initiatives that are yet to happen

Schwag

• gregdek_home: Current delivery date for store stuff: May 19th, firm.

Next Meeting

• 2006-05-23 03:00 UTC (Monday in US)
• channel: #fedora-famsco (this is an invitation-only private channel)