[Ambassadors] mentorship, sponsorship, etc.

[Francesco Ugolini]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Clint Savage <herlo1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> To start with, I've seen the discussion of Active and Inactive
> Ambassadors be brought up (by me and others) only to be shut down by
> some who would wish to discourage alienating other Ambassadors who are
> doing good works.  But I always thought there were ways to identify
> those who were driving ambassadorship in Fedora, the methods we used
> were archaic and incomplete.  In this case, while I don't believe it
> will ever be perfect, I think we're getting very close to a good
> system that can improve the quality of the Fedora Ambassadors.  I also
> believe that the quantity will not slow too much, but rather more
> people will be interested because they will gain valuable skills now
> as an Ambassador.

The big problem of the active/inactive ambassadors was that it
underlined a deep vision of that issue.

>From this perspective what Max summarized wanted to underline that we
want to solve a big lack in our commuity starting from another point
of view, understanding what community really need.

> Raising the barrier some is good and that's why mentoring will be a
> very important part of this barrier.  So far, I've seen some great
> suggestions for how to do that, and I agree with the basic sentiment
> of a sponsor.  Essentially, every other FAS group has one, we should
> too.  The sponsor is the mentor, the person who makes sure that the
> new ambassadors understands the issues and drives the sponsorship
> based upon some specific milestones as well as a few loose guidelines.
>  My theory is somewhat similar to the one provided by David and
> others, we should sponsor new members who have proven themselves and I
> think that's really important.

Sure. Raising the barrier doesn't mean block the gowth of Ambassadors:
the main goal is to make Ambassadors working giving community (the
World) the best "service" we can give, helping spreading open source
and finding new contributors.

> I know my examples are weak, and that probably encouraging ambassadors
> into another group of their interest would be key elements of
> mentoring/sponsorship, but at some point we need to set those limits.
> I just think they don't have to be a set list, but rather an agreed
> upon set of promises between the prospective ambassador and the
> mentor/sponsor.

Sure, that's why this discussion was opened to the community and why
we wanted people know what we are discussing about: people have to
understand that we don't want to block community growth, but just
manage a really big community with tools that could really improve
their experience.

I'm sure Ambassadors could agree on this set of proposals David done,
in order to achive this goal we must be sure the processes proposed
are clear.

Regards

Francesco Ugolini