Archive:Improving Ambassador Program

Note: The followings are just the notes for further discussions and by no means final decisions. Plans on this page are drafts and their status is RFC, so that anyone can add his/her opinions and ideas.

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Some comments. --HeliosReds 07:21, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

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Preface

The openSUSE Ambassador program was launched in May 2009 and many Ambassadors are registered on the Ambassadors List now. Thanks to those, who are working hard on promoting openSUSE in their area on a daily basis ! However, there still remains much works to do in order to make this program more effective and some problems to be solved. The necessity of improving Ambassador program was discussed in the last openSUSE Conference and some thought, "Now is the time to start improving the program !"

Task Force

Some volunteers have considered, that it is helpful to organize a small group of persons who are *really* interested in this task for the first step, in order to clarify what are the problems and things to be improved, so that we can much more effectively discuss this issue further.

The task force aim to ...
- make things clear. What are needed and what should take priority for the improvement.
- prepare a basis for the further and open discussions.
- make draft plans so that we can discuss more specifically.

The task force doesn't aim to ...
- make any final decisions. The decision making process should be as open and transparent as possible.
- be a privileged class in Ambassador program. Members of the task force are just the persons who volunteer for improving Ambassador program.

Note: The task force itself should be expansively dissolved, once the structure or basis for the further and open discussion is established.

At this moment, members of the task force are:

Satoru Matsumoto (IRC Nick: HeliosReds)
Sascha Manns : saigkill
Jan Weber : The_Code
Jan Simon : dl9pf
Sirko Kemter : gnokii
Chuck Payne (IRC Nick: terrorpup)
Name (IRC Nick: )

The task force had a kick-off meeting on #opensuse-marketing channel @Freenode on the 26th of September, 2009.

Note: The next meeting is planned to be held on Saturday, 3 October.

How and What to improve

Structures

Ambassador Leaders (Coordinators ?)

Note: Some Ambassador's Coordinators are already registered in openSUSE:Ambassadors_list. However, their tasks and responsibilities are not defined clearly ATM. In order to avoid being confusing, we call the new concept leaders Ambassador Leaders tentatively.

Who can be Ambassador Leaders ?
- Will current Ambassador's Coordinators be concidered Ambassador Leaders automatically ?
  - In that case, each Ambassador's Coordinator should get off his will to be an Ambassador Leader again, at least.
- The initial Ambassador Leaders have to be Members, because Members are approved by Board for their continued and substantial contribution to openSUSE project.
- Ambassador Leaders have to be able to communicate in English.
- Once the tasks and responsibilities of Ambassador Leaders are clearly defined(see below), the task force will call for Ambassadors to step forward to Ambassador Leader by sending an email to -marketing list.
  - Everyone who are willing to be an Ambassador Leader can become an Ambassador Leader ?
    - Is a screening needed somehow ? In that case, who can/should screen ?
- After the group of Ambassador Leaders will be established, someone who is willing to become an Ambassador Leader have to get off his/her will by sending an email to -marketing list and need to be approved by a majority of Ambassador Leaders.
- An Ambassador Leader can be ousted from his/her post, when he/she can no longer carry out his/her duty
  - This may triggered by self-assessment, indications from other Ambassador Leaders and complaints from Ambassadors.
  - However, the detailed procedure for recalling an Ambassador Leader should be defined later by Ambassador Leaders themselves.

How many Ambassador Leaders are needed initially ?
- This depends on the tasks and responsibilities of Ambassador Leaders(see below).
- Per region(see below) ? Per country ? Per language ?
- At least, one Ambassader Leader is needed for each region initially. 2 - 3 Ambassador Leaders for each region might be effective in the future.
  - Are Sub-Leaders needed for each country/language ?
    - If a person who is willing to become an Anbassador but is not good at English and can only speak the language that Ambassador Leaders can't understand, how can Anbassador Leaders help him ?

What are the tasks and responsibilities of Ambassador Leaders ?
- Ambassador Leaders will ...
  - organize regular meetings for Ambassadors.
  - organize regional meetings for Ambassadors in their region, if needed.
  - shuffle around the time schedule of the meetings.
  - announce, moderate and summarize the meetings.
  - act as central points for Ambassadors in their region.
  - act as relay points for providing DVDs and goods for events in their region.
  - help new Ambassadors in their region and give them advice.
  - help resolve conflicts among Ambassadors in their region.
  - facilitate communications with Ambassadors in their region.
  - request Ambassadors to report on their activities.
  - post summarized regional Ambassadors reports to lizards.o.o.
  - maintain Ambassador related Wiki pages.
  - (to be added)

What can Ambassador Leaders get from the projekt ?
- Many responsibilities but no benefit except honor - is it enough ?
  - Even Board members get no special benefit...
- How can be actual costs - i.e. postage and cost of packaging materials for sending DVDs and goods to Ambassadors in their region - provided ?

Region

Region definition
- Wider aria
  - EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), NALA (North America and Latin America) and APAC (Asia and Pacific)
- Continental
  - Europe, North America, Latin America(including Caribbean States), Africa, Asia and Oceania(including Pacific Islands)
- Continental+Cultural
  - Europe, North America, Latin America(including Caribbean States), Africa, Middle East, Central Asia(former republics of the Soviet Union and Siberia), South/Southeast Asia, Eastern Asia and Oceania(including Pacific Islands)
- (Any other drafts ?)

Infra

New communication infra for Ambassadors ?
- Do we need extra list (i.e opensuse-ambassador@opensuse.org) and IRC channel (i.e #opensuse-ambassador) for Ambassador program ?
- ATM, we are discussing in -marketing list and #opensuse-marketing (or #opensuse-project ?) channel.
- Extra list and/or channel might be needed in the future, when the traffics are increased.
- BTW, who can be a channel operator of th #opensuse-marketing channel and change the topic ?

Ambassadors' Tasks

Contributions of each Ambassadors can be varied. Some tend to be organizing and/or attending local events, others are willing to help newbies on mailing lists and/or IRC channels. Blogging about openSUSE in their language can be one of the good way for promoting openSUSE.
However, all Ambassadors should make their activities visible.

How can Ambassadors make their activities visible ?

Each Ambassador must at least ...
- make his/her Userpage on en.o.o and keep the page updated.
  - If he/she is not good at English, Ambassador Leaders will help him/her.
  - The Userpage should have informations below:
    - Name (real or handle) and Login ID
    - Region, country and city
    - Available languages
    - Mail address
    - IRC Nick and channels
    - Blog URL (if exists)
    - Account for micro blogging(Twitter, Facebook and so on)
    - Profile
  - Sample Ambassador Userpage would be helpful.(AI for Ambassador Leaders ?)
- register their entry on openSUSE:Ambassadors_list and follow the procedure mentioned in "How to join".
Each Ambassadors is strongly recomended to ...
- join the Ambassador meetings as long as possible.
- post announcements to local mailing list and call for participations if he/she will organize/attend local event.
- register the entry for the event he/she is planning to organize/attend on the Events page.
- report the events he/she organized/attended in his/her blog and on the Events page.
  - The Events page have to be improved in order to concentrate all the informations on local events.
- feedback his/her experiences and share problems with other Ambassadors.
- share templates and materials that he/she used.
- (to be added)

Templates/Materials

Templates and materials that Ambassadors used should be concentrated in some place so that other Ambassadors can easily reuse them as needed.
- Presentation templates
- Business card
- Letterpad
- Posters
- Cheet sheets
- Cliparts
- (to be added)

How to provide DVDs and goods more simply and effectively

Path to Members

Budget

Additional Ideas

In August 2010 we did some brainstorming for further ideas (and the above information was not taken into account). Below are the ideas - now we need to merge and consolidate all of this...

Physical Resources

PromoDVDs as give-aways
- Note: We need some kind of hint on how many DVDs to send depending on size and audience of an event.
- Also, preparing shipping is laborsome, we could use some help here in collecting addresses
- Which languages are available on PromoDVD should be clear. If the language which is spoken in the country where the event will take place is not included in the PromoDVD, it won't be a good give-away.
Provide ambassadors with openSUSE promo material (boothbox/partybox like stuff with t-shirts, stickers, cd's etc)
- note: If we have an event kit to ship around, we'll need to seek volunteers to hold the box and ship around for us in the major regions.
- Usually shipping a box around is expensive (depends on area). Having small boothboxes for one-way sending would be very nice.
- Pens are a good cheap promo item that people actually use. Cheap to freight and always appreciated
- Retail type stand boxes for the DVDs. It would be good if the box that DVDs are shipped in could be printed so they could be refolded to do this.
For events: Identify attendees so that our presence at events targets that particular demographic with materials and personnel. Materials such as custom DVDs, pamphlets and presentations that target the particular demographic. i.e. The two broadest groups would be Developers and Endusers. Then these groups need to be divided into more specific demographics
- Developers like Community or independent, Corporate, University
- Endusers like Small medium Enterprise, Corporate, Government, NGO, Educational

Processes

Organize regions
- for regions where there are many ambassadors, let's discuss to have at least one person to volunteer to be coordinator of all ambassadors in that region. I suggest one per state if we have more than one
- The role, responsibility, authority, tasks, etc. of the coordinators should be clearly defined. Without this, there will be titular coordinators, who are just pretenders to the title.
- make sure that "top-level" ambassador keeps information flow effective between region and the Project- sure, Ambassadors have to be very aligned with the project and always work closer with our openSUSE Project - We call this as "reports to openSUSE "mothership"
- Maybe add a page to Ambassador Page to high light who are the top-level ambassadors and break down of regions. At this time I am bit lost who is who. Also, clean house on inactive ambassdor as soon as we can.
- We should be careful not to add so many regions all at once, but wait on a case-by-case basis. We can take a look at some of the most common regions that have events and try to populate the kits there. That will save us from spending money needlessly.
- Identify regions/countries that we want to boost the ambassador program first. Grow the ambassador teams in those regions and grow further regions with that knowledge.
- Perhaps we should build a master list of known events that ambassadors can look at and pick from. Not easy to do this, but helpful. An ambassador doesn't know everything that's happening within their region. +1
For 2011 if we can get a little more money for Traveling. Question is how to decide who gets what.
- Another question: How an Ambassador can make out how much does it cost for traveling actually, and how we can check whether it is reasonable or not ?
- Maybe a proforma "Proposal sheet" that an ambassador can fill in so we can make sure we're getting bang for buck. Perhaps we can make a list of events that have priority for attendance.
About Ambassadors meetings. How will be handle this? What frequency? Where? Do we need meetings or can we handle everything via email?
Really and real interactions between ambassadors, more then ambassadors we need to be friends and have a very deep commitment with each other