Good questions, Kostas... I will attempt to answer below: On Thu, 2011-07-28 at 10:43 +0300, Kostas Koudaras wrote:

Well I have like 2.000 questions ;-) I will start with a few that might answer many other questions.

1) When this program starts? If it already started we are a bit late for the first deadline, should we arrange an ambassador meeting to decide which events we will attend until the 31 of October?

This program starts immediately. Obviously we received approval *after* the July 1 theoretical deadline for the upcoming August 1 quarter. But that is okay, go ahead and do your best. We fully expect some trial-and-error in this process as it is a new process and we want to empower you to decide how best to proceed.

2) Do we have a list of events that ambassadors MUST attend? We probably need to create a list in the wiki with dates of future events until May of 2012,right?

The list of *Must* attend is something the team should come up with. As Ambassadors, you are the experts of your regions and can clearly identify what is happening in your area. From time to time, Jos and I might step in to say "What about this one?" What impacts how you decide would be based on different criteria, including but not only: - Is there anyone in the region who can go? - What are the costs to go? - What are the goals and benefits of attending I would not make May of 2012 a "hard" limit of the list you will create on a list. It should be a living and breathing list that always evolves over time. For example, some events that are important don't determine their dates until few months before the event. It's not always easy to know for sure when it will be.

3) Priority is a great subject here, how do the team define who ambassador has priority on going to events?

Priority should be built through consensus of the ambassador team based on various factors and strategy that you develop. Now, this is only my opinion, as I don't want to *tell* you what to do. We believe the Ambassadors have the ability to determine best practices. But if you take a look at our history, the past year has seen growth in regions such as Brazil, Greece, India and the Western United States. The Ambassador team should try to look at new regions each year and see where there is the best potential for growth. There are many regions that need more growth, such as Asia for example. The purpose of this program is to help you strengthen growth in existing areas as well as new areas. This is not a one-person job to determine that because no one person knows all the things happening around the world. Communication and collaboration is key here. Mentoring is also key, the more we mentor ambassadors and help them to get to places, the stronger we will be.

4) I suppose for an ambassador to attend on an event he/she should apply for a talk about the community, right? Can ambassadors attend events that won't be able to give a talk?

Giving a talk is always good. But it is not always the main factor. Some ambassadors don't give good talks but have good networking skills. The main key, in my opinion, is to provide good openSUSE visibility at events. And you're right, some events don't have talks. For example, last weekend was the Community Leadership Summit in Portland, Oregon. That was an unconference, therefore no talks, but awesome networking opportunities. My suggestion is, if you create a form for ambassadors to apply for funds, you should include two questions: "Why should you go?" and "What do you plan to do there?" I also want to emphasize that we should not focus only on sending experts. We want to encourage those who want to promote openSUSE but have never done it before to develop those skills to become experts. And you cannot be an expert until you have at least done it once before. Right? :-)

5) Timing is also another great subject, those who apply earlier for an event have priority over others?

Again, that's a strategic determination you will need to make as a team. For example, maybe there is an event with 10,000 attendees that you agree openSUSE must be at. Should we give priority to the person who applied for funding to a 150-person event because that person applied earlier? Depends on your agreement of what is important for that quarter. Sometimes a 10,000 person event is not as beneficial as a smaller event. You need to look at the focus and purpose of that event. For example, we recently decided not to spend money at OSCON because the focus isn't that well-related to openSUSE and we can use the funds for other things.

6) If we have to choose among 3 local events(that are cheaper) versus 1 global event, that have the same cost, what do we choose?

See my answer in #5. However, if we see some really important benefits to doing both, then we can make the case for Jos to look for additional funding for that particular case. Again, knowing our list of events as long in advance as possible helps to make it easier for Jos to find that money. Last minute asking doesn't help. :-) Jos is committed to helping you do your job any way he can, and the easier we make it for him to plan for it, the better.

7) If one quarter we have fewer events and we don't spend the whole budget can we use those money on the next quarter?

Try as hard as you can to find more events if you can! :-) But, in the past, under Novell, the rule was we had to spend the money fully for each quarter or lose it. The rules are different under Attachmate, and I'm not sure how it works exactly. Jos can answer this better than I can. I believe if we collaborate and work hard to reach out to as many potential ambassadors, we won't have trouble spending this money. Part of the reason we have approval for this program is because we see that investment and growth paid off in the regions I mentioned before. So always make sure we hit the $5,000 mark so we can be sure that next year we continue to receive those funds from Attachmate/SUSE.

8) Are registration fee's included and is it possible for SUSE to give ambassadors (if available) free access on events so that the whole event will cost less?

This program is specifically for travel and hotel expenses. Materials and other related event expenses are considered separate. Jos, can you step in here and give your assessment how we would handle this?

1992 questions left for later ;-)

2011/7/28 Bryen M. Yunashko <suserocks@bryen.com>:

...

Dear awesome Ambassadors and Marketeers,

We are very excited to announce a new program for our Ambassadors to be able to travel to important events in their regions and promote openSUSE. Over the past few months, Jos and I lobbied and recently received approval from Attachmate to create this program. Each quarter, the Ambassador Team will be allowed to reimburse up to $5,000 (USD) for transportation/hotel expenses.

How it works:

* At least one month prior to the start of each quarter, ambassadors discuss and make a proposal for expenses to events and other promotion opportunities globally.

* The Ambassadors will determine the long term event strategy; deciding which events should be supported with these funds. Jos and I will provide any advice or encouragement needed throughout the process.

* Jos has final approval of any expenses. Ambassadors will be reimbursed up to 80% of their personal expenses.

* Each quarter is as follows: August 1 - October 31 (Proposal Deadline - July 1) November 1 - Jan 31 (Proposal Deadline - October 1) February 1 - April 30 (Proposal Deadline - Jan 1) May 1 - July 31 (Proposal Deadline - April 1)

Why we are doing this?

We have two purposes here:

A) Tto empower the Ambassador Team to strategically develop a plan of action and determine for itself where it can make the most successes.

B) To develop a long-term strategy and schedule. This will improve the flow of funding in a quick manner and also help us to determine what materials and other preparations are needed for the entire year.

While this is a quarterly program, we encourage the Ambassadors to think long term (up to 1 year) and identify as many potential events globally. This will help us to better allocate our limited resources. (For example, we are already out of Promo DVDs currently. Long-term planning would help us better anticipate our printing needs.) It will be up to you to determine how best to discuss/document/propose actions.

Thanks and feel free to ask any questions you may have!

Bryen M Yunashko openSUSE Marketing Team

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Kostas 'Warlordfff' Koudaras

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On Thu, 2011-07-28 at 23:23 +0200, jdd wrote:

Le 28/07/2011 20:36, Bryen M. Yunashko a écrit :

...

The list of *Must* attend is something the team should come up with. As Ambassadors, you are the experts of your regions and can clearly identify what is happening in your area.

Ambassadors that don't have yet experience in attending meeting should go as near as possible to get some experience.

Others (just a bit more experienced, not old timers) can prepare talks about openSUSE and propose them to the organiser. Often, if accepted, they will get some refund for travel from organiser, openSUSE could add some.

That is a determination that you, as a team, can come up with. We are giving the team the ability to self-evaluate what works best.

we probably have to make priority for international events in continent locations (aka fosdem and OSC for Europe, for example), but for more local ones, there are not so many AFAIK and the local team should be able to choose the best :-)

may be, for example, some regions should have some choosen meeting to allow local ambassadors to meet each other. Work is much better when people know themselve physically :-)

Absolutely. And we see things like that happening in Greece and Brazil already. Let's build upon that experience. Also, I want to mention that OSC (openSUSE Conference) is not part of this fund. We have separate travel sponsorship funds for our own conference. This fund is to go to other events.

of course all this is only my own personal opinion :-)

Your discussion of your opinions are greatly appreciated and I hope you'll be actively involved with the Ambassador team in determining the best method for building a strong travel sponsorship program. I would like to make a comment here for everyone. Do not try to come up with the perfect answers right away. There is plenty of opportunity for trial-and-error and we would much rather see that than "assumed perfection" that does not work in the long-run. Keep up the good work everyone and I look forward to seeing more discussion about this program and seeing how you all come up with some great solutions. openSUSE has the best damn energetic ambassadors...bar none! Bryen M Yunashko openSUSE Marketing Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+help@opensuse.org