As a community leader, it is important to identify what motivates the individuals that participates in a community – to identify what makes them tick – and work to not lose what makes that individual motivated to keep contributing to the group towards a common goal. When we expect everyone to be motivated by the same thing or when we ignore looking for what motivates people we eventually find members resigning or burning out.

Understanding that each type of interest group can have a common motivating factor is the key that will make things move ahead. Let’s look at some easy examples:

* As a designer, occasionally receiving a t-shirt, stickers or part of the artwork that you have created will keep you motivated to keep creating artwork.

* Programmers/hackers will feel motivated (and invite friends too) if we provide pizzas and soda for a group hack night (Fedora Activity Day)

* Marketing people will feel motivated if they have resources to create amazing ideas to spread technology.

In countries with few resources or places where Red Hat support is not that easy to get these small details can make a big difference. Sometimes, we think that this is mostly a *money* issue, and while sometimes it is, we often find that if we don’t know or explore how to spend these resources to make a difference, then we are just wasting them.

The same way a hacker designs a piece of software, or a designer does a mock-up, or a writer creates documentation, we can make a plan to keep people motivated. But our lack of patience is our own worst enemy. All of us have amazing ideas and our leaders tell us to *just do it*. Sometimes it is easy, however, we are talking about a worldwide community here and we need to plan, organize and be prepared to turn failures into achievements. How do we prepare to motivate the world?

Even if we are a horizontal organization, we can do a pyramidal structure to determine the motivating factors of our community. Let’s start with the biggest motivating factor:

Freedom. As FLOSS users, our main motivation is to create/use/spread technology. We all agree on that.

Another factor is to determine what drives (motivates) people to want to be members of the team. Design, Program, Translation, Documentation, QA, Marketing and many more. There are teams where people join trying to learn, teach or just show/use their skills. Even if people inside each team are different, they have some common goals that can be easily determined. Designers are always trying to send a message, telling a story or turning complicated ideas into *easy to see* graphical stories. Translators love to learn different languages and make things readable for their local teams. Hackers love to hack, create and modify things – they have an awesome purpose and create/improve new tools that will make someones life easier (sometimes even their own). Each team has their key tasks that we can work with. However, we need to remember that each team consists of people with different language skills, cultural backgrounds and therefore contributes in different ways.

There is a third motivation factor – localization. If you ask someone from North America and someone from Latin American, how easy is to get marketing goodies, you will not get the same answer. If you ask someone from Asia or Europe (for instance) how easy is to use Social Networks to spread knowledge you will get different answers. Determining each region’s features is also important. Different languages, currency, customs, designs, ideas, programs and many more things, can seem really complicated, but it is just a matter of time and dedication.

From my perspective (not perfect), as long people see that we are interested in how to make everything work better and easier, they will also be more interested in contributing. We give love to Fedora and other FLOSS projects. The same way people expect to receive *something* even if they are too humble to say *NO, I’m ok this way*. I’m not only referring to receiving money, trips or goodies, I’m talking about comments, visits to their blogs, help with packages and with events, potential employees/employers and a lot of things that can be acquired inside such a diverse membership. Things are out there, but ask yourself this: “Are we looking to see what is needed to be improved or are we just sitting at our computers expecting the problems get resolved by other peoples ideas?”- I’m sorry, but I’m not the kind of person that likes to wait, maybe that’s why some think that I’m too annoying and others think that I push too much. Either way, this is what makes me happy.

A couple of days ago, a friend asked me about my perspectives on the Fedora project and if I think that things can get better. For me it is easy to see where things need to fit to make things work better, but like most people we have a real life outside the team. Our time to spend on the project is limited. Fedora or FLOSS projects in general and life itself is a huge puzzle we all struggle with. The pieces has always been there, either they are being shaped by your experiences, knowledge and people but is also shaped by what people around you support. What’s funny is that we always stress about missing pieces or not finding the right ones. Our lack of patience makes us feel frustrated, (let me remind you), you don’t have a unique puzzle… There is someone out there that have a couple of pieces that will fit yours, and if you’re lucky enough, there will be more than one.

Let me use the example of the Fedora video project that I’m part of now. Fedora has been talking and pushing video projects since 2009, however, every couple of months things just stop. Thanks to a couple of really pushing guys, we are now about to start again the video projects but with a different perspective. Is this project going to work? I have no idea! But, we need to at least *try*. Every time a contributor tell us an amazing idea and we say *no, you can’t do that because we already tried it and it didn’t work*, you may be dumping a potential puzzle piece. Sometimes, we are so stubborn and believe that we are *the masters of the world* just because we have tried it and failed. We may be able to be the piece for someone else’s puzzle. A *no* is not an option anymore when you open your eyes to life… Failure is a fact of life – it happens. What can we do when we have been trying for some years and yet we did not find a solution? You have two options, and even though I’m speaking only about FLOSS projects, please consider applying this to your own life:

1.- The perseverance way: You can keep trying, until you actually succeed, or
2.- The patient way: You can document and leave everything as explained as possible (even the ugly parts) so other people can continue your work someday.

Life is about patience and perseverance. I have even thought about getting a tattoo saying that. This saying *does not* mean that you need to have both, I’m not as patient as I would like, but life is about balance and believe me: I’m sure that there is a patient/perseverance person out there that will bring *balance to your force*. Life IS about never giving up – NEVER. If you ask me why did I write this? Maybe just because the same user that I talk about this has encouraged me to do a blog post. Is my brain normal? NO! And I’m happy with that. Do we/I/You have a way to solve problems? YES! But do it. If someone says *NO* to you, ask him/her to explain why. Help save us my learning from your experience and to avoid the same mistakes. Even if we do, it still might show us a different way that our friends may have not seen.

Now, here comes the fun question: What to do now that we have a different perspective? Act, plan and put it *into* practice. From my point of view, our community needs a bit more interest/focus on their contributors and not quite so much about the projects, because at the end, projects are nothing without people. I truly believe that things are going fantastic, but we can always improve on *everything*. What if we take those ideas that we have (because I’m sure everyone have amazing ideas), express them on our blogs, mailing-lists and whatever comes to our mind, and encourage people to make them happen? Do it as a test, as people need a push (motivation) sometimes. We also need it but it will never happen unless you TALK!.

This will be a general talk about:

• How to join the Ambassadors program
• Steps to fullfill before open a trac tickets
• How to contact and interact with your mentor
• What to do once you are aproved
• What will Fedora expect from you once you’re an Ambassadors
• Tips to be the best ambassador

When: Friday at click here to know your time
Where: Google Hangout gplus.to/tatica
Language: English (first 30min) / Spanish (second 30min)

I didn’t expect this sucess, however, I embrace it. Maybe our community just need to use tools that aproach them and give them an oportunity to give faces to names and nicks. Last night was a clear example of this, where we had 21 people having an EXTRAORDINARY hangout like I had never seen… I can be completely honest and say that was as productive as a FUDcon (maybe someone can jump with an online FAD? :D )

I didn’t had a prepared conference for this time, since mostly I wanted to know how has been for Amber Graner and Selena Deckelmann to be FOSS contributors, their experience, ideas and feedback; however, everything took a different direction before and after that conversation that the 3 of us had. I need to say THANK YOU SO VERY VERY MUCH (yes, awful sentence) specilly to our amazing invited, Amber and Selena, who show us a lot of reasons to be part of FOSS communities, to keep learning, to keep teaching… and to keep having fun! but also I want to thank to the rest of the crew that join us: Mark Terranova, Alejandro Perez, Hector Alonso Gonzalez Mata, Hedayet Mabrook, Clint Savage, Pat Mcgovern, Carlos Reges, Nemecis Rojas, John Dulaney, Vinil V. Menon, Abdel Gadiel Martinez Lassonde, Oliver Rivas, Ben Williams, Miguel Alvarado, Garry Elliott, Click Mapa, Sandeep Pothuganti, Junior Paz, Javy Martinez and Fabrizzio Moreno

Now, lets make a list of interesting things that we talk about and let me show you my random notes. Please, know that this is the *crude product* comming out from my head, some of this points (I hope all) will end up beign applied or put into practice. This is not a list of goals (maybe is) but consider ir as one of the best Feedbacks and brainstorms online ever! :P

= Geeks at FOSS =

• * Weird names are AWESOME… but please, make sure to have an audio file with a proper pronunciation – Thank you.
• * ask about your friends life… they will be happy to share some details with you so you are not just a robot.

= Mentors =

• * Fedora has guides for everything, but not to be a mentor (check on this)
• * Has to know well how community works
• * Need to have amazing people skills, not enough just to be an ambassador

= Ambassadors =

• * Must know how to organize an event, learn about logistics, marketing and people skills
• * Propose talks for events that you don’t organize
• * Try to take fedora to non-fedora places, events and activities
• * To be an ambassador you need to have good ideas, but also work on turn them into goals, not only expect that someone will do it for you (or if you can’t, please, make if happen)
• * Every member of Fedora IS an ambassador

= Fedora a better place =

• * more testers
• * Better websites or way to find info at our websites
• * More brainstorming, less information meetings… push feedback
• * Focus on fulfill ideas, not only give them.
• * Show Fedora with more serious marketing (product)
• * Help tech people to show themselves more professionals and less hippies
• * Marketing are focusing on a few events… what happen with the small events and we need to be and are not fedora specifics
• * We need more marketing outside events… if we have 2.000.000 linux users on a country and we only spread fedora on an 200 people event.. we are waisting 1.800.000 potential contributors.
• * Daily marketing MATTERS
• * Passion at events and focused on fun. Gather together for the fun, not by the tittle
• * Don’t join the community expecting to get a job, join it because the fun and with fun, might come a work.
• * Curiosity
• * Explore and expand what you can do, not what you cannot or don’t know how to do
• * Whatever your motivation is… keep being motivated
• * Encourage people to make money with FOSS
• * Opensource is about friends… so find the right ones and those that make you feel a rockstar and motivate you

= Questions for Selena and Amber =

• * Are you a girl? or just a robot?
• * How is to be a community person for you?
• * What are your tasks on Free and Open source community?
• * Which is the best experience you can remember being a community leader?

= FUDCon Panama=

• * Bring a key people of each team available to allow new contributors to get sponsorship and contribute without have to wait after-event.
• * show the simplicity of contribute to fedora with people examples.

So PLEASE, if you have any further idea, or you join the conversation but you didn’t talk… feel free to add any comment. We need your ideas and feedback in order to make stronger proposals that can actually change things. Hope you tomorrow night for our second hangout, this will be about “how to be a better ambassador” (30min english, 30min spanish)“

I have become a VideoConferences addict, for many reasons (and to practice my english)! Talking is easier sometimes than writing, but problem is… where are logs? The best thing we can do is record them. Most of the time we plan to let as many people as want to join us… Let me invite you to our weekly videoconferences.

Now comes reality… I don’t think we will be able to set up an specific date/time for videoconferences. People from all over the world might be interested to join. I will try to use Twitter, blog post or whatever is on my hands to keep people informed. Also, if you’re interested in having a videoconference about a specific topic, let me know. Our next videoconferences will be these:

Geeks at FOSS

Today I will meet with Selena Deckelmann and Amber Graner General talk about tech experiences, Cultural shocks on IT fields, what it is like to be a girl working in FOSS communities and what can be done… sharing our ASCII coffees :)
When: TODAY! at click in here to check your time
Where: Google Hangout gplus.to/tatica
Language: English

How to be a Fedora Ambassador

General talk about how to join the Ambassadors program, steps to fullfill before open a trac tickets, how to contact and interact with your mentor and what to do once you are aproved. What will Fedora expect from you once you’re an Ambassadors and tips to be the best one.
When: Friday at click here to know your time
Where: Google Hangout gplus.to/tatica
Language: English (first 30min) / Spanish (second 30min)

Today I had an interesting chat with a contributor that, I just found out, was a lady (after being helping her for about a month or so) we talk about, why are so few women in FOSS projects? I guess this is the question we all made to ourselves (as woman) and many guys do too. I start to point out things that I believe are the main reasons and I would like to share them with you:

The Comparison

I have meet a lot of women who actually code amazing things. Problem are comparisons: “That girl can code as good as a guy” or “She’s almost as good as any of us(guys)”. And we as women do that too sometimes: “I’m as good as any man can be” or “I can code anything that a man can code”.

The Emo-Side

Everyone gets hurt, everyone cries, everyone has bad moments… don’t use that to get more sympathy. If you show everytime that you’re beign disturbed that you need them to stop because you’re a girl, then you’re giving people the right to just keep doing it.

You ARE a girl, girls don’t do that

Since we were born we got people telling us what to do and which kind of things a woman was not supose to do. Is amazing to see that many of the geek ladies I have meet didn’t had this kind of parents, Most were fully support to do anything they wanted to.

You’re a girl, why don’t you recruit more?

WRONG! I sometimes ask myself… is there a special code that girls have or can use to recruit only girls? a secret society that I don’t know about? From all the women I have meet I think over 80% were recruit by guys. Yes, me too.

I don’t know any other geek girl

WUT? I could name so many amazing women that I have the honor to meet, to work with and to follow on their amazing blogs that you would be amazed. Name them all might be imposible, and naming just a few would be not fair, however, let me tell you that maybe the contributor that helped you last time with your code issue was a lady, or the t-shirt you’re wearing was designed by a lady, or the tutorial that you’re following was written or translated by a lady.

All those AMAZING photos thx to CC licences :D Kodomut on flickr

Even if I know is a really boring thing to do, let me encourage you to take some minutes to explain why you need to do it:

If you want something, people need to know who the hell are you!

If you’re interested on request media, swags, attend to events or anything… be sure that people will ask who are you? what have you done so far? what are you doing now? and anything that they can come up with. We are not asking you to write when do you brush your hair and how many sock wear daily, but a couple of details about things you like in FOSS and project you’re in can help.

Is there a human behind that nick?

We would like to know your real name and if there is a way to contact you. Doesn’t matter if you rather a mail, twitter, fb or smoke signal… please, provide us some way to get in touch and make things happen.

Now, cool thing about wiki is that anyone can do whatever they want (but please make it readable), however I know that there is lazy people that simply doesn’t want to get involved with complicated styles (even if they like them)… so let me provide some ideas and you can choose any you like:

• Yes, you can use a template! Even if isn’t easier, is the one I use. just click on edit and copy content, and then just add your information following the info-text in your own page. DO NOT EDIT THIS ONE plis plis plis. Follow this link to see my template. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/Template-User
• Yes… if you’re too lazy I can do it for you… but make my job easier. Please follow this link, complete the info and send it to me through mail. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/Template-User-Mail

Even if this wasn’t the one I was thinking on buy, was the best option. We went to so many stores that I was really driving crazy, however, worth it. I had saves for this since last year, because if you think on buy this kind of electronics in my country is completely insane (prices are +500%).

Now I can say that I have a *monster* at home where I can start to render my blender videos again and do all the crazy stuff I like to do :D. Sadly, now I have to wait a bit more to use it since where I’m living now only has enough space for me to… sleep… but at least I have weekends to play with it at my grandparents home :D

If you´re needing one… the thermaltake TR2 600w (W0388RU) is a good choice :) Here you can read all tech specifications

Learn:

There is NO WAY you can be on ANY FOSS community or group if you are not willing to learn. Life itself is a learning journey that will take you to unknown places where you might get amazed. Some people join FOSS communities thinking that know everything, but soon they realize that there is no way you can know everything, and you will always learn something new, just need to keep your mind open :)

Teach:

Be a FOSS contributor is be a student and a teacher. Open Source way teach us that what we learn must be teach because you don’t know where is that next contributor that might change the source code of your world. Teach however isn’t easy. You must be patient, perseverant and if non of those work… friendly to send them to other teacher. We never say no, there is always an answer for everything.

Help:

Help people is what we do. We get up everyday and turn on our pc (some just never go off) and try to make someone life easier, either with code, design or translations, each one of us help everyday to make Open Source better. If you’re not a *people person* you can always help doing something else. I’m sure people will apreciate.

Enjoy:

At the end.. you will make friends, will find people to chat every single day, you will be able to learn different languages and maybe travel to other countries. You will find a new image that bring a smile to your face or a code line that will make you breath. Every day FOSS makes people life easier and our goal as contributors is enjoy this process. Is everything perfect? No, but like life, every single day counts.

What are you waiting to join a FOSS community? There are a lot of places where you can make a difference… just give yourself a chance :) Now… help me to spread some love! (click on each to get a full size or multiple sizes.)

and some banners :) (right click to save banner images.)

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