New Ambassador Mentor Program

Purpose
This document is to discuss and layout the program for mentoring those who are new to Fedora Ambassadorship. Below is a rough idea of the values we'd like to communicate to new Ambassadors, processes new Ambassadors need to know, ideas on how they can contribute to the community.

Values of the Mentor Program
First, like the Fedora Community at large, our Ambassador community is made up of volunteers. As such we need to stay true to the "Do what you can" motto of being an Ambassador. The activities or projects below are meant as examples of what an Ambassador can do, not what an Ambassador must or should do.

The core values of Fedora are:

Openness (both in source code and transparency of organization) Freedom Community Service Innovation

Process of Welcoming New Ambassadors
Currently in North America, David Nalley greets new Ambassadors with the following e-mail:  Please excuse the forminess of this email, I don't know the level of involvement you have had in open source software, so this email assumes very little.

First, please make sure your User: page has your location and email address at a minimum. Second, if you need to order supplies and swag such as tshirts, media, pins, stickers - do so at: https://fedorahosted.org/famnarequests Third: If you don't have a blog, you need to get one. Livejournal, Blogger, and Wordpress.com seem to be favorites now. You also need to get the blog aggregated to the Fedora Planet: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Planet  <-- Read that to learn how to do so, if you need help ask in #fedora-ambassadors

So now about getting up to speed within the Ambassadors, we have meetings regularly on IRC. You'll see the schedule here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Meetings We regularly hang out in #fedora-ambassadors on a regular basis, feel free to join us. Someone should always be there if you have questions.

You need to be familiar with our Code of Conduct and Forbidden Items that Joerg Simon has sent you links to in your welcome email. Fedora takes freedom very seriously, and we seek to be the standard bearer with regards to freedom, so please understand those, and if you don't, please ask someone.

In North America we have designated a number of regional Ambassadors, they'll be happy to mentor you and get you up to speed and you can generally trust their advice/opinion. They are:

David Nalley - Southeast. IRC: ke4qqq Clint Savage - Mountain West. IRC: herlo John Rose - Central. IRC: inode0 Brian Powell - Northeast. IRC: demonjester Larry Cafiero - West Coast. IRC: lcafiero

The Ambassadors are largely self-directed, so look for opportunities to talk (offer your services as a speaker on behalf of Fedora to LUGs near you) try and make sure Fedora has a presence at nearby installfests and activities like BarCamp. There are also regional conferences that we tend to attend such as the Southeast Linuxfest and Ohio Linuxfest.. If you need resources - such as money to buy pizza for a LUG meeting you are speaking at, let us know. It is the regional ambassadors job to get you resources (and the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAmSCo) to make sure the regions have enough resources)

I also think that you need to know what's going on in Fedora if you are going to be representing Fedora so I generally argue that every Ambassador should be subscribed to the Fedora Advisory Board mailing list. http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board

You should also read planet.fedoraproject daily, or use a newsreader to keep up with it.

Also check out Fedora Weekly News every week so you don't miss something important. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/LatestIssue

You also should spend some copious time reading the wiki - learn about the various groups within Fedora, how to get involved, etc. I generally recommend that people get involved in something other than Ambassadors. This isn't a requirement but it will increase your exposure to the internals of Fedora. The groups with the lowest barrier to entry are the Bugzappers and Documentation. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Joining http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/Join But look around and see what else interests you.

Finally I think that it is imperative that representatives of Fedora understand the Free/Libre Open Source Software. As such I think the easiest way to do that is to read some of the older writings on the subject. Not that Fedora necessarily agrees with everything in these writings or even likes the authors, but they are important to understand:

Writings from Eric Raymond: The Cathedral and the Bazaar Homesteading the Noosphere

Writings from Richard Stallman: Free Software, Free Society The Gnu Manifesto

All of the above are free on the net, so it won't cost you to read them.

If you have questions, please don't hesitate to ask. 

The first item is resources for an introduction to the open source community and explanation of what open source is.

Second, fedora community resources, and wiki pages the Ambassador should be familiar with.

Third a reminder about the content sent by Joerg

Fourth, the designated regional ambassadors and contact info.

Lastly, some words of wisdom and more homework about the community and resources.

=Discussion= A lot of the items in the welcome e-mail are on the wiki, do we just need a single wiki page to aggregate the content, so that when the new Ambassador is reading the welcome e-mail they keep seeing the same URL over and over, so it becomes their first stop?

We tell them IRC handles for ambassadors, but don't tell them the IRC server or what client they can use (important?)

Is this welcome e-mail too long? too short?

Events
Besides attending LUG meetings or conferences/conventions, what else can ambassadors do?

Other
In IRC we've mentioned making a short web video of Greg DeKoenigsberg, Max Spevack, Paul Frields, to introduce people to the Fedora community. Thoughts on what subjects we should ask for, or other people to include?