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title: Fedora Community Outreach Revamp AMA

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# Fedora Community Outreach Revamp AMA

The Community Outreach Revamp initiate held an Ask Me Anything on December 10th, 2020. The co-leads Sumantro Mukherjee & Mariana Balla were answering questions, with moderation by myself (FCAIC). We had some great questions and we are always open to more! Find us on #fedora-mindshare every other week at 15:00UTC(Fedocal Event). 

If you have an interest in the future of Fedora's Community Outreach please take a minute to fill out this short survey. The more perspectives we can get on outreach, the better, and we want yours! 

https://apps.fedoraproject.org/calendar/meeting/9818/
https://fedoraproject.limequery.com/679163?lang=en


## Q1: What are the goals of the revamp?

This objective will be an initiative to revamp several community outreach teams within Fedora that are struggling to function, or need more support to truly become a success. The objective will bring together Ambassadors, Ambassador Emeritus, Join SIG, and Advocates all under the same umbrella of CommOps in a clear and cohesive structure.

## Q2: How will funding available to ambassadors be affected by the proposal?

There is no change to the current process for funding, we will focus on enablement for the ambassador team. We will clarify the funding request process if needed (or just polish it up) and add it to the new and updated ambassador docs/process.

Follow up question: how can ambassadors get funding currently?
Through the current Mindshare request for funding process, found here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/mindshare-committee/advocate/#_getting_swag_or_financial_support

## Q3: Is the structure of CommOps/ Mindshare changing with the revamp?

Yes and no. The various community outreach teams are going to stay the same in most of their same functions, with added activites. The idea of bringing them under the same umbrella is to allow them to share resources/processes and to avoid redundant work. 

## Q4: Will the revamp support in any way diversity and inclusion for new comers/contributors?

Yes, absolutely we support D&I, though it is currently not the focus of this initiative. We are focusing on updating & modernizing processes. We are also focusing on helping the current outreach teams heal and grow into something new. We would love to see the outreach teams collaborate with the D&I team in the future. 

## Q5: Do you think that by moving inactive ambassadors to ‘Emeritus’ we are actually excluding them from future involvement?

It always depends on the person and how they can handle the message. Some might take it as an opportunity to come back when they are free.. others might feel left out. We are going to make sure there is a clear process in place for Ambassador Emeritus members to come back to the Ambassador group if they want to help alleviate any stress around this. 

## Q6: Given this will be an Council Objective, how will the TTF get more involved?

We are currently running a survey, found here:
https://fedoraproject.limequery.com/679163?lang=en

The outcome of the survey will inform the creation of the role handbooks. This task is assigned to the TTF and they will be crafting those in the upcoming months. 

## Q7: To follow up on the council question, will the leads be submitting reports to council? If yes, is there a timeline?

We will attend as many regular council meetings as possible. We will also participate in the Council F2F's to give more detailed reports. Our monthly blog updates will also serve as a reporting method. Additionally, we (Sumantro & Mariana) will be sharing one vote in any voting situations. 

## Q8: What will happen to ambassador mentors?

We plan to update the ambassador mentor process/program. The resources are a bit scattered, and definitely out of date. So far, we have done a "clean up" of the mentor group (ambassador sponsors in the FAS system). Mentorship is super important and we want to improve this aspect of the program greatly!

## Q9: When moving ambassadors to ‘Emeritus’ is it going to be dificult if the $USER would like to be active again? What is going to be the procedure?

The process from going from Emeritus to Ambassador should be simple. We think tracking those requests on a ticket would be pretty straightforward. This part is definitely up for discussion, though. 

Follow up question, will the clean up be a one time activity or will it get reviewed periodically?

We think this should happen periodically. Yearly seems like a good cadence. 

## Q10: One big problem ambassadors felt was the lack of recognition, as they felt being asked to work while this supposed to be a contributor work. How the revamp is trying to address the “I’m not an employee” problem/feeling?

This is a really tough question. First, we will need to capitalize on the tools for recognition that are already in place: Fedora Badges, Fedora Appreciation Week, and plenty of karma cookies! 

We will be working with the Design Team on creating a new brand for the outreach teams. Once we have these design assets, we plan to create new swag for the different teams. Not sure how these will get to everyone based on the current state of the world, but we will figure something out. We mention this here, because we feel the ambassador identity is important to keeping folks connected. Getting new swag with new designs will hopefully help amp people up!

Longer term, we would like to set up some kind of recognition program between peers. It could even be capitalizing on existing tools, like badges. We could make a series for the Ambassadors that come from peer to peer nomination. Once you earn the "50 times nominated" you could earn a gift. 

This is just one idea, and we definitely want community input on what they want to see. 

