[Ambassadors] Active/Inactive Ambassadors

[Casey Jones]

Jeffrey made some really good points.  When I first joined this group, what initially drew me in was the open-minded attitude of the entire team.  Right from the beginning, everyone was very warm and welcoming.  That positive attitude inspired me to be a very active and vocal supporter of Fedora in my line of work.  I work with lots of very talented I.T. professionals who are very linux-savvy.  Many of them wouldn't have given any thought to trying Fedora as they were already Ubuntu, Debian, and Slackware fans.  But, I have already gotten many of them to switch to Fedora and utilize its out-of-the-box security features and networking tools.  We are incorporating Fedora LiveCDs  into our processes at work as well.  I wouldn't have known about any of this had it not been for this group just allowing me to be a "fly-on-the-wall" for so long in the discussions.  True, I should be sharing success stories, but with over 1,000,000 Fedora 6 downloads worldwide, this group's success stories are not new news anymore.  That is a tribute to this incredible operating system and this team.  And, I would rather let the group focus on resolving issues than take more time just hearing success stories.

But, because I don't report my success stories, I could see the inclination of the group to categorize me as "inactive."  I would have no problem with marking my name in the wiki as "inactive."  But, please allow folks like me to remain permanent members so that we can continue gathering information that is critical to helping us help Fedora in the long run.

My other concern is that if we start to formalize this group too much that it becomes a corporate bureaucracy, we are taking Fedora away from the whole free spirited thinking that makes up the greater Linux community.  If a newcomer were to read terms and conditions that laid out these new rules the group is proposing, I would be worried they would be turned away because they would fear they wouldn't be able to keep up their active status for long due to their busy schedules.

I think the intentions of this discussion are very good.  I just don't agree exactly with the proposed solution.  

Casey



----- Start Original Message -----
Sent: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 17:56:22 -0400
From: Jeffrey Tadlock <linux at elfshadow.net>
To: fedora-ambassadors-list at redhat.com
Subject: Re: [Ambassadors] Active/Inactive Ambassadors

> Francesco Ugolini wrote:
> > Active Ambassador is a person who report his work, it's not important to
> > do this trough M-L or irc, he can send a mail to FAmSCo or to another
> > ambassadors that will report your activity, but we need reports.
> 
> An active ambassador is someone that promotes Fedora - whether it be at 
> work, to friends and family, to their local LUG or at Open Source events 
> near them.  Reporting of those events is just icing on the cake.
> 
> Yes, communication is good and should certainly be encouraged.  But to 
> declare people such as Tony and Casey and certainly many others inactive 
> because they didn't report what they do on a regular basis is *very* 
> short-sighted.  Why do we even want to risk alienating these people?
> 
> As someone else mentioned - having inactive ambassadors costs the 
> project nothing.  Trying to weed out inactive (I still haven't been 
> convinced we have a good way to determine activity yet) can cause much 
> more harm than any good it can bring us.
> 
> Where does the rest of FAMSCO stand on this issue?
> 
> --Jeffrey
> 
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> 

----- End Original Message -----