Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-ambassadors (190 mails)

["Bryen M. Yunashko" <suserocks@xxxxxxxxx>]

There are some inherent problems with this proposal, so I'll try to make
it short and bullet point the issues:

1.  What you are proposing is to promote the SLE product line and its
related certifications.  This isn't right as it is not who we are.  We
are openSUSE not SLE.  They have their own well-paid marketing team to
handle this.  To expect openSUSE Ambassadors to work for free promoting
a product line that is not openSUSE is asking our ambassadors way too
much.

2.  I don't see Novell agreeing to this because this is a *very*
expensive proposition.  If you've been involved with Novell's training
and certification program over the last 30 years as I have been, you'd
know that this is not cheap to create and deliver.   The test exam is
$400 per try.  (Or it was when I took it a while ago.)  

3.  Novell's training partners would scream bloody murder that Novell
would give away the farm by giving such free incentives to openSUSE for
no direct benefit to other parties.  This is the livelihood of many
certified Novell instructors and authorized education centers and to
take away a main revenue stream like that...  it won't fly.  Authorized
centers have already been complaining over the years that Novell gives
away too much.  This would add insult to injury.

4.  As i stated in #1, this is not an openSUSE area.  And as such, while
many of our community are interested in openSUSE and in SLE, not all
are.  This is not an incentive that covers the full wide base of
ambassador enticements.  I'm all for creating a nice incentive, but this
isn't the one.   This would create an end-run for people who are looking
for a free way to get certified and we would have to screen our
ambassador program more carefully to ensure such ambassadors really are
here to represent openSUSE and have earned such incentive.   That means
increased management overhead on our part and we just don't have the
time to deal with that.  I don't want to see an ambassador program where
people sign up just so they can get free certiication and then disappear
after that.  People should be ambassadors because they're passionate
about openSUSE, not for the freebies.

I'm concerned that we're losing the focus of what openSUSE means, within
our ambassador program.   Chuck rightly points out some of the failings
we are facing in an earlier posting on this thread.   I also had a
discussion with some members of the welcoming team yesterday to try to
reorganize the team approach so that openSUSE has a better understanding
of what the Project means and represents.   The message is growing
elsewhere in our community but seems to be failing within the ambassador
program.   

Let's focus on that first before we start thinking about building up
incentive porgrams.

Bryen M Yunashko

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