If an Ambassador Emeritus desires to become active again, they may be added to the ambassadors group again by contacting FAmA.

Just curious, what criteria is considered for someone to be added back again? For example, could I say "I am active again", not attend any event for a year, and still be considered active?

I think so? I think we decided to not make people have to justify their activity level, i.e. I did X, Y & Z this year, as that is hard to quantify, but just to ask people if they are active or not. Thus I think my proposal would be that yes, they can just say they are active again, although I could be persuaded to change my mind. Thoughts?

I think will be nice, so we can count on who are currently active.
But, if if in emeriti state, but like to contribute in a single event or something alike, should be welcome.

@lin, sure, the proposal doesn't means that cannot do anything, just that it will be not counted as "active" but you can attend any especific event, or even ask for funds if needed.

@nb, @jflory7 I think that maybe not "justify" the activity.

I will explain my point: as @lin said, being emeriti doesn't means that will never attend an event or ask for funds or anything, it will only allow us to know how many real active people are. We need to be really clear about this: "You, Emeriti, don't need to require to be active to request funds or support for one event, you will need to require to be active if you're going yo be really active: attend meetings, vote in decisions, and more"

Does that make sense?

I will explain my point: as @lin said, being emeriti doesn't means that will never attend an event or ask for funds or anything, it will only allow us to know how many real active people are. We need to be really clear about this: "You, Emeriti, don't need to require to be active to request funds or support for one event, you will need to require to be active if you're going yo be really active: attend meetings, vote in decisions, and more"

Given how things are working these days, what does being an active ambassador mean? Above, @x3mboy suggests it means attending meetings and voting on decisions. The funding decisions are now made by the Mindshare team with input from the project as a whole. I am not sure what meetings/decisions still are being made by ambassadors. what are they?

In the past, ambassadors were the only people trusted to do our events. We've made it clear in this ticket and in practice that we trust people to run events in their area of expertise. Today we reference getting an ambassadors help with large proposals. I suspect we could drop that language and not change anything negatively. A non-ambassador making a large proposal is not inherently bad. An ambassador making a large proposal is not inherently good. We would judge these each on their individual merits, aiui.

@x3mboy said make sense. There is no meetings any more, so to qualify who is active is more difficult, since no decisions are made by the team any more.
I think is the willing that will be qualify if still ative or not. So just asking once a year is ok.

@lin @x3mboy @nb can you talk about bit more about what qualifies someone as an ambassador?

Since I don't consider myself an ambassador anymore, I'm not sure. I think it could be related to: Alive in the ML (but ML at least in my region is kind of dead), alive in the correspondent IRC channels or in the global IRC Ambassadors' channel, do more than 1 event per year.

For this matter event could be: a talk, a booth, an interview, a FAD

That's all on the top of my head

Actually it doesn't.

Now that we are talking about this, an ambassador should know the project, not only how to install the distro, but know about the labs, the spins, the governance on the project, the objectives, both current and recently achieved, the subprojects, the mission statement, the point where the Fedora Program is (even if it's only via taskotron), and know about how to join, even if it's only referring people to the Join team.

Maybe I'm wrong, but my general sense it's that these topics are vastly unknown among ambys.

@x3mboy How would one demonstrate that they knew these things and "verify" they are an ambassador? What does it mean to be an ambassador really? For example, if someone wanted to represent us at a GoLang event, I am less worried that they know about our spins than that they understand Go and how Fedora interfaces with it. A seasoned Go developer who wants to talk about how Fedora IoT is the best Go deployment device would get a huge vote of support for me from Mindshare.

I understand your point.

If we look at the definition of Ambassador you will have this:

Ambassadors are the representatives of Fedora. Ambassadors ensure the public understand Fedora's principles and the work that Fedora is doing. Additionally Ambassadors are responsible for helping to grow the contributor base, and to act as a liaison between other FLOSS projects and the Fedora community.

And also, in our own words:

• Show a basic level of knowledge about Fedora and its key marketing messages (as shown through a mentorship program). Know the teams, subprojects, working groups, and special interest groups, to help guide new collaborators to areas of interest.
• Lead public-facing events with a Fedora presence, and request reasonable funds to support such events. Be able to work in a Fedora booth and both represent the Fedora community, but also demonstrate Fedora in a way that attracts new users and contributors to the Fedora Project.
• Be available for contact from new users and contributors who need help getting started in Fedora.
• Understand Fedora's limited resources (volunteer attention, time, and budget) and uses them efficiently and effectively.
• Communicate with the rest of the community, and stay current on developments in Fedora

Also in that list we prepare a list of new functions, so for your example, I will consider that person an Advocate . Also, we discuss largely this, and the idea is not to make everyone that can give a talk the role of Ambassador. IIRC, we said that the idea should be to make the process easier to that person, for example, find an ambassador to "represent it", that will allow also to Ambassadors to ask for an expert on any topic inside the topic to attend and give a talk, or come directly an allow him/her to open a ticket directly in Mindshare (Low hanging fruit).

Sorry for the super long post. My point was to create a list of things that an Ambassador "Should be/know", but that's not the intention of this ticket.

Going on topic again, If we are going to have an Emeriti category, and it's opt-in, is because we trust our Ambassadors, so I think that it should be enough to the person to raise its hand and say "I'm active again" in its own terms. Does it make sense?

Traditionally, one or more long-term ambassadors from each region was appointed as a "mentor", and new ambassadors would have to spend time with their mentor showing that they understood the basics of what it takes to be an ambassador, what the expectations from Fedora are, how to ask for event support, how to get reimbursed, etc.

This was put into place to avoid the problem (or at least the perceived problem) of people who wanted the title or just wanted Fedora funding, but wasn't invested in the project even enough to understand the responsibilities and expectations for Ambassadors.

@jsmith we seem to be doing the "vetting" work required on funding requests via mindshare decision making and not titles granted via regional processes.

What does the title signify now?

In today's Mindshare meeting, it was suggested to block this ticket on #145.

+1 to block this on #145

+1

+1 to block in favor of resolve #145 first

This is an interesting task.

What does ambassadors do? As read on the mailing list we don't all agree with the same definition. Which probably leads to #145
What is the meaning of beeing an active ambassador? By beeing active, what power do we have?

I am an inactive mentor. And I can't be active anymore because for several years I've been too far from the fedora community and its development. It is moving too fast (which is really good). I do not know all the internals in the Fedora Project anymore. (I don't know anything about mindshare, only FamSco for example or FudCon…)

And in a certain way, I am an inactive ambassador. Inactive because I am no longer organizing events. Or I am not really in touch with local communities.
But I am still a proud Fedora user and time to time contributor. I have to stick the Fedora logo everywhere and promote the Project to external GNU/Linux users.
I still know the Fedora missions and fundations, being able to help interrested people to start contributing. I don't know the "how" (Hey Pagure, what a wonderful thing that I never really used!) but I certainly know "how to start" and the "what".

I still read many mailing lists. I would read the reminder "please answer to stay active". Would I click on that link? probably not. But that process won't work if I click on that to "stay active".
I have been active in docs, L10n, I18n, websites, infra (only for websites), amba… If you ask any active people on those groups they won't recognize me as "active". They would be right.
Labelling people/account is only necessary when we need to remove access right. That is definitely needed and I am probably not the only FAS account to "clean". Being a member of the Fedora community? Yes, for life. Having power without being active, no never.

Do this kind of task apply for other groups? I have been the French L10n coordinator for years and I am not active there anymore. I do read mailing list and answer time to times. I still appear as "active translator" (even coordinator at least until recently under zanata...) on the translations tools.
I don't want to interfer with active people like Jean-Baptiste (jibecfed) but its really hard to close all doors by yourself when you feel the need to continue contributing (even when you don't).
I were active and that time defined me.
On the other side, going in every applications (which might become obsolete, like Transifex) to switch the status to inactive or ask the actual maintainer to drop your maintainer access is not really possible, for someone already "inactive".

That being said, what is the right way to became "inactive"? Everyday I feel the need to mark me as inactive but I only know two axes: mentorship programs and L10n online tool (and mailing list).
We used to have FAS group, but it is not deeply linked in every groups that would only apply for certain access.

I don't want to threat my case, but I would like you to understand that being "inactive" is not really simple. Not sure to really help you though, but being inactive without being absent is hard!

Once again, thanks all for your hard work!

This has been addressed in the revamp initiative and we can close it for now.