15:02:21 #startmeeting 15:02:21 Meeting started Wed Aug 12 15:02:21 2015 UTC. The chair is mizmo. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 15:02:21 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 15:02:41 decause, how do you name the meeting? 15:02:45 #chair decause 15:02:45 Current chairs: decause mizmo 15:03:07 Jiri: I'm still the chair of famsco... 15:03:12 FAmSCo is dead nowadays 15:03:23 I still feel some responsibility so I'm trying to continue some level of activity 15:03:36 but FAmSCo itself has not been active for several months already 15:03:49 all the people in FAmSCo have been serving at least me for the last several years 15:03:56 and i feel that most of us are kind of burned out from that 15:04:09 so even if we decide to keep famsco we will need new blood 15:04:17 i dont think there will be a lot of ppl from the current famsco who will be down for it again 15:04:35 i'd like to start the talk with the tasks of famsco - what it is doing nowadays 15:04:41 what are the tasks the new body would have to take over 15:04:45 famsco tasks 15:04:49 - steering the ambassadors projects 15:04:52 - regional support budget 15:04:55 - membershi administration 15:04:57 - escalations 15:05:02 - reviewing events (fads, fudcons) 15:05:05 - coordination between regions 15:05:10 - collaboration with the rest of the project 15:05:27 we try to direct the ambassadors subprojects... it didn't work that way before when i joined... 15:05:37 mattdm: the leadership vs the governance? 15:05:51 jiri: when i joined famsco we did mostly day to day business 15:06:02 if someone wanted to buy or produce some swag for $50, famsco had to vote about it 15:06:04 so it's something we have changed 15:06:10 it should be the leadership of the ambassadors project 15:06:19 over the last couple of years has taken care of the regional support budgets 15:06:33 we get money from red hat / osas, we try to spend it in the regions and spend it wisely 15:06:42 famsco still responsible for this 15:06:50 mattdm: for the budget - is 100% of that delegated to the regions? 15:06:51 jiri: yes 15:07:09 we wanted to keep a portion of that budget for some kind of global initiatives, but it didn't treally work out 15:07:15 we didn't have any global initiatives 15:07:25 if we wanted to do something, the regions took it and each allocated some of their budget to make it happen 15:07:29 we also take care of membership admin 15:07:44 that includes the mentorship program, who make sure new ambassadors are capable of doing that and know enough abut the project and so on 15:08:07 so we still have new mentors trying to set the rules or at least guide the mentors what the new ambassadors should know 15:08:27 we also solve escalations - if there are any problems in the regions and some conflicts, they can be raised to famsco. unfortunately we haven't had such abn issue for a long time 15:08:42 s/unfortunately/fortunately 15:08:43 :) 15:08:46 we also review events..... if one of the regions want to organize fedora FAD, they always first go to famsco 15:09:03 if famsco likes the choice of the region and then they go to mattdm 15:09:22 mattdm: we have moved that from being just me to the council at large 15:09:31 jiri: ah okay. well historically famsco would approve the bid then forward it 15:09:46 famsco also serves as a coordination point between regions 15:09:52 so that we can coordinate things globally 15:10:17 this is definitely an important function of famsco 15:10:23 so people from all regions can talk to each other 15:10:38 famsco also helped enabled collaboration between ambassadors with the rest of the project. sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't 15:10:49 #topic what has changed in famsco in the past 2 years? 15:10:51 i joined famsco in 2012 so since there 15:10:59 1) we created a new system for budgeting 15:11:05 before that, every single expense had to be voted on famsco 15:11:13 so wechanged this by just approving the tickets 15:11:22 most of the power moved to the regional communities 15:11:23 the regions 15:11:26 - plan events and activities 15:11:28 - create budgets 15:11:34 - set their own mechanisms, rules for approving expenses 15:11:39 all of the regions have picked up these tasks pretty well 15:12:05 2) clear criteria to "remove" inactive amabassadors 15:12:30 In india/apac, we organize FADs in December for the next year 15:12:53 this is the base for the budget, so that FamSco puts the regional budgets togehter into one budget for OSAS, and now the council. 15:13:19 there was a bit of aheated discussion about this 15:13:25 "removal" of ambassadors was a long and heated discussion 15:13:27 (removing the inactive ambassadors) 15:13:48 * decause bows out to mizmo transcription now you're back 15:13:52 maybe 2 active out of 10 or 15 ambassadors, it becomes confusing when users/contributors want to contact an ambassador from their country 15:14:04 so we wanted to find a way to clear the list of ambassadors that were inactive 15:14:15 on the other hand there was a big pushback on removing ambassadors completely from the ambassadors group 15:14:45 so then we came to a consensus that we don't remove them completely - there was also a philosophic question is ambassador status for a lifetime in fedora, or if it has some conditions and you have to be active or do something to maintain ambassadorstatus 15:14:54 in the end, we decided it's for lifetime, 15:15:23 but to clear the list of inactive ambassadors - then we flag them as inactive, whenever he or she feels they want to come back and be active, they just need to go to fas account and switch flag back to active 15:15:27 we managed to clear the list quite a bit 15:15:42 question: you're setting their fas acct to inactive or their ambassadors status inactive? 15:15:46 jiri: their fas account marked as inactive 15:16:06 jzb: apache has an emeritus thing to handle this. if you don't have time to contribute anymore, we want to recognize what you did, so we call you emeritus 15:16:45 jiri: someone doesn't have to be active on mailing lists 15:17:00 jiri: if you know nothing about someone's activity online, but they could be very active locally at event 15:17:08 it's extremely hard to measure fedora ambassador activity 15:17:11 we can't really jduge that 15:17:18 so we dont want to remove them completely 15:18:10 we also wanted to have the criteria of being independent of someone's decisions.. historically for example the indian community just made a list of inactive ambassadors and they were removed 15:18:34 kushal was not extremely happy about our solution but one of the objectives people had is that they didnt want the process to be dependent on one person's decision 15:18:45 criteria: 15:18:49 - has to be active every 18 months 15:19:01 - we check online activity. if you are active as packager or anything else, you'd wont be set as inactive 15:19:09 - we don't just check ambassador activity but whole fedora activity 15:19:12 - we check fas logins too 15:19:20 - we just try to cull people who aren't interested in fedora anymore 15:19:24 #topic why fosco 15:19:34 fosco supposed to be fedora outreach steering community 15:19:39 mattdm proposed maybe 10 months ago 15:19:50 can we think about this new body that may potentially include famsco 15:19:55 i found it a good idea 15:20:02 famsco definitely does stuff beyond boundaries of ambassadors 15:20:06 eg we manage regional budgets 15:20:31 budgets is not just meant for ambassadors but for historic reasons - bc mostly ambassadors manage budgets and organize activities/events that involve funding - ambassadors tend to manage it 15:20:36 on the other hand we don't want to exclude anyone else 15:20:40 so we like to be inclusive in this 15:20:45 and invite other groups in fedora to participate in this as well 15:20:57 for me it was a good idea that we could create a body that could easily include other groups 15:21:05 so ambassadors aren't doing this stuff almost exclusively 15:21:14 frankly after the changes we have made, i dont think ambassadors need their own steering committee 15:21:30 we've moved so much agenda to the regions that i think we've got capacity to oversee other subprojects as well 15:21:37 a shared committee would definitely support collaboration 15:21:53 even in famsco one body - meetings really helped coordinating stuff 15:22:01 so could help with coordination between ambassadors, marketing, design so and so on 15:22:12 on the other hand..... we haven't moved as far from then 15:22:18 that's why we're here :) 15:22:19 this is when i'd like to start the discussion 15:22:22 #topic open questions 15:22:41 1) should fosco be an additoinal body? should we keep famsco and create another body above that, to oversee ambassadors/fmasco and other groups? 15:23:01 my opinion: we shouldn't. we should have as few bodies as possible and solve problems instead of creating new bodies and committees 15:23:12 if we decide for fosco, i think it should definitely replace famsco 15:23:20 2) what should be its agenda? community operations or outreach activities? 15:23:25 famsco mostly did community operations 15:23:40 but outreach activities could involve focusing on the outside, looking at metrics, etc 15:23:54 mattdm: when i initially proposed outreach - sometimes has a connotation of specific diversity outreach 15:24:04 so maybe we should avoid outreach name to not take on that meaning 15:24:15 imeant all activities - ambassadors, marketing - things that go outside of our community to new folks 15:24:33 jiri: yeh we had 2 or 3 irc meetings about this, and there were deifnitely different interpretationsof this word 15:24:52 some interpreted as engaging people from outside, some people thought it was a replacement for famsco 15:25:04 so that's definitely a good topic for discussion 15:25:11 3) What subprojects should it oversee? 15:25:18 ambassadors, marketing, design? others? documentation? 15:25:31 mattdm: my imaginary idea here is to end up with everything not under fesco under fosco 15:25:47 mattdm: so everything has a nice orderly place for it to connect up to - not to be controlled by but to pluginto a tree 15:25:57 ryanlerch: because about half of that stuff is not outreach - eg i wouldn't call docs outreach 15:26:18 jzb: i disagree, docs is the first thing - once we get someone to come to fedora, that's one of the first things they interact it 15:26:29 ryanlerch - yeh but the OS itself is what they interact with too, the docs is part of the product part of the os 15:26:46 mattdm: people say i had to do something, how to do it in ubuntu came up, so i'm an ubuntu user now. that's why for me docs is part of the outreach thing 15:26:51 ryanlerch - yeh but for me it's part of the product 15:27:01 jiri :for me it's also definitely tied to the product 15:27:08 jiri: but it's also connected to outreach 15:27:28 ryanlerch: docs is part of the product, not part of the messaging 15:28:28 someonei don't know: docs fits into marketing into an internal collab context... but not a ux way. if you want to coordinate features, etc you coordinate ambassadors saying what is awesome about fedora, you have marketers pushing that feature, you have docs so once user bites on that hook they know how to grab onto it. but as a governance group - my concern has been that kind of collaboration could happen without a governance group 15:28:44 better to hvae individuals driving for that collaboration between groups and if you need to build up org structure to support people doing that, you do the way they did organically 15:30:15 mizmo -- that's randomuser (aka pete travis) 15:30:34 * mizmo ranting about design getting dumped a bunch of stuff with no higher level plan 15:30:54 and how having some kind of steering body aboard could help us plug into a higher level plan 15:31:01 mattdm: can i go back one sec? 15:31:27 one of the things about having individuals having collaborations - when we have strong ppl in those positions that works. i worry that if you have structures and if that person goes on to other things, the structures make the vacuum obvious 15:31:36 if it's people based, we notice the vacuum 3 months later - wait nobody did that who was doing that 15:31:47 having those things a little more formalized can i hope help with that 15:31:55 but i do see the appeal of what you're saying (pete) 15:32:03 we dont want bureacracy bogging things down 15:32:15 pete: worried about it being slow to get momentum 15:33:35 decause: i've been here fora minute, still discovering new pieces of fedora, treasure troves of info. the thing i think here is iportant - ppl assume bc we're a foss community, that it's everyone's responsibility and that it's noones responsibility 15:33:56 * randomuser proposes "the wiki" as official flock 2015 scapegoat 15:34:06 decause, messaging / outreach - it's not just those people's responsibility. it's everyone's and no one's. codeifying it into something that's a manifestation that people can show is important 15:34:24 decause, everything that's visual that falls into design, etc etc no coordination between them because people think of these teams as silos 15:34:28 ryanlerch: there's no overarching plan 15:35:01 ryanlerch: a lot of "this would be nice" but lacks oomph, no major pushes, this is the plan, even in the magazine we sort of just write articles. if we had some plan .... to tie into the project plan, to tie into outreach, use that as our guide 15:35:19 ryanlerch - could just be a group, we come up with a plan and that way when something comes up, we can figure out how it applies to the overall plan 15:35:24 jzb: did we completely hijack this? 15:35:31 jiri: no i'm completely okay with this, we need todiscuss 15:35:44 ?: maybe we talk about it as a messaging body not an outreach body 15:36:03 ?: that gives it better definition. it's kind of a junk drawer - everything not in fesco... you'll wind up with screwdrivers next to knives and forks 15:36:07 mattdm: you're right that was bad 15:36:15 mattdm: do you ahve more slides? 15:36:17 mattdm: one more 15:36:22 jiri: question for remy 15:36:29 4) How does CommOps fit into this? 15:36:36 #topic proposal 15:36:53 1) FOSCo takes over the agenda of FAmSCo as is (so mostly operations), build on that, and add the outreach agenda 15:37:02 2) Oversees ambassadors, marketing, and design 15:37:12 3) Structure: 4 representatives of regions, 1 design,1 marketing, 1 elected 15:37:24 the budget we oversee - we can't just leave it in a vacuum 15:37:31 so the new body would definitely have to take over the budget 15:37:35 then we can figure out what to include in the grouop 15:37:48 my prposal / opinion - we start with ambassadors / marketing / design because they are the obvious target for this 15:38:08 then, again... as it goes we can .... if it makes sense to include another subproject because we feel that some coordination with them is necessary, then we can again work on that 15:38:23 but starting with something like let's include everything !fesco is a bit too vague of a plan for the beginning 15:38:28 so better to start with something smaller and add 15:38:36 #link https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CommOps 15:38:48 and the structure pretty much move from completely elected body to appointed partially... something similar to the council 15:38:54 i really like democracy but i dont think its the best model 15:39:02 in the elections, people vote and most of them know very little about the candidates 15:39:15 mattdm: "democracy and voting aren't always the same thing and our mechanism for voting hasn't always resulted in democracy" 15:39:31 jiri: The idea with the council - elections to appointed members that are of particular expertise is something i definitely like 15:40:10 my prposal involves 4 representatives of regions.... we feel it's necessary to keep the coordination between the regions... they have their own budgets but we still need to make sure they are doing the same thing from a central point of view so the swags aren't completely outside of our strategy 15:40:31 if one of the regions are missing from famsco meeting, we noticed issues with what the region was doing, so we think having reps from each region was really important 15:40:59 regional communities of ambassadors - we should shift from the ambassadors only thing to be more inclusive, so a regional rep maybe doesn't have to be an ambassador, just a contributor from that region 15:41:16 we shuld also change the way other contributors can participate in decisions. now its mostly set up so just ambassadors vote 15:41:31 then we should also have representatives from other groups - design, marketing - to ensure coordination from those groups 15:41:37 then we could have one or two seats elected 15:41:44 i think a body with 7 members is the right size 15:41:56 i dont know if we want to really want to have a group with 15... i would like to keep it a small group 15:41:59 but its up to discussion 15:42:06 if we need to include more groups would require more members 15:42:25 ?: fedora magazine rep? 15:42:32 ?: i think magazine is standalone? 15:42:35 jzb: no it's not 15:43:09 ryanlerch: in marketing we should be making stuff for ambassadors to use and vice versa 15:43:15 ryanlerch; ambassadors the footsoldiers going out there 15:43:56 jzb: similar to what mo said sometimes ambassadors come to us in marketing asking for materials last-minute 15:44:18 jzb: my concern with the proposal is that it seems very ambassador heavy. four reps from ambassadors, 1 marketing, 1 design, 2 random. no docs, no translators... 15:44:30 jiri: what i want to emphasize - i want to move from ambassadors only ... 15:45:01 jiri: i'd like to change that we include other contributors as well, and then it doesn't have to be the regional rep doesn't have to be an ambassador, could be active in design or marketing but contributes from a specific region 15:45:10 we want to solve and take over what famsco is doing in a more inclusive way 15:45:23 ryanlerch: for me the main goal of what we're trying to create here is to increase the communication and collaboration between these groups 15:45:41 ryanlerch: for me, that's the goal. so even if the groups stay a little bit a part, i dont know if a board of ppl from each group can do that or.... 15:45:54 pete: overall branding strategy / messaging is what we need then go out and do it 15:46:06 mattdm: +1 :) 15:46:19 ryanlerch: yeh one problem we have at the moment - unless you have a member of two teams - like i'm in marketing and design - there's no collab, we don't get together and talk all together about the goal outside of those little things 15:46:24 ryanlerch: that's the wall we're hitting 15:46:28 remy: i have a lot of thoughts about these things 15:46:41 mattdm: session is over and its now lunch but im happy to stay maybe we should talk more later 15:46:48 remy: i'm giving a lightning talk tomorrow at 4:30 about commops 15:46:54 ryanlerch: what is commops? 15:46:58 remy: that's what we'll talk about :) 15:47:01 remy: three diff conflicts: 15:47:20 1) governance bodies that are elected vs appointed.... how do you xfer responsibility when people move in and out of a volunteer project 15:47:27 2) outreach is a loaded term, means a lot of different things to diff people 15:48:06 3) the work that needs to be done is a kind of work that is a heterogenous thing. a lot of devs in the community, a homogenous experience when they share - git, trac, etc dev tools. a contrib in design or marketing is very different. coordinating thesse htereogeneous contributions is going to need a new focus / strategy 15:48:18 a lot of stuff from this discussion and other discussion that commops is going to attempt to solve and is going to need a lot of help 15:48:27 check the link in irc, we have a wiki page to start laying out everyone's priorities 15:48:30 pete: that 15:48:34 s a separate group from fosco? 15:48:36 remy: yes 15:48:46 remy: you dont want people to choose between building things and figuring out how to build things 15:48:58 remy: you dont want someone who's building a project to choose between writing the blog post about it and actually doing it 15:49:20 remy: want a frictionless system, leverage fedmsg amazing infrastructure, we're just starting to analyze and figure that out, but from that we can publish heat and light 15:49:29 bring light to stuff thats happening so we can bring more people there 15:49:32 still very new 15:49:36 we're still figuring out 15:49:39 need more input here at flock 15:50:15 jiri: we can definitely meet again here 15:50:48 if the proposal going to happen who has to approve it? council? 15:50:51 mattdm: i think fedora council 15:51:00 mattdm: the pppl involved have to want to do it then council rubber stamps 15:51:04 council cant make things out of cloth 15:51:29 jzb: thought fosco was done, going to happen. didn't realize how tentative. just found out about commops last week 15:51:34 remy: just happened, still happening 15:51:48 jzb: ties into groups that never heard of the proposal... it's a thing, it's happening... 15:51:57 mattdm: ironically symptomatic of the problem we're trying to solve 15:52:10 jzb: should be an rfc with an idea rather than a fully formed proposal 15:52:43 remy: but its not a fully formed proposal. a wiki page, an idea on mailing list, posted to council and famsco, thats where it started bc theres a fundamental time sensitivty between absorbing famsco duties and coming up with long term thing we need to take slowly 15:52:50 council has absorbed most of mission critical stuff 15:52:54 mostly have bases covered 15:53:04 but the overarching - what does the community strategy look like? 15:53:10 theres certain mailing lists and people that need to be brought in 15:53:20 this is the beginning of that. it's not hey everyone heres a thing that exists 15:53:30 we're starting as any effort in fedora does, infra started up 15:53:45 need everyone to be involved in and have a stake in community 15:53:54 i really stick by the heterogenous contribution thing 15:54:01 its a more difficult problem than merging patches in the same languages 15:54:09 need big tent strategy, hard for people to self identify, join, come and go 15:54:17 not supposed to be decision making body, place where people can add to a stack 15:54:21 a stack ppl can build not a queue that blocks 15:54:32 you contribute want you can and funnel the stuff you're already doing into it and start talking about it 15:54:37 not a done deal, not just a thing 15:54:47 based on input from council, ambassadors, famsco as the base bc of the more time urgent needs 15:54:54 but will require a big tent where everyone should be involved 15:55:03 this flock is the first time i've been able to talk to a wider base of folks 15:55:09 im interested in finding out the places to approach 15:55:23 but its also really excited bc the more places we find that are big tent spots, the more likely i think this is going to work 15:55:28 all the stuff thats already being done - so much to pull from 15:55:41 its like middleware for ppl. want communtiy layer to hook into what is already happening 15:55:59 fedmsg has changed things significantly, once we tap into will be alot easier to integrate things 15:56:17 clear paths, clear tools to get people involved 15:56:34 we'll hopefully use each of these things to make those ideas into something larger 15:56:39 a lot of ppl have had input we need more of it 15:56:50 famna brainstorming session is coming up, that could be a good place to talk about this 15:56:55 open workshop on last day could be a good time 15:57:30 jiri has a talk on fedora swag on the third day 15:57:34 #endmeeting