[Ambassadors] spending our Q4 money smartly and globally

[Max Spevack]

Hi Ambassadors,

I'm a bit late with this, but I want to start talking about how we can 
divide up our Q4 money worldwide.

There are two very specific goals that I have for the current round of 
budget:

(1) Support the events that are taking place in December, January, and 
February.

(2) Give regions the resources that they need to create swag, CDs, and 
any sort of marketing materials that the regional leadership wants. 
The hope is that all the stuff created can last for the entirety of the 
Fedora 10 release cycle, or reusable resources that folks need.  In 
short, long-term planning with short-term money.

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I've combined the "Global events and swag" line item with the "Fedora 10 
marketing" line item, and removed a few thousand dollars to stash aside 
as a "buffer" that I like to maintain each quarter, for the unexpected.

With that in mind, I want to discuss how we can allocate about $23k 
wisely.

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I'm going to start with EMEA, because all year long, I've been planning 
that a big chunk of this Q4 money needs to go to the Fedora-fr team, to 
really jump-start their 2009 planning, give them the resources that they 
need for Linux Solutions, and to cover some swag production and smaller 
events that they organize.  To that end, I'm going to earmark $5,000 USD 
for Fedora France (about 4000 EUR at today's exchange rates).  My hope 
is that we can give Fedora France most of the money they'll need for 
2009 now, and future budget needs will be a bit smaller.  Feedback from 
the French team would be great.

Another $5,000 USD (about 4000 EUR) should cover the rest of EMEA not 
only for Q4 (which includes FOSDEM), but also for creating any swag that 
will be used further down the road.  I think that we need some new 
posters (the old ones are getting pretty beaten up), stickers, or 
whatever else folks want to purchase.

EMEA -- about $10,000 USD total (about 8000 EUR), which will be 
transferred to either Fedora-fr non-profit or the Fedora EMEA e.V. 
non-profit.

NA -- From an event perspective, Q4 is a bunch of smaller events, so in 
my mind I set aside about $2,000 for that.  I'd like to set aside 
another $5,000 USD for the NA leadership to tell me the best way to 
spend it.  Some of it is already allocated for the purchase of stickers 
in NA that Mairin Duffy is taking care of.

NA -- about $7,000 USD total.

LATAM doesn't have any events at all in Q4, but I'd still like to get 
about $3,000 USD spent on our behalf in that region, just to start to 
get shirts, stickers, posters, or whatever stuff they'll need as next 
year's conference season gets started.  I expect that we'll spend more 
money on LATAM in the early parts of next year's budget.

LATAM -- about $3,000 USD total.

APAC -- I'd like to let Harish Pillay take charge (from Singapore) of 
getting a bunch of Fedora swag made up and available for distribution in 
that region to our Ambassadors.  For this, and also for funding some of 
the events currently in that region, I'm allocating about $3,000.

APAC -- about $3,000 USD total.

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Other things to consider:

Sankarshan continues to manage a budget for community stuff in India, so 
swag production in India as well as individual Ambassadors who need 
funding should go directly to him (but feel free to Cc me).

===============

Feedback is welcome.

Thanks,
Max