[Ambassadors] Improving Ambassador Membership, Mentoring, Measurabilty.

[David Nalley]

2008/11/15 JoergSimon <jsimon at fedoraproject.org>:
> Hi Ambassadors,
>
> yesterday i could share my thoughts about improving the Ambassador Membership
> Experience.
> http://jsimon.fedorapeople.org/fad08.pdf
>
> Today we touched the Topic certain times again -  and the Idea to give
> a "Ambassador Classroom" to teach new Ambassadors and answer their questions
> once a month, seems attractive. What do you think, would it make sence to try
> this out and offer this in the "Ambassador Welcome Message" that new
> sponsored Ambassadors get?
>


Sorry for the really late response on this. On the upside it has given
me a bit of time to consider a response.
I like the idea of mentoring in principle however in practice I fear
that it will be difficult to achieve.

I think to really preface this conversation that we have to define
what an ambassador does.
So when people ask me what it means to be an Ambassador, I tell them
that Ambassadors are around to be liaisons between the community and
the project. In some ways we try and show people the awesomeness that
is Fedora, in others we try and build relationships with potential
contributors, and even other projects. Ambassadors IMO are the face of
the Fedora Project.

The wiki page says this:
Fedora Ambassadors are people like you and me, who go to places where
other Linux users and potential converts gather and tell them about
Fedora — the project and the distribution.

So from my perspective - there are things that I do as an Ambassador
and things I also don't do, or at least don't try and put  my focus
there. For instance, I don't try to convert every person I meet into a
Fedora user. I am happy to talk to them about the benefits of Fedora
and the philosophy behind it. I do constantly look for people that I
think are capable of being good contributors to the Fedora Project.. I
have set my primary focus as an Ambassador to be the recruiting of new
contributors. I think I am maginally capable in that respect. That
isn't, nor should it be, the focus of every Ambassador. I am also
trying to grow into the position of recruiting OSS projects to package
for Fedora. I don't know if I am succeeding here or not - with just
3-4 projects that I have contact with thus far, and a lot of interest
but no forward movement that may take some time to develop or even see
if I can be successful with.

That said I don't know how to teach any of the above. I've been
sitting here trying to figure out what needs to be taught in order to
be an Ambassador and here is the shortlist that I have come up with:

*Understanding the Free Software movement in general. I think the
following should be required reading/viewing for anyone:
    - Revolution OS   (the Movie)
    - Free Software, Free Society (book by RMS - freely available as a download)
    - Cathedral and the Bazaar by ESR
    - Homesteading the Noosphere by ESR
    - probably a number of others that aren't coming to mind at the moment.

Now I say that cautiously - I don't think that we ought to necessarily
become RMS-ites or ESR-ites, but exposure to the ideas and being able
to talk intelligently about them is useful.

*Next I think it's necessary to understand how the Fedora Project
works - that means knowing the org chart, but more than that the
entire flow. I once worked in a job, where I was unavoidably the
public face of the organization. I was expected to handle most things
on my own and at my level, but I also had to know how and where to
escalate, and even where to point people to in the event that it was
'above my paygrade'. To accomplish that I was essentially forced to
spend multiple two week periods 'embedded' in the other groups. So in
trying to train the Fedora Ambassador we'd 'assign' them to
Documentation or Translation for two weeks, after which time they'd
spend two weeks in Bug Triage - attending meetings (or at least
reading the minutes) and perhaps even doing the work. If a person who
acts as an Ambassador for Fedora can't describe for a potential
contributor the process to get involved in Docs or Art or Packaging
then I perceive that as a problem. I'd even argue that subscribing to
the f-a-b list should be mandatory. Most of the policy questions
you'll be asked (MP3, DVD, etc) have been clearly defined, but as an
Ambassador you need to be in the loop with regards to what's going on
in the organization.

*Perhaps before any of that I think that people should understand the
principles of the Fedora Project and why they are important. I can't
tell you how disheartened I was to see discussions on the f-a-l
advocating inclusion of proprietary, closed source kernel drivers in
Fedora. If a person doesn't get the principles or doesn't agree with
them the last thing they should be doing is being the face of Fedora.



Now that said - the thing we don't want to do is unnecessarily raise
the barrier to contribute. (Which I think can be avoided). That means
that there needs to be a welcoming mentorship process. I'd argue that
we leave the 'join' portion the way that it is - and keep the 6 month
probation period (at least there used to be one before you could get
money) What we follow that with is a list of what's involved and most
of the work I envision from the above is placed on the new Ambassador.


So let me step back a bit and say - With one or two exceptions I don't
really try and recruit people to become Ambassadors. I know we as
organization have done so. Ambassadors I think would be most ideally
recruited from within. While I didn't do this, (I started in
Ambassadors and marketing, and both were worse off for it :) ) I think
that we'd have better Ambassadors for it if we did. There are people
like ianweller who are heavily involved in a lot of aspects of Fedora
and in my opinion would make a great Ambassador rather than
$randomlinuxuser we pick up at a conference.

Thoughts?