Following the rules

* Respecting Meetings protocol: Dear lord… was so nice to have people respecting IRC meeting protocols that I really felt on heaven. When you have a really structured meetings wiki page, that people actually reads, everything is just easier.

* Knowing zodbot: everything is easier when you know how to work with zodbot. First time I see on a meeting that all attendees are mark as chair for a meetin (even me).

* Quorum: Is really nice to see a lot of people being at meetings and participating. Quorum is always an issue at any meeting. either we talk about time/date collide or just people not beign interested. Community members should try a bit harder to attend to meetings (even if sometimes are bored), you might always know about something new or provide a good idea.

* Mistakes: If you make a mistake, get slow on sending your message, got some lag, your nick was jumping or just missunderstood something… don’t make a big deal and keep the meeting going. Everyone can make a mistake, so don’t turn it into a meeting topic.

* Local leaders show up: This might be the most interesting, as community contributor, that you can find on a meeting. When a local (or general) leader shows up and interact on the meeting means that people care. Motivation and example arethea key that we should try to take advantage of every time we can.

Activities to spread Fedora

* Ton of Release Parties: Yes… perhaps only 2 so far, but they are working a lot and are already organized for this activities. This only encourage me to plan a Fedora Release Party full with Beefy Miracles :)

* Marketing Swags: When we talk about a big region this is a common issue that is always hard to work with. At LATAM we are still working on this, however, we are 21 countries (plus 9 dependencies), and even if we still have some unexplored places, we have to deal with shipping prices that most of the times, are equal to bring swags from EMEA.

* Media: I don’t know if I’m the only that receives perhaps 300% more tickets from APAC that from anywhere else. This means that Fedora media-program is beign effective in this region. Perhaps simplify how we send media, how we produce it and who can really make shipments can be a solution. For those locations where our users cannot get (or is too expensive) maybe contact a local company, school or college might be a solution. I guess is easier just to send a couple of bucks to a local person to buy a dvd pack that ship a single dvd through mail.

Sorry Shakthimaan - by Shreyank Gupta

I will keep trying to attend to each regional meeting. I think that know what’s happening all arround the world can teach us how to improove. Take a look arround, learn from your peers goals and failures, and make everyone take a step into change. “I never thought we could transform the world, but I think every day you can transform things.”- Françoise Giroud.

Is really cool to see how FUDCon Margarita is taking shape. I always love to see how an idea become something real and how people envolved work as a team to acomplish each goal. Fedora is the kind of place where you want to hang out if you want to be part of something :)

This week was full of tasks. We had our first meeting, which was really productive, and we delegate most of the tasks. That’s the way to work as team, however, we need to be more open and inform the rest of what we are doing, so our task don’t collide. We separate task this way: Travels – Location – Marketing.

You can find meeting logs and minutes in here: All minutes are in here… yes, in spanish: Minutes – Minutes (text) – Log

Acording to artwork, I have been working on some posters (which were awful) but thx to the help of our amazing team have started to take some shape. Like always, you can see progress on my tatica.Fedorapeople space or just ping me directly.

We are still dealing with dates and location since RHsummit is at same week we wanted to held FUDcon… but with our amazing team I’m sure we will figure this out soon.

Remember to join us next week, wednesday at 2230UTC (check your local time in here) at #fudcon-planning (and yes… everyone can attend, Fedora contributor or just an enthusiast)

Note: Now you might be asking yourself: Why is she posting this in english and not spanish? Because i need -some- of our sponsors to know what are we doing in their native language :) If you want to read this in spanish, please click here

El año pasado, el LibreBus viajó desde el 03 hasta el 16 de mayo de 2011, intercambiando experiencias alrededor del software libre, el conocimiento y la biodiversidad, la libertad de expresión y la libertad de compartir. La idea del recorrido, además de llegar a las distintas ciudades, es ir trabajando los conceptos, problematizando las propuestas, deconstruyendo esas “soluciones” que ya se tienen enquistadas en las ideas y promover así la discusión y reconstrucción colectiva de alternativas.

Si quieres ver como es el Librebus por dentro, como es la experiencia y te animas, entonces date unos 30min para que veas este clip. Creo que si tenemos tiempo de ver una serie en tv, ver las noticias o ver una peli en casa, esta es una peli que no solo nutrirá tu intelecto sino tu alma, porque las experiencias de vida se deben compartir. No olvides de visitarlos en: http://librebus.org/

Para quienes no pueden ver el embeded de youtube, el link directo es: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqUXkC7Iu9I

For a lot of years, I have followed this event online.There was always amazing projects, ideas on this event. I live on the other side of the world and is really hard for me to attend. Flights from South America to Europe are really expensive. My crazy… Crazy friend Sirko (gnokii) created a donations page, where people can make donations.

If I have helped you once, so maybe you can help me this time. :)

Those who have already made a donation, there will be a special surprise for you on retribution. So what do you say… ready to help me attend LGM and let me bring that amazing knowledge and experiences back to
Latinamerica?

Here is what Gnokii wrote on Pledgie:

“Maybe you know that girl here. You know she does a lot for FLOSS, using GIMP, Inkscape and Blender. Its not that she makes only graphics for Fedora and a lot of othere FLOSS-projects or events. She also give her knowledge always to others, giving talks and workshops on events or producing screencasts.

She always wanted to see an FLOSS event in europe, so the Libre Graphics Meeting and LinuxWochen Vienna would be the right event for her.
There is only one problem, flights from south america to europe are really expensive. From Caracas to Vienna is mostly between 1500 and 1700 $, why 2500 then. So maybe we can pay the hotel also? ;)”

Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bOsE5TGeU0

I will try to make a weekly post about how is FUDcon planning going on. This will be the first time I organize an event where people from different countries and that’s pretty cool.

For those of you who don’t know what is FUDcon, is the Fedora Users and Developers Conference, a major free software event held in various regions around the world, usually annually per region. FUDCon is a combination of sessions, talks, workshops, and hackfests in which contributors work on specific initiatives. Topics include infrastructure, feature development, community building, general management and governance, marketing, testing and QA, packaging, etc. FUDCon is always free to attend for anyone in the world so if you’re near, come by :)

I can say that the first -real- planning week for me started right after I arrive to Venezuela from FUDCon Blacksburg. I had an amazing oportunity to watch closely to everything that needs to be done at FUDcons. Even if people sometimes didn’t saw me, I was usually taking notes and making weird plans at sessions, halls and even at the fireplace. Be able to see some FUDcons, and be close to the organizers gave me a different perspective, I’m really grateful for that.

Artwork, yes…

First thing I came up with was design (dohh…) since I know we need a logo that represent us as country. Our logo was created with the base FUDcon logo + 2 cliparts from openclipart.org (which I made some modifications to fit our needs). A Puerto Rican Cuatro (modify) and some Maracas, both from from Jeffryroldan. We are a tropical country and a very colorful one, so that’s why this is our logo :) – High-resolution PNG can be found here and SVG sources here.

Letters and more papers

One of the things that Organize events like FLISoL and others taught me was that, everyone needs a paper to sign or see. First, we need to have something to present the event to potential sponsors, because… things cost money. I used as base part of the letters from FLISoL and adapt them, so I don’t need to work too much on things I already have done. Is not ready, but feel free to take a look (might be in spanish right now, but I ask help to translate.team, so we can re-use it everytime we need to), is not complete since we still doesn’t know exactly what we need, and there are some items to check first, however, I’m sure is a good start.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Margarita2012/Organization/Sponsorship

Since I’m a designer, our brochure (or letters) will need covers and letterheads, so if you want to take a look click here and check them out: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Margarita2012/Organization#Artwork

Bills, payments and headaches

I think the chaos starts when you need to pay, or at that moment when you realize that you cannot buy the world. In order to know how much do we need, we must make a list to identify those items that need to be paid. In our case, the list is just starting. If you see that we are missing something, or you have an amazing idea, or just know a sponsor that can take care of this.. PLEASE let me know ASAP.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Margarita2012/Organization#Sponsorship_requests

First week, hotel, college and some potential sponsors are beign contact… work continues to bring you an amazing FUDcon full with knowledge, hard work and friends to spend an awesome weekend in Venezuela.

Note: Now you might be asking yourself: Why is she posting this in english and not spanish? Because i need -some- of our sponsors to know what are we doing in their native language :) If you want to read this in spanish, please link here

A tal fin, las diversas comunidades locales de software libre (en cada país/ciudad/localidad), organizan simultáneamente eventos en los que se instala, de manera gratuita y totalmente legal, software libre en las computadoras que llevan los asistentes. Además, en forma paralela, se ofrecen charlas, ponencias y talleres, sobre temáticas locales, nacionales y latinoamericanas en torno al Software Libre, en toda su gama de expresiones: artística, académica, empresarial y social.

En Venezuela, el FLISoL se estará celebrando el día sábado 28 de Abril al igual que en el resto de Latinoamérica. Si quieres ser parte del FLISoL bien sea como colaborador o como organizador, no olvides dar un vistazo a la wiki oficial:

http://flisol.info/FLISOL2012/Venezuela

Recuerda también que en Venezuela, los últimos 4 años hemos hecho un esfuerzo enorme en dar mayor exposición al evento, convirtiéndonos en bandera de difusión en todo el continente. Revisa eventualmente también todos los recursos que ponemos a tu disposición, y recuerda que esta servidora; quien no estará a cargo de Caracas este año, siempre estará ahí para darles una mano :)

Este año me enfocaré a nivel internacional en ayudar tanto con las tareas de diseño, publicidad, marketing y patrocinios internacionales; utilizando esa experiencia que fue llevar la batuta del FLISoL en Venezuela los últimos 4 años. Nuevamente, agradezco a todos el apoyo que siempre me han brindado :)

Fecha: 28 de Abril
Website: http://flisol.org.ve
twitter: @flisolve
Identi.ca: @flisolve
Flickr 2011: Flisol 2011

Our social live, or some part of it, happens inside a screen, and we are uses to help because we learn from someone who also took part of his/her time to show us how special Fedora community is.

But every fairy tale has his dark side… What happens when people doesn’t understand that is not a requirement to be 24/7 waiting for someone who needs help? Problem is’t them… We are!

I can only use my experience as base for this: I have been using Fedora for about 5 years now and i was one of those who spend hours reading what people had to say because “there was a big chance to learn something from them”.

Most of the time that’s what happens… But when you are near 15 hours on IRC you become the person who give answers and knows who can provide them in case you don’t know what to reply.

Slowly, we create a dependency on people and they get used to see us Always on IRC/Mail_list/Whatever and we also delay meals and other activities because “we can give a short reply and will help”.

On an ideal world we could live that way, but truth is that we cannot because we have family, jobs and some of us are seeking to have a life outside the Box.

Now that we know that is our fault we need to consider what to do. People is already used to this behavier and new contributors have learn that this is the way things work… So is not weird to see someone mad if we are not online. So, what can we do?

1) Would be nice to tell them to go to… But we cannot.
We need to stablish limits. add that kind of info on your wiki user page or run a calendar that you can share with people. Let them know that your time is partialy dedicated to Fedora.

2) interact beyond the chat: people wont understand what you do outside Fedora if you don’t let them know.
I’m not asking to twit what are you doing at the bathroom or how many drinks you had… But a couple of daily/weekly facts about your non-robotic life may work.

3) help hem to learn what you know instead link them to everything:
Isn’t nice when someone ask you “hey, which is the Fedora site URL?” … Seriously….
If you’re an troll try with www.lmgtfy.com or simply point him/her how to Google it, how to contact other contributors, how to analize their problems… Don’t create a dependency on your shoulders. Create leaders, mentors and creative people.

4) You’re a community member… use that!
If you’re a developer and think on ideas to decreasse the dependency of new users, then do something (like ask.fedora), if you’re a designer or marketing team member then create a campaign (like we will with videos.fedora) or if you have anything in your head.. please, tell us. The only way to apply is to act, doesn’t matter if you only have 10min to explain us your ideas or you have 3 days to develop it.

5) if anything works… Turn arround and help the next one.
Is as hard as it sounds. However, we are a free-to-join community and everyday people comes and goes. It hurts, but that’s how it works.

What to expect?
People may not change or react to this in a while, however, people will change at the end. If we not start changing what we believe is not ok, we might get used to what is wrong. Make people Change is almost imposible, but we can all learn to adapt.

We need to stop showing how much we know everytime we can and start pushing people to learn and teach what they can do… Teach them how to fish with their own TCP/IP cables.

We had so many interesting topics that we all the time look people running through the hallways trying to make it in time for other talks. Is kind of amazing to see people interested in learn and teach as much as possible just making FUDcon a special moment for everyone involved.

Just before lunch I had time to make a quick walk through Virginia Tech Campus and I must say that is just amazing, not also the structures, but also the way people take care of it. People here is really nice, so now I know why everyone loves Virginia :).

Evening was full of technical sessions where people was able to learn, teach and discuss topics that often are controversial or hard to deal through social networks, I believe that this is the mayor goal at FUDcons. On my side I was able to check a bit for Kdnlive tricks, Darktable trips with the most amazing photographer I have EVER meet, Russell (because I just realize that FOSS-photographers are different) and then a quick time for my small intervention about how make users and contributors cohexistence a bit more smooth.

Then fun came… FUDpub at an amazing place with amazing food. I play a bit of bowling… however… just a couple of minutes after arrive Markdude came to me with a HUGE snow ball and well… you might now understand why I don’t have FUDpub pictures because I just run as crazy to see finally Snow after so many years. I believe in Dharma, so for me this was the mayor payback from live… be nice worth it.

I wasn’t able to sleep too much because of the excitement and must say that thx to Russell and a quick lending from him of his flash+softbox I NEED one. I think Ruth is gonna like those pics I took. I believe I haven’t sleep at all looking through my window…. actually, is 7am and I’m just waiting to finish this post and run outside to keep the fun.

Today’s plans are for me: (just in case that anyone has an idea and please, ping me out through IRC, mail, twitter or alien signs)
* Work on STRONG ideas for a FUDcon website
* Finish as much as possible all FUDcon Venezuela information.
* play with snow…… is a work plan, right?
* try to go room by room asking people what they would like on our next release design, because even if we are designers, our work must like *them*.
* Work on how to bring more girls into Fedora…
* Work on a smoothly way to make users and contributors interact, so our dev people doesn’t need to take care of everything (develop and support) using our fedora people person resources.

That’s it… time for me to leave the comfortable Fireplace and go to our last FUDcon day.

Buenos amigos.
Una de las cosas que mas disfruto en cualquier evento es poder encontrarte con la gente con la que hablas casi todo el dia, siempre… con esos que se convierten en tu familia a pesar de las distancias y de las buenas y malas conexiones. Es aun mejor cuando te encuentras con amigos de otros paises porque sabes que seran pocas las veces que tendras oportunidad de pasar un excelente rato con ellos. Son esos momentos en los que te das cuenta de que la tecnologia es un ecosistema completo en el que una sociedad puede surgir por completo.

Conocimiento, tecnologia y aprendizaje.
Venir a un FUDcon es un cambio completo a lo que estamos acostumbrados. Las charlas, talleres y demas actividades surgen en medio de un compendio de propuestas que siempre se hacen con previo aviso, pero se decide su ubicacion en el momento. En esta oportunidad he intentado ayudar con la logistica, lo cual me ha dado la oportunidad de comenzar una guia para el FUDcon que en Venezuela en el mes de Junio.

Pude dar mi charla en conjunto a Jared sobre “como hacer que la gent entienda que no somos empleados ni esclavos de Fedora y tenemos vida social” y terminar de preparar todo para mi taller de Blender. Asi mismo, asisti a la sesion de Drupal y a la reunion del Board, la cual segun los mismos miembros fue bastante productiva.

Creo que lo mejor del dia es que a la final pude tener un encuentro en el que comprendi mejor las diferentes necesidades entre un usuario y un colaborador (o potencial colaborador) y la forma en la que podemos ayudarlos cuando tienen preguntas. Sin embargo, es interesante conocer que en un principio, para los colaboradores que ya tienen tiempo en el equipo, ayudar usualmente tiende hacia lo tecnic y algunos no siempre necesitan la respuesta mas alocada. Es por eso que uno de los proyectos que comenzare con algunos amigos sera crear un escalon adicional en el que los usuarios que solo quieren ser usuarios puedan conseuir la informacion que necesitan sin necesidad de pasar por canales de IRC, cosas muy tecnicas y otras cosas que los hacen sentir incomodos (tanto a ellos como a nosotros).

Creo que lo importante luego de esta charla es saber que, cada persona es diferente, y aunque somos una comunidad muy grande, siempre hay una orma de personalizar las cosas para que sean mucho mas placenteras para una mayor cantidad de personas. Siempre la idea de Fedora es hacer que las cosas avancen y meoren en orden de hacer que los involucrados en este proyecto tengan la oportunidad de ayudar, aprender y disfrutar :).

Blacksburg: Una ciudad de pelicula
En el anterior FUDcon en Tempe quede impactada culturalmene por la diferencia que hay entre los paises, sin embargo, debo decir que Blacksburg (y las ciudades cercanas) son increiblemente hermosas. Es estar en el campo con las casas de madera, la gente que sabe que quieres comer en los restaurantes al estilo de los 80′s… pasear por las calles de Blacksburg es una excelente experiencia que cualquier persona que venga a USA debe tener.

Para ir a la galeria de fotos solo haz click en la siguiente imagen.

Y como bono.. John Dulaney amenizando la velada con su musica :)