Goodbye!

In our life, sometime, it comes the time when the things you want to do become far and, even you can try to keep up with it, all the efforts result in a failure.

I think this is just the case. You don’t know how disappointed I can be writing these lines, but I can’t fool myself and you with future plans: i can’t keep up with the project.

First of all I want to make clear one thing: I’m using Fedora Linux and will continue to use it.

What is changed since I have joined the project?

I started contributing without any ambition and I received things that I didn’t expect to receive: experience, leadership and new friends. These are the rewards for all the time I spent in the project, trying to improve and make it bigger. I don’t know if I have succeeded but, sure, I’ve done all my best.

My student’s duties took me away for a while, like it happened in the previous years, but, when I went back, it wasn’t the same. Things were changed and, damn, they had changed in better. Ambassadors project had become well organized, with a great FAmSCo, great Ambassadors and great mentors, but I wasn’t able to work like I did. My fault. Soon I have become an inactive Ambassador, like the many I’ve tried to convince to come back.

I get more that I expected and now it’s time to have new experiences and find something that could boost my knowledge and energy. Sure, my experience here will help wherever I’ll go!

Now, here I’m. Writing this goodbye email with a sad heart, but a conscious brain.

Many people didn’t trust me at the beginning, then they changed mind. These are the first ones I want to thank. If I’ve tried to improve myself, it’s because of you. I commend you to continue to do the same with the men and women that empower this amazing community.

A big thank to all the people who helped me being what I become, especially who I met during the events I attended around Europe and the FAmSCo members I worked with.

Many of you have become part of my soul. Max, Joerg, Francesco, Luca, Gerold and more and more (sorry if I can’t name all of you). I’ll never forget you and I hope to stay in touch with you, even if not directly for this special project.

Saying goodbye is not simple. You think at what you want to underline and what to not forget but, at the end, you know you have missed something, forget to thank someone and, maybe, think that you are doing the wrong thing. But time is passing, things are changing and looking back doesn’t help taking the right decision.

So, here I am. Thank you my friends for everything. I wish you all my best.

Long life to Fedora Project, one of the marvelous experience I’ve ever had.

Francesco

Fedora 12 Release Events

Fedora 12 has just been released.

If you want to discover more about it, and meet the people behind this marvellous job, I suggest you to take part of one of the F12 Release Events.

In the upcoming days the wiki will be updated with more events. Naturally, feel free to ping your local ambassador for one in your area 😉 .

Take a look at the page and see if there is a location that fits you: you’ll be really impressed.

To all contributors: it’s implicit but I like to make it public, you are all invited to join these ones. Without you nothing of this was possible. You are the real stars behind Fedora!

FAmSCo Election 2009: Nominations are open!

Sirs, it’s election time!

Apart from the jokes, this is an important moment for the life of the project, especially for Ambassadors.

With this election Ambassadors will be called to choose 7 people, who will represent and manage more than 700 other ones from all over the world.

If you run, you could became a FAmSCo member!

Like any challenge, it has its difficulties but, if you are motivated and if you like to make your voice heard, you’ll find it as one of the most exciting and marvelous experience.

Is there any requirement? Passion and self commitment. With these two ingredients you’ll be able to face this job. Experience, naturally, will give you an important help.

What are the steps required in order to run for it?

First of all, add you name in the nomination wiki page (just click here).

In this page you’ll be able to explain the vision you have for the project, your ideas and the goals you want to achieve.

Don’t worry, it’s not required to write something complicate. Just write what you think, even if it’s only a brief sentence. Remember: sometime a word is worth 10000 words.

The deadline to nominate yourself is November 16th.

It’s normal to have doubts, but you haven’t to be feared of not being elected. The most important element is be there. Express your ideas! Make your opinion relevant!  You’ll be important just because you will run!

Everybody, at the end of the race, will win: candidates, even if not elected; Ambassadors and the whole Fedora Project.

What are the next steps?

I’ll write about them later this week and during the next ones. Thanks to John (inode0) this is the schedule for the upcoming weeks:

* November 10-16: Nominations are open.
* November 17-23: Candidate questionnaires.
* November 27 – December 3: IRC Town Hall-style discussions with candidates for the various elected positions will be arranged.
* December 8-15: The elections will take place.

P.S. Just a reminder for whoever want to organize/join a fedora 12 Release Event: visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F12_release_events.

Fedora 12 Release Event – A reminder

Have you considered holding a F12 Release Event?

If you haven’t done it yet, you are invited to visit fedoraproject.org/wiki/F12_release_events.

There, you’ll find the basic informations (for more ones see my previous posts) you may need. If you are interested, you, also, will be able to add your event.

If you like the idea and you want to give a try to this initiative, you are welcome!

Linux Day 2009 – Livorno

Saturday 24th was a great day. I had the honour to attend Linux Day 2009 organized by the GULLI, the local Linux user group, in the Metropolis Pub, Livorno. This place is owned and maintained by a Linux enthusiast who gave his availability to host this event: the location gave the right atmosphere for an event that was both interesting and fun.

The event was divided in two halves, morning and afternoon. Unfortunately I could attend only the latter one, but sure I had the possibility to meet great people and attend interesting speeches, like the open source relation with government, the creation of dynamic web sites with open source tools, and Linux on net-books.

Along the conference side, people joined the event to get in touch with Linux and ask questions/report concerns on Linux and some distributions.

I see also that some GULLI members had Fedora (or derivatives) installed in their laptop: I had the possibility to talk deeply with them and share each other the experience with this amazing distribution 🙂

Thanks to GULLI availability I had the honour to give one speech too, which basically was focused on the core features of Fedora, our community and our values.

People seemed interested and I felt like at home: they demonstrated to be a great community, from an organization to a socialisation point of view.

During the afternoon we had the opportunity to discuss about future collaborations, starting from the possibility to organize a Fedora Release Event (but it’s still an on-going issue), to the creation of a more strict relation between us. Both the ideas sounded great and, sure, I saw this as a great chance to improve our experience and share with them our passion and tools.

When available, I’ll post some photos of the event. Meanwhile I hope to have described, even briefly, what happened and what were the results of this amazing experience.

Organizing Fedora 12 Release Events

Fedora 12 will be released in a month. While packagers, marketers, designers and the docs guys (and many others) are working hardly to have everything ready for that time, we, Ambassadors, will face a big challenge: organize Fedora 12 Release Events.

Why you may be interested in holding one? First of all people. It would be great to put contributors and community all together, and to be able to share each other opinions about the new release. Not only. Release Events mean talks, hacking and, sure, party!

If you haven’t considered yet, it’s time to think at it.

When you’ll be convinced, add your event in fedoraproject.org/wiki/F12_release_events (you’ll find more information in the page).

For Fedora Contributors: visit the page, see if there is an event near you (if not, try to convince your local Ambassadors) and get in contact with the event owner/s. You’ll have a crucial role in the event and, sure, you’ll receive a VIP treatment!

Planning F12 Release Events

Events are part of Fedora style. In that way Release Events (or if you prefer Parties) have become a hallmark of what we are.

Fedora 12 is under development: people are working hardly to realease something special and, we, as Ambassadors, want to honour this, spreading the result around the World.

Release events grew a lot since the early beginning and it’s time to go a step further.

First of all, we have defined a deadline to better address what to do and to align with other sub-project schedules.

We, also, have defined REs goal: have end-users (e.g. students, developers) and contributors, all together, to celebrate the new release; introduce newbie to the new release; discuss about what is changed and what can be improved; do some hacking and so on.

This time we want to let end-users know who are the contributors, and to let contributors know who are the people who use/will use Fedora: it will help boost the motivation on both sides. It’s marvellous when you meet someone who share the same passion and sure, after an event, you can understand that your work, as small as it could be, is precious as the biggest work. And, from an end-user perspective, to have all/most of your questions/doubts/concerns answered.

The success of a Release Event depends, first of all, on Organizers: in the last years Ambassadors have done an excellent job organizing them and doing the hard job: they are the people who go in search of a place, who set up it and spend most of the day talking about Fedora, holding speeches, supporting new users, helping solving problems etc..

The thanks must go to these people, ready every release, to challange themselves doing a better job, and sure, since now, they have achived this goal. We should be proud of them and we should encourage them continuing on this way!

I assure this will be an unique experience for everyone, from organizers to attendees: you are invited to take part in.

Haul the anchor! An amazing experience is waiting us.

“Fedora 11 Release Events Contest” Winners Announcement

It’s my pleasure and honour to announce the F11 Release Events Contest winners: Kevin Higgins with the Vancouver, WA (USA) release event, Neville A. Cross with the Managua (NI) release event and, finally, Truong Anh Tuan with the Hanoi (VN) release event.

For the Fedora 11 release, FAmSCo wanted to give some of the Ambassadors who organized great release events an opportunity to attend a FUDCon or a FAD in their region, and to meet more of the community face to face. As such, we’re going to be providing some sponsorship opportunities to some of the organizers of great Fedora release events.

Our decision was based not only on the quality of the event, that sure was the base requirement, we also took care of the experience of the people and the potential they could express in future events and in the whole project, both in a regional and global perspective.

For several releases now, Fedora Ambassadors have been organizing release events all over the world, becoming a natural component of our activity and showing us the maturity of the project. The purpose of these events is to promote the new release of Fedora, to raise awareness among local communities, and to educate users and developers on the most important features of the release.

These release events are low-cost and are therefore easy to scale worldwide. As a means of encouraging these events, we have occasionally offered some sort of reward for the best events.

FAmSCo wants to thank all the participants for their amazing job: stay sure that we will continue to encourage it.

For future Fedora releases, we hope to do the same thing, and to spread the sponsorship around so that folks all over the world have opportunities to attend FUDCons. It is a high priority for us that we continue to grow Fedora Ambassadors all over the world.

We are proud to have such great people on this marvelous team!

Stay tuned

On Behalf of FAmSCo
Francesco Ugolini

p.s. A special thanks goes to Joerg Simon for his detailed review of
all the events.

Here I am

pfew… I finally finished two of the hardest months since a year (sure, they will be overwhelmed by the ones that have to come next year).

During these months I’ve tried to use most of my (few) free time for Ambassadors stuffs, trying to follow most of the activities we have covered.

Now, I have set some priorities for the next six months.

Personal ones:

– Improve leadership (sure this is one of my top priorities)

– Try to join most of the events around me and find time/resources for the European ones

– Work with the other Italian ambassadors building a strength Italian community

From a FAmSCo point of view:

– Check all the open tasks and review all the amazing work done (especially regarding mentoring/membership thanks to Joerg, Fabian, Susmit and all the guys behind this job)

– Read Release Events reports and prepare for the Release Events Contest results (just wait for all REs)

– Working on the communication: I have an idea that I’ll bring you soon (see the list for further information)

– Bring weekly meetings back (we hold only M-L discussions during the last month)

I think the agenda seems full enough.

Now I’ll use today and tomorrow to take some rest and say: “OK, now I can breath!”.

Ambassadors Project Schedule

Ambassadors Project is moving forward. In order to make this happen, we need to know what we are doing. 

If you have a open task, that isn’t mentioned in fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Schedule, please write in the list or contact me directly.

This is only a small stone in the great building that Ambassadors (and, sure :), Fedora) community is.