Hello one and all,
For about two months now, there has been a pickup in interest in Fedora's campus ambassadors program. I think that it is about time for us to start picking up efforts for the program. I'm going to go ahead and try to kickstart a bit of discussion about exactly WHO we are, WHAT we want to do, and HOW we will do it. Anyone feel free to jump in, as this is a discussion I'd like all current and prospective campus ambassadors to take part in.
With that out of the way, I have a few questions to ask, and my answers for them. nt, I'm going to go ahead and try 1) What do you want to see in the campus ambassador program? What is our primary goal? 2) How (or should we?) differentiate from the main Fedora Ambassadors program? 3) How should we interract with the Fedora Ambassadors program? 4) What are our next steps?
Thanks and best, Ryan Rix
On Fri 26 March 2010 2:00:12 pm Ryan Rix wrote:
Hello one and all,
For about two months now, there has been a pickup in interest in Fedora's campus ambassadors program. I think that it is about time for us to start picking up efforts for the program. I'm going to go ahead and try to kickstart a bit of discussion about exactly WHO we are, WHAT we want to do, and HOW we will do it. Anyone feel free to jump in, as this is a discussion I'd like all current and prospective campus ambassadors to take part in.
With that out of the way, I have a few questions to ask, and my answers for them. nt, I'm going to go ahead and try
- What do you want to see in the campus ambassador program? What is our
primary goal? 2) How (or should we?) differentiate from the main Fedora Ambassadors program? 3) How should we interract with the Fedora Ambassadors program? 4) What are our next steps?
Thanks and best, Ryan Rix
Let me start off with a short introduction. My name is Ryan Rix, and I'm currently a student at Deer Valley High School in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Next year I will be attending Arizona State University as a Computer Scince major. Within Fedora I'm involved in the KDE SIG, marketing and ambassadors group, along with campus ambassadors. My IRC nickname is rrix, and you can find me in basically any Fedora IRC channel on Freenode.
== What do you want to see in the campus ambassador program? What is our primary goal? == My personal hope is to inject Fedora into each major institution worldwide. It's a lofty, and hard to obtain goal, sure, but we have the manpower to do it with a small amount of work. We should have at least some presence in campus LUGs which are currently DOMINATELY Ubuntu users, basically turning it into a subset of the LoCos. We should work to change the landscape of the community of students involved in FOSS in each institution into a landscape dominated by Ubuntu, and turn it into a more vibrant landscape, with more users of other distributions. The second part of our goal should be to get students who are not involved in Free and Open Source software involved in our communities. This involves the activism of an ambassador, and the ability to reach out to new folks, explain who we are, and what we stand for. Leverage of our four Foundations[1] is key here, and they are especially pertinent in a more open educational environment. Unfortunately, as I see it, most students are involved in illegally copying software simply because they cannot afford to pay for the software, or do not want to do business with companies like Apple, Adobe and others. These are the kind of students that I see more and more in universities, and they are the kind of people we should be working to attract to Fedora and Free Software in general. However, to expose these students to Free Software, and eliminate the NEED for proprietary software, we have to get professors involved in Free Software, and away from tools that can cost students money and freedom. This can be done through ad-hoc relationships with professors primarily, and through works like POSSE[2]. Fedora's Campus Ambassador program should take an active role in the adoption and promotion of POSSE and similar to get professors involved in the Free Software community, attracting them, and their students to our and other Free Software communities.
==How (or should we?) differentiate ourselves from Fedora's existing Ambassador program?== I think that the biggest, and most important, difference between these two projects is the target: the ambassadors mostly work on attracting the FOSS community at large, and the general public, to Fedora, whereas we should be working to attract students and faculty of secondary and upper level education to Fedora. Of course, students and faculty of secondary and upper level education are a subset of the general public, and the FOSS community, which means that, unless some communication is established, our goals are congruant. This is why I believe it is important that we work with the ambassador program closely.
==How should we interract with the Fedora Ambassador community?== What I see in our relationship with Ambassadors is a more symbiotic relationship than anything else. Fedora's ambassadors are Fedora's face to the rest of the Free Software community, and the general public at large. We should strive to be Fedora's face in our institutions. As such, I see our role to be smaller (but not less important!) than that of the Ambassadors program. Optimally, each Campus Ambassador would be in contact with a local Ambassador, and that they would be their primary contact for events and needs, rather than having the campus ambassadors going through a central non-distributed system. The Campus Ambassador could request media or swag from their ambassador contact for, say, a University LUG meeting, or an installfest. This ambassador could then also attend this event, possibly speak, and increase our presence even more. This of course, comes with the stipulation that for every campus we need at least one Fedora ambassador in the near area, which is not always the case. For example, I am currently the only ambassador in Phoenix Arizona, and I would not be the least bit surprised if there were locations with no nearby ambassadors. This of course gets media and swag in the hands of campus ambassadors who would not, in most other cases, be able to get any. If I recall correctly from what Mel told me, the Campus Ambassador program has about 2500US$ per year (fiscal quarter, maybe? I'd have to ask Mel or Max, I honestly do not know). This is not enough to forge pressed media for a worldwide group and have it distributed. This is why we need to work with the Ambassadors program. With this symbiotic relationship, it should not be necessary for each Campus Ambassador to go through the Ambassador mentoring program. However, I think that Campus Ambassadors should also have to go through some sort of training or mentorship program. I am unsure of what, or how we would go through thtat though. We should probably draft up a few wiki pages about how the Campus Ambassador mentorees can better relay our position to the different communities within universities as opposed to the standard wiki pages.
==What are our next steps?== First and foremost, this is a discussion that needs to happen. The Campus Ambassadors program should not be dictated by one person, or a small aristocracy, but the group as a whole in an open and transparent fashion (hence me moving this to the mailing list rather than IRC). When this discussion has been ended, the final product needs to be distilled into a set of wiki pages under the [[CampusAmbassadors]] page, so that anyone interested in joining our project can see how we differ from the Ambassadors program, and how they can get involved. After this, we should begin discussion with the Ambassador program about how to best handle us working with them, and distill that into a wiki page or four. Hopefully, this framework can be laid before the next school year begins. I believe it's too late in the year for us to organize in time for this semester, but come next fall, we could really have an awesome program.
Like I said, this is a discussion, not a dictate, so please talk back :) Thanks and best, Ryan Rix
Hey, all --
First, Ryan: Thanks for kickstarting this.
When the Campus Ambassador program was first initiated, I was a student at Cabrillo College. However, I am no longer a student but I would like to contribute anyway. My responses to the questions are integrated below.
1) What do you want to see in the campus ambassador program? What is our
primary goal?
The primary goal for the Campus Ambassador program should be to promote Fedora on high school and college campuses, where Campus Ambassadors serve as spokespersons and representatives of Fedora. What makes the Campus Ambassador program unique is that students at a particular school take the reins in promoting Fedora at their own schools, rather than having an Ambassador come from off-campus to do the promotional work.
2) How (or should we?) differentiate from the main Fedora Ambassadors
program?
There should be no difference, and the Campus Ambassadors and Fedora Ambassadors should work in unison. In my opinion, Campus Ambassadors should be Fedora Ambassadors who also happen to be high school/college students representing Fedora at their school. So Campus Ambassadors should go through the same vetting and mentoring that a regular Fedora Ambassador goes through, and s/he becomes a Fedora Ambassador with the same rights, privileges and responsibilities as a non-campus Ambassador.
3) How should we interract with the Fedora Ambassadors program?
See above.
- What are our next steps?
I think there is a lot of nuts-and-bolts stuff to get done; things like organizational framework, and that sort of thing. There's probably too much around that to go into here, but the situations will arise where this will have to be addressed, and we all can address it accordingly
Despite the fact that I am no longer a student, I do talk about FOSS and Fedora on campuses frequently and I would like to help out wherever possible.
Larry Cafiero
campus-ambassadors@lists.fedoraproject.org