Today seems like a good day to write this blog post. Interested to hear people's feedback.
http://spevack.livejournal.com/103305.html
--Max
On Friday 26 March 2010 05:57:34 pm Max Spevack wrote:
Today seems like a good day to write this blog post. Interested to hear people's feedback.
http://spevack.livejournal.com/103305.html
--Max _______________________________________________ fudcon-planning mailing list fudcon-planning@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fudcon-planning
IMHO this is an excellent idea. Helping to plan the last NA FUDCon, I saw how much of their limited time both stickster and mchua had to invest in the process. Not saying that the FPL leader and others from the Community team do not need to be involved in the process but just that it should not take as much of their time as it appeared to take last time.
I would include the following in the responsibilities area
Work with and provide direction to a group of community volunteers to design and implement the regional FUDCon. Leverage local (to the event) volunteers, cutting down on the need for travel prior to the event.
Responsible for setting goals for the event, and provide a post-event report detailing the set goals and results.
Leverage RH and community assets to provide the best "Return on Investment" (ROI).
Document everything so those who follow you will have a blueprint to work from.
and #1 Be open and transparent and involve the community, after all you are planning their events.
Steven
on Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 5:57 PM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
Today seems like a good day to write this blog post. Interested to hear people's feedback.
http://spevack.livejournal.com/103305.html
--Max
ambassadors mailing list ambassadors@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/ambassadors
I think this is an outstanding idea. I have one comment re the rotating.
So from an outsiders perspective, I infer that there must a lot of internal wrangling that occurs, especially for the larger events such as FUDcon. I suspect that alot of the internal wrangling (and I don't mean to make it sound bad, it's just part of the process, be that budgetary or whatever else) is the reason that the community at large hasn't picked up the responsibility. (And if it isn't, and this is something the community should be picking up, please correct me, I'd hate to think that we want FUDcons and FADs so bad and yet aren't doing the work thats needed if it's something we can do). That leads me to believe that this internal wrangling has a learning curve that is non-trivial, and that repeating it would be a waste of time and resources. If it takes a month to get someone up to speed, having to repeat it for each FUDcon sounds likely to be an excercise in frustration.
So from an outsiders perspective, I infer that there must a lot of internal wrangling that occurs, especially for the larger events such as FUDcon.
<snip>
That leads me to believe that this internal wrangling has a learning curve that is non-trivial, and that repeating it would be a waste of time and resources. If it takes a month to get someone up to speed, having to repeat it for each FUDcon sounds likely to be an excercise in frustration.
I'll chime in here because FUDCon Toronto was my 2nd-ever FUDCon and the first one I helped organize (as a small portion of my $dayjob, so I think that if there was "internal wrangling" that occurred I would have had to see it).
I learned everything on the fly, right before I needed it; it wasn't difficult, it was just constant keeping-up-with-communications. I learned by asking questions of prior FUDCon organizers (Paul and Max) or by making something up if there wasn't an existing process. For this reason, I'd suggest at least a 2-FUDCon term for the position - do a FUDCon (while being mentored), mentor someone else to do a FUDCon.
Stuff the community can do:
* Finding and negotiating contracts with hotels, venues, food vendors, etc (actually, Chris Tyler did basically all of this, and ended up just telling me and Paul "hey guys, is this ok? Yes? Great, here's the invoice, you take care of payment.")
* How to run the sponsorship process, which is now documented at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sponsoring_event_attendees. Again, this can very much be a "we have decided these people need $X - hey $person_with_pursestrings, please take care of <invoice>" sort of thing.
* How to announce FUDCon news to the Fedora community - there's nothing special about this, it's all sending mails to list and posting on Planet and poking individuals on IRC to register, plan hackfests, get their sponsorship apps in, etc. There is no secret magic sauce beyond Lots Of Communication.
* Basically, everything at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_organization_process.
Stuff that's harder for the community to do:
* Red Hat expense reports and reimbursements (a.k.a. "I paypalled these people the money we owe them, and now I need to submit everyone's receipts to the Red Hat system so that Max can tell Finance to give me back my money.")
In other words, as far as I can tell, the only "internal" stuff that's needed is "Step N: actually apply the Red Hat credit card and pay for things"[0] - the rest of it is documented at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_organization_process.
--Mel
[0] and if there was a portion of the bill someone else wanted to pick up - for instance, I recall OLPC sponsored... I think it was FUDPub, back in the January 2009 FUDCon in Boston - there's no "internal Red Hat" stuff needed at all.
On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 03:10:46PM -0400, Mel Chua wrote:
So from an outsiders perspective, I infer that there must a lot of internal wrangling that occurs, especially for the larger events such as FUDcon.
<snip> > That leads > me to believe that this internal wrangling has a learning curve that > is non-trivial, and that repeating it would be a waste of time and > resources. If it takes a month to get someone up to speed, having to > repeat it for each FUDcon sounds likely to be an excercise in > frustration.
I'll chime in here because FUDCon Toronto was my 2nd-ever FUDCon and the first one I helped organize (as a small portion of my $dayjob, so I think that if there was "internal wrangling" that occurred I would have had to see it).
I learned everything on the fly, right before I needed it; it wasn't difficult, it was just constant keeping-up-with-communications. I learned by asking questions of prior FUDCon organizers (Paul and Max) or by making something up if there wasn't an existing process. For this reason, I'd suggest at least a 2-FUDCon term for the position - do a FUDCon (while being mentored), mentor someone else to do a FUDCon.
Stuff the community can do:
- Finding and negotiating contracts with hotels, venues, food vendors,
etc (actually, Chris Tyler did basically all of this, and ended up just telling me and Paul "hey guys, is this ok? Yes? Great, here's the invoice, you take care of payment.")
Right, this was really what started us down the path of having FUDCon run on a lightweight bid process. We wanted to extend this model, so global Fedora events won't hinge on just one person in Red Hat doing everything.
- How to run the sponsorship process, which is now documented at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sponsoring_event_attendees. Again, this can very much be a "we have decided these people need $X - hey $person_with_pursestrings, please take care of <invoice>" sort of thing.
- How to announce FUDCon news to the Fedora community - there's nothing
special about this, it's all sending mails to list and posting on Planet and poking individuals on IRC to register, plan hackfests, get their sponsorship apps in, etc. There is no secret magic sauce beyond Lots Of Communication.
I agree!
- Basically, everything at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_organization_process.
Stuff that's harder for the community to do:
- Red Hat expense reports and reimbursements (a.k.a. "I paypalled these
people the money we owe them, and now I need to submit everyone's receipts to the Red Hat system so that Max can tell Finance to give me back my money.")
In other words, as far as I can tell, the only "internal" stuff that's needed is "Step N: actually apply the Red Hat credit card and pay for things"[0] - the rest of it is documented at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_organization_process.
--Mel
[0] and if there was a portion of the bill someone else wanted to pick up - for instance, I recall OLPC sponsored... I think it was FUDPub, back in the January 2009 FUDCon in Boston - there's no "internal Red Hat" stuff needed at all.
We should continue to look for sponsorship opportunities for FUDCon where we can do similar partnerships. Those sponsorships increase when FUDCon results in some tangible gain, be it code or otherwise, that's of interest to a sponsor. If the planning group for a FUDCon event builds an objective for something deliverable like that, the potential's much greater for substantial sponsorship.
On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 11:23 AM, David Nalley david@gnsa.us wrote:
on Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 5:57 PM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
Today seems like a good day to write this blog post. Interested to hear people's feedback.
http://spevack.livejournal.com/103305.html
--Max
ambassadors mailing list ambassadors@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/ambassadors
I think this is an outstanding idea. I have one comment re the rotating.
So from an outsiders perspective, I infer that there must a lot of internal wrangling that occurs, especially for the larger events such as FUDcon. I suspect that alot of the internal wrangling (and I don't mean to make it sound bad, it's just part of the process, be that budgetary or whatever else) is the reason that the community at large hasn't picked up the responsibility. (And if it isn't, and this is something the community should be picking up, please correct me, I'd hate to think that we want FUDcons and FADs so bad and yet aren't doing the work thats needed if it's something we can do). That leads me to believe that this internal wrangling has a learning curve that is non-trivial, and that repeating it would be a waste of time and resources. If it takes a month to get someone up to speed, having to repeat it for each FUDcon sounds likely to be an excercise in frustration. _______________________________________________ fudcon-planning mailing list fudcon-planning@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fudcon-planning
Even though I am on the outside of RH, as far as planning for the last NA FUDCon stickster and mchua had all their convo in the IRC channel and everything was logged. Even budget talk. And one of the goals of the Events FAD was in my mind to get everything setup so the community could take over the planning, with RH thru the FPL or the designee handling the budget.
Steven
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 5:57 PM, Max Spevack mspevack@redhat.com wrote:
Today seems like a good day to write this blog post. Interested to hear people's feedback.
http://spevack.livejournal.com/103305.html
--Max _______________________________________________ fudcon-planning mailing list fudcon-planning@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fudcon-planning
I'm sitting here working up my plans to attend SELF in June and it came to me that the "Fedora Events Planner" could also help Fedorians who are attending these types of events. Maybe help with funding for the who are giving talks and representing Fedora. Also could help match people up as roommates etc.
Just a thought
Steven
fudcon-planning@lists.fedoraproject.org
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David Nalley -
Max Spevack -
Mel Chua -
Paul W. Frields -
Steven M. Parrish