ambassadors June 2008

ambassadors@lists.fedoraproject.org

123 participants
108 discussions

self introduction
by Catur Wijiutomo 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

<fedora-ambassadors-list(a)redhat.com>Hi please let me introduce myself, my name is Catur Wirawan Wijiutomo, 21 years old, from Bandung (Indonesia). My interest ini Linux began about 3 years ago when I first know what is linux. but I'm serious to use Linux an totally migrate 1 year after that. nowadays, I use linux for everyday living, from doing my assignment to leisure. the first distro I use and still be my favourites is Fedora I'm a student of Informatics Engineering at the Institut Teknologi Bandung, Linux is getting famous in my school. everybody know Linux. but not many people who know it use it. they prefer to use windows and too bad they use the piracy edition. from my research to asking them why they doing that is a mindset that windows is become standard. well that's what I disagree about and what I want to change, even in my experience life could be wonderful without it. my school already established a center for open source community which funded by government one year ago. and I am one of the member of this organization. I like to help people to understand Linux and why Linux is better. of course Fedora is what I recommend to them. I've got plan to some event which will be held and involve community in my school *Install Fest : my school has an centre of Open source that is fund by the government, install fest is one of their program. I involved in this organization. * Linux Information centre : make a portal in my local campus network. so everyone can easily get information about Linux * Fedora Weeks : a weeks with fedora. I would encourage people to use fedora for a wee and get the feedback from them * Linux Training : an event to introducing Linux technically. and some little project that involve just myself * fill my blog about my activities with Fedora * answer people question's about fedora * help people using Fedora * giving access to people about Fedora product * and much more.. I'm looking forward to working with you ;-) Best regards -- Catur Wirawan Wijiutomo Students of Institut Teknologi bandung

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Re: [Ambassadors] My vision on Fedora and student partnerships
by Luke Macken 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

(Resent, as I was not subscribed to this list until now) On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 05:51:23PM +0200, Mathieu Bridon wrote: > > * The voting UI. Every member can go to the list of proposals and vote > > them up or down, Digg-style. Bill sees on Fedora Planet that a new idea > > has been proposed for "tracking cell phone numbers". He likes the idea a > > lot -- not just because it's a good idea, but also because Alex took the > > time to explain it well. So he clicks on the link and votes the idea up. > > Note: this implies that the bad proposals, like "I think Fedora should use > > apt" with no good arguments why, will languish at the bottom of the list. > Couldn't Brainstorm do it ? > > I know it was developped by Ubuntu, but that's not really a reason to not > use it as it is GPLv2, the source is available here: > https://code.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu-qa-website (the name is quite > misleading). > > If we have one thing less to develop from scratch, it could be worth it. Sure. I initially assumed that Brainstorm was just another piece of the proprietary ubuntu infrastructure stack. Seeing as how the code is public, if someone wants to step up and deploy and maintain it, I have no problem with that. I, however, will not touch PHP. Ever :) I'd also be happy to continue working on my prototype if we wish to take that route. It is not even close to the maturity of ubuntu's codebase, but it does fit in with the other dozen of TurboGears apps that we have in our infrastructure, and also blows brainstorm out of the water technology-wise (100% ajax, real-time comet-based widgets, *not* php, db-agnostic, etc). I also added support not just for submitting and voting on Ideas, but also asking/answering/voting on Questions as well. luke

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Re: My vision on Fedora and student partnerships
by Luke Macken 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

(Resent, as my original reply never hit the list) On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 11:09:01AM -0400, Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote: > > There's a lot of energy here on the list, so I thought I'd share my > thoughts. Pardon the long email. [...] > b. Task Management Tools. Luke Macken, who is also copied on this email, > is working on an interface for Fedora community members to contribute > their ideas to the project. The best ideas can be voted up. It's a > good start. > > These kinds of tools may also be able to correlate a newbie's skills with > the skills required for various projects. One can imagine the following > flow: > > * A proposal UI. Alex has a great idea -- "an interface to track cell > phone numbers for all Fedora volunteers" -- and he goes to the "Fedora > Proposals" UI. He enters an abstract of the project. He clicks the > "Turbogears" box and the "Python" box under the "skills needed" part of > the UI. > > * The voting UI. Every member can go to the list of proposals and vote > them up or down, Digg-style. Bill sees on Fedora Planet that a new idea > has been proposed for "tracking cell phone numbers". He likes the idea a > lot -- not just because it's a good idea, but also because Alex took the > time to explain it well. So he clicks on the link and votes the idea up. > Note: this implies that the bad proposals, like "I think Fedora should > use apt" with no good arguments why, will languish at the bottom of the > list. > > * The project-finder UI. Clarice signs up with Fedora as a contributor. > As part of the join form, she is asked for her skill set, and she checks > "Python" and "Turbogears". Upon completion, she immediately sees a UI > that says "hey, the following projects need exactly your expertise!" And > at the top of the list is the "cell phone numbers" project, with contact > information of potential mentors who can help her get started. > > This is not a complicated vision. It is a highly achievable vision. > Luke Macken is already working on pieces of it, and if you have any web > programming skills, you could probably help him on it, right now. So, for FUDCon this year I gave a talk on the upcoming Python web framework, TurboGears2. As an example program, I started implementing a system similar to http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com I see a lot of value in a system like this, as it drastically lowers the barrier for contribution. Instead of "Welcome $NEWCONTRIBUTOR, here are a dozen mailing lists and IRC channels that you should pay attention to, an gigantic wiki, and oh -- here is Bugzilla. Good luck!", Fedora needs to be able to delegate its own tasks to people, based on their skill set. So, as I see it, we've got some work to do: - Fedora needs to know it's contributors skill sets. These can most likely go into the Fedora Account System, as there is an arbitrary configuration column that we can easily throw anything into. So then, we need some sort of interface for people to input their skill sets. This can probably go into FAS as well. Ricky and Toshio (who are now CC'd) would be the guys to talk to about this. - Our tasks need to be categorized/tagged based on the skills required to complete them. With the digg-like idea sharing brainstorming app that I started writing, we can tag ideas with anything we like 'Python, documentation, web, etc' -- which we could easily funnel people to. Giving people new ideas to work on is great and all, but the problem with this is that we have infinite amounts of work living in our fedorahosted tracs and bugzilla. So maybe in the pkgdb we could store a list of the technologies associated with each package? - Fedora needs to delegate it's own tasks to people, based on skill set. Once we know what people can do, and what skills are required to get things done, it really shouldn't be too difficult to put a shiny web interface in front of this that can be used to show contributors a list of projects, ideas, bugs, mailing lists, irc channels, mentors, etc. > So. That's my take. Sorry for the long email. If you agree with this > vision, please get in touch with Luke Macken to help make this vision > into a reality. He's already got a great headstart. :) So I started writing this tool only a couple of days ago, but it has turned out to be pretty slick so far. It's 100% ajax (w/o the xml), has comet-based widgets that allow people to go to a single page and watch the ideas/questions/comments flow in *real time*. If you're interested in this project and/or TurboGears2, you can checkout my slides from FUDCon (there are a couple of screenshots of the app at the end): http://lewk.org/tg2.pdf Yes, the talk is about an advanced bleeding-edge technology. If you're interested in diving in and learning TurboGears, I recommend starting with my TurboGears1 talk from a couple of FUDCon's ago first: http://tg.lewk.org and then working your way up from there. So I'll go ahead and create a fedorahosted setup for this project, so interested parties can help out. Once the code is in good shape, we can create a publictest instance and deploy it. luke

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Thank you!
by Prakhar Agarwal 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

Thanks for such a warm welcome. hope, we have a great time together. cheers! -- Prakhar Agarwal prakhar(a)fedoraproject.org Key fingerprint: 86E6 098E F129 92D3 879B 267D 0DD1 FE4A CEDE 9642 "Life is the greatest teacher"

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My vision on Fedora and student partnerships
by Greg DeKoenigsberg 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

There's a lot of energy here on the list, so I thought I'd share my thoughts. Pardon the long email. === POINT #1: ALL THE ENTHUSIASM IN THE WORLD FAILS IF IT CAN NOT BE HARNESSED. This was the first thing I really, really learned in my tenure as Red Hat Community Guy. Pretty much everything I've done since has been to harness energy by providing focus. === POINT #2: WE STILL DO NOT HAVE A COMPREHENSIVE SET OF FEDORA WORK ITEMS SUITABLE FOR NEWBIES -- BUT WE WILL FIX THAT. This is an absolutely key problem to solve. The following scenario is one that we must avoid at all costs: Newbie: I just found out that I can work on a cool project for Fedora! I'm going to go to the Fedora site to learn more! (An hour of searching a poorly-maintained wiki follows) Newbie: This is really hard. I think I'll go play Freeciv instead! Note: MORE WIKI PAGES DO NOT SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. We've tried. There are abandoned "suggest your projects here" pages all over the Fedora wiki. We need a strong mechanism for collecting project information, and making it easy for potential contributors to find *exactly* those projects that suit them. Fortunately, I think that we are now tackling this challenge from a couple of different directions: a. Seneca College. Chris Tyler of Seneca College, who is copied on this email, is giving us a very tangible reason to solve this problem. Chris will be teaching about open source participation to his students in the upcoming year, and one of the first things that Chris needs from the Fedora community is precisely this kind of list of work items. Which means that Chris will be relentless in helping us figure this problem out. :) If you want to learn more about the Seneca project, please email him to learn more. b. Task Management Tools. Luke Macken, who is also copied on this email, is working on an interface for Fedora community members to contribute their ideas to the project. The best ideas can be voted up. It's a good start. These kinds of tools may also be able to correlate a newbie's skills with the skills required for various projects. One can imagine the following flow: * A proposal UI. Alex has a great idea -- "an interface to track cell phone numbers for all Fedora volunteers" -- and he goes to the "Fedora Proposals" UI. He enters an abstract of the project. He clicks the "Turbogears" box and the "Python" box under the "skills needed" part of the UI. * The voting UI. Every member can go to the list of proposals and vote them up or down, Digg-style. Bill sees on Fedora Planet that a new idea has been proposed for "tracking cell phone numbers". He likes the idea a lot -- not just because it's a good idea, but also because Alex took the time to explain it well. So he clicks on the link and votes the idea up. Note: this implies that the bad proposals, like "I think Fedora should use apt" with no good arguments why, will languish at the bottom of the list. * The project-finder UI. Clarice signs up with Fedora as a contributor. As part of the join form, she is asked for her skill set, and she checks "Python" and "Turbogears". Upon completion, she immediately sees a UI that says "hey, the following projects need exactly your expertise!" And at the top of the list is the "cell phone numbers" project, with contact information of potential mentors who can help her get started. This is not a complicated vision. It is a highly achievable vision. Luke Macken is already working on pieces of it, and if you have any web programming skills, you could probably help him on it, right now. === POINT #3: ONCE WE HAVE STRONG TASK MANAGEMENT TOOLS, WE CAN FUNNEL ALL KINDS OF NEW ENERGY INTO OUR PROCESS. Once the infrastructure of participation exists, the critical job changes, from *enabling* participation to *driving* participation. First, you SIMPLIFY. It should be *dead simple* for *any* newbie -- college student, college professor, bored professional, retiree -- to find useful work to do that helps his fellow man. Then, you AMPLIFY. When you trust your ability to manage community work, you shout from the rooftops, "HEY, WE NEED YOUR HELP!" If the projects that you drive people to are interesting, useful, and achievable, you will find that people will crawl out of the bushes to work on them. If college professors want to build their own curriculum around such a program, so much the better. === So. That's my take. Sorry for the long email. If you agree with this vision, please get in touch with Luke Macken to help make this vision into a reality. He's already got a great headstart. :) --g

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Self introduction...
by Anton Arapov 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

Hi there! My name is Anton, and feel free to pronounce it however you feel, this kind of international enough name - Anthony/Tony/Tonda/WhatNot ... :) Formerly I'm from Vladivostok/Russian Federation, but at this moment living in Brno/Czech Republic while working at Red Hat. My first Linux was Caldera Linux, that was created by the former Caldera Systems, *doh*, SCO Group now... So that I'm living with Linux from the end of 1995. I used Linux everywhere I can at my previous jobs, you can find on LinkedIn. The most significant was the whole IT Infrastructure switch from M$ to Linux at the one of the biggest Rail-Road Logistic company, which was planned and implemented from the very beginning by me. At the moment I'm Kernel Team Lead in Brno, working at Red Hat, as a part of non-Lead duties I'm eliminating bugs in Linux Kernel. Busy enough by daily duties, but... I'm going to contribute into Fedoraproject my free/spare time. Will try to share my expertise in Linux with everybody who will need it, just feel free to ask me. And of course, I'm sharing all the statements of the Fedora Ambassadors! :) At least, I will be available at IRC: aarapov @ #fedora-kernel and #fedora-mktg. See you soon... -Anton

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Introduction-New FA
by Prakhar Agarwal 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

Hello All, I have just joined the Fedora Ambassador Group. I'm Senior Year Under-graduate student from India with major IT. I have been using fedora from the time I started using Linux, be it university labs or PC. I really love Fedora and have been involved in promoting it as a user. Now, I'll be officially supporting it thanks to the community. I plan to introduce Fedora to my peers and juniors in their day-to-day activities or computing necessities. Also, I will aim to encourage as many enthusiasts as possible to get involved in the community and development process. I hope that my collaboration with Fedora community will be beneficial to all. Thanks for accepting me to be a part of your group. Cheers! -- Prakhar Agarwal http://prakhar.jiit.googlepages.com Key fingerprint: 86E6 098E F129 92D3 879B 267D 0DD1 FE4A CEDE 9642 "Life is the greatest teacher"

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Self Introduction
by Mathieu Bridon 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

Hi ! My name is Mathieu Bridon, known online as bochecha. I discovered Linux at school 4 years ago and was really annoyed by the fact that I had to use it when it seemed totally broken. Two and a half years ago, out of curiosity, I decided to try it again. I spent one week with Ubuntu, breaking it every time I was trying to do something with it, reinstalling it twice a day. :) Then someone made me discover Fedora and had the patience to explain me the basics so that I could at least use it. I then discover the french Fedora community, in which I instantly felt at home and quickly made some friends. What kept me in Fedora all this time and will probably keep me ad vitam aeternam is its strong ethics (only open source, always upstream, etc...). After being involved in the french community by doing support on the forum and IRC, I decided it was time for me to start contributing directly to the Fedora project. My first RPM just landed in updates-testing and I might join the translation team if I ever find the time for it. I also co-initiated with Mohamed Elmorabity the Fedora | Paris project. What we do is gather the Fedoristas who live in Paris and have diner every 2 weeks, and more if the night goes on. Of course, we all already know each other on IRC or on the forums, so those meetings are more a way to know the non-geek-side of each other, and build friendship inside our community. Fedora | Paris organized the Saturday night party this week end before the Sunday Install Party, so that people who don't live in Paris and were coming in Paris for the IP would receive a warm welcome. As an Ambassador, I'll try to go on promoting Fedora everywhere I can, starting with the IT company where I work which is too Debian / Ubuntu oriented. I'd like to have some co-workers contributing to Fedora, as they already contribute to other FOSS projects. Looking forward to working with you, almighty Fedora Ambassadors of the world. :) Mathieu Bridon aka bochecha

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Tech Day (Garlasco, Italy) - Report
by Gianluca Varisco 23 Jun '08

23 Jun '08

Hi guys, Here's my report about the event we (on behalf of the Fedora Italian Ambassadors team) organized last Sunday in Garlasco, Italy. It was simply great! http://www.techtemple.org/blog/2008/06/tech-day-report/ Cheers, -- Gianluca Varisco, RHCE Intern - Web Engineering, Red Hat Italia Tel.: +39 02 5681 4487 Fax : +39 02 669 3111 Cel.: +39 333 574 0934 Address/Indirizzo: Via Antonio Da Recanate 1 20124 Milano

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On vaccation till sunday.
by susmit shannigrahi 22 Jun '08

22 Jun '08

Hi, I shall be on vacation till sunday with no connectivity, please drop a mail if you need. -- Regards, Susmit. ============================================= ssh 0x86DD170A http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/user:susmit =============================================

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