On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 8:12 PM, Buddhike Kurera > This is just an idea and you can grow it. Please support with your > ideas and thoughts. > > However I am worrying whether the name of the team is confusing. > > [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Bckurera/Fedora_Campus_Ambaasador I'm not really clear on what you want to change and why. The current charter I think is quite nice.

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 11:31 PM, Buddhike Kurera > Campus FAm is an inactive group at the moment[4]. So why dont we > re-structure it and give some life to it. If campus Am is not the right place, > we can have a separate team. The idea behind is the important, i believe. I think the focus being on involving students is the better, more productive focus. But we come back to the problem it always had which is getting students involved. I really support the idea here, so I'm all for trying something new to make it work. I do think the fundamental problem is reaching the students to get them involved.

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 11:50 PM, Buddhike Kurera <bckurera(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote: > I had a IRC chat with Biertie some days back and he is willing to support > for a change. If we change the scope as we can get the students support, > I think we can get their involvement, but first we need to have a place to > invite them. Therefore we need to change the way the Campus Am team > organized. > > So the problem is, how Campus Am. team should be changed to get more > students' involvement? I'm afraid changing the organization of the team doesn't solve the problem of getting students interested in it. The team has probably been organized three or four different ways so far and none succeeded. I think the reason none succeeded is our failure to find a way to reach out to students. Making a wiki page inviting them to join us isn't enough. We need a coherent way to market Fedora (the project) to students.

You have my support changing the organization and trying again. I'm just sharing what I took away from the history of the program so far and as I often am I could be dead wrong about it.

while i agree that we need more contributions from students, and agree that theres a need for a lower barrier of entry group for ambassador, I'm not sure about separation of campus and normal ambassadors. In my country at least, the students are the ones who tend to have more visible activities, compared to the full-fledged ambassadors, as the normal ambassadors tend to have limited movement either limited due to $dayjob or family. Most of my events are actually done by these students too, while i'm just facilitating in term of guidance and giving talks in the events. There are some of them which I feel already deserve to be normal ambassador, rather than just campus ambassadors. how about the change campus ambassador program to be a less-student-specific ambassador apprenticeship program, with a more flexible mentorship system?. ie: 1 - anybody can apply for apprenticeship, regardless whether they are student or not. 2 - they have to contact any nearby, active local ambassadors (if available, else contact regional ambassador), for apprenticeship. 3 - once the person found an ambassador who is willing to mentor him, the person will need to run one or several events, under guidance of that ambassador. 4 - the ambassador responsibility is to guide the apprentice on how to run fedora events, and also help out with getting famsco funds or swags, if needed. 5 - once the ambassador feel that the apprentice is ready to be a full fledged ambassador, forward the apprentice to a ambassador group mentor 6 - from this step on, follow our usual ambassador acceptance flow. my 2cents ..

On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 12:44 AM, Mohd Izhar Firdaus Ismail <kagesenshi.87(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > while i agree that we need more contributions from students, and agree > that theres a need for a lower barrier of entry group for ambassador, > I'm not sure about separation of campus and normal ambassadors. Here is the point that seems to get missed every time conversations about Campus Ambassadors comes up. This program is not about ambassadors, it is not about mentoring new ambassadors, it is not about recruiting student ambassadors. It is about building lasting relationships between the Fedora Project and educational institutions. Honestly, it is far more about engaging *teachers* than it is about engaging students because teachers aren't transient and once engaged in open source they will continue to expose many more students to it over the years. So why have campus ambassadors (student reps, whatever you want to call them)? Because regular ambassadors have not been able to build these lasting relationships with teachers. It isn't the fault of ambassadors. Giving a talk once in a while at a school isn't enough to create them. Students have the advantage that they interact with their teachers daily. And what matters to students matters to good teachers. So having students interested and involved in Fedora (not in ambassadors but in any part of Fedora) is a huge win in terms of access to and influence of teachers that ambassadors will never have. Fundamentally this program is more about promoting teaching open source than it is about promoting Fedora itself.

On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 11:10 PM, Mohd Izhar Firdaus Ismail <kagesenshi.87(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > still, i dont see a reason for a separate group.. what's wrong with > accepting students as normal ambassador? and run a campus/educator > promotion program which any ambassadors may choose to pitch in and > help when they feel like it, or have access to the sector (eg: have > friends who are educators). or the ambassador is a non-academic staff in an educational institute .. of which, i know several people (not officially ambassadors, yet) who are promoting fedora/foss in the institute they work in .. to both lecturers and students

> Right, I happen to be one of those people myself. Staff access to > teachers is different than student access to teachers and honestly we > only have a sprinkling of staff/ambassador presence now in educational > institutions. This program was simply an attempt to get more buy-in > from teachers and it would happen to engage more students as a bonus. > I can't see why anyone would resist it in its abstract formulation. just to be clear .. i agree and support the idea of the initiative :-) .. just not the part where its a separate group .. if the reason why it need a separate group is its more difficult to be a full-fledged ambassador (the "Who can join?" and "Eligibility" section in wiki looks more lenient, with lower barrier of entry), then , imo, it should be made easier :-)

On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 9:32 PM, inode0 <inode0(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > Campus ambassadors are not some inferior class of Fedora ambassadors. > We should call them Campus Open Source Representatives or something > else if we can't avoid this confusion. Hello Thanks John and Izhar for inputs. I believe the name is a confusion as noted.Being clear, what we want through this group is to reach students/ teachers or any academic related person. Not every student want to be a FAm, if anyone is interested to promote Fedora/ Free software they can join with the group and get the FAms help and promote Fedora/ Free Software when they have time. There is not much commitment required. I strongly believe the name "Campus Ambassador" imply that the group is a sub group of FAm. Therefore we should eliminate the confusion. We need a group for that since we dont have a team to facilitate such requirement. The idea behind is simple. If any academic related person wants to promote Fedora or FOSS with the help of Fedora, they can join with the team. When ever they need help FAm will support them. However what would be the next step? Please express your ideas and will implement the discussion to work ! Thanks for the support.

On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 10:32 PM, inode0 <inode0(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 12:44 AM, Mohd Izhar Firdaus Ismail > <kagesenshi.87(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: >> while i agree that we need more contributions from students, and agree >> that theres a need for a lower barrier of entry group for ambassador, >> I'm not sure about separation of campus and normal ambassadors. > > Here is the point that seems to get missed every time conversations > about Campus Ambassadors comes up. This program is not about > ambassadors, it is not about mentoring new ambassadors, it is not > about recruiting student ambassadors. It is about building lasting > relationships between the Fedora Project and educational institutions. > Honestly, it is far more about engaging *teachers* than it is about > engaging students because teachers aren't transient and once engaged > in open source they will continue to expose many more students to it > over the years. > > So why have campus ambassadors (student reps, whatever you want to > call them)? Because regular ambassadors have not been able to build > these lasting relationships with teachers. It isn't the fault of > ambassadors. Giving a talk once in a while at a school isn't enough to > create them. Students have the advantage that they interact with their > teachers daily. And what matters to students matters to good teachers. > So having students interested and involved in Fedora (not in > ambassadors but in any part of Fedora) is a huge win in terms of > access to and influence of teachers that ambassadors will never have. > > Fundamentally this program is more about promoting teaching open > source than it is about promoting Fedora itself. > still, i dont see a reason for a separate group.. what's wrong with accepting students as normal ambassador? and run a campus/educator promotion program which any ambassadors may choose to pitch in and help when they feel like it, or have access to the sector (eg: have friends who are educators).