[opensuse-marketing] Re: [opensuse-project] Re: [opensuse-ambassadors] Announcing changes to the Ambassador Programme
On 21 May 2013 15:54, Kostas Koudaras <warlordfff@gmail.com> wrote:
If you are seriously thinking of a rename: What about openSUSE Jedi?
The problem with a pop-culture reference, is that it creates an inside joke, which kind of makes new entrants feel excluded.
Ok I am a Star Wars Fan but afterall, we are geeks...
That might not be a very reasonable assumption in the long run.
2013/5/21 Per Jessen <per@computer.org>:
Greg Freemyer wrote:
On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 3:18 PM, Carlos Ribeiro <carlosribeiro@opensuse.org> wrote:
"Why do I need to talk with openSUSE Advocate, I did nothing wrong, against the law I don't need a Advocate"
That may be a valid concern. I work with lawyers all the time, so I'm used to the word "advocate" being used routinely.
The use of "Advocate" might be controversial, as Carlos states, due to the associated legal implication. While Richard, as a native English speaker, has a very good point, as in we are intending to tell people that we advocate the use of openSUSE (distro ++) , and participation in openSUSE (project). The discomfort with evangelist is very understandable, because of the bad taste it leaves in the mouth for people who have encountered users of this label first-hand.
I have no issue with "Advocate" (although it also means "lawyer" in my native language). To me, "Advocate" and "Ambassador" both have some connotations of being officially assigned. My favourite is "Geeko" as also proposed by Carlos.
"Geeko", with it's association to openSUSE & Gecko, sonds like a reasonable choice. However, it says nothing about what the role entails. This might or might not be an issue. I personally wouldn't mind being associated with that label, but at the end of the day, it kind of means nothing. Advocate and Ambassador kind of mean the same thing in English for this use case, but Ambassador sounds kind of more approachable imho. While I understand most of the changes in the program, such as a new distribution system for DVDs/goodies, I fail to see why a name change would be necessary, especially when the new name has an identical meaning for all practical purposes. Also, I am curious why removing the vetting system was proposed/implemented. It was a very basic screening, and as there are actual costs involved in sending stuff to "Advocates", money that is obviously finite, this would mean we potentially have a system that cannot support itself. I understand that not all the Advocates will be sent event/DVD kits indiscriminately, but do we actually need unvetted labels for every person who tells others, "Use openSUSE"? The promoDVD request page doesn't have a requirement that anyone have an "official tag/post" anyway. IIRC, this wild west approach was tried in the early days of the Ambassador program, which resulted in an insanely long list of names on the wiki, with people that were never seen, or heard from. Isn't it exactly what we are trying to do all over again? TL;DR : Why change the name at all? Why remove vetting of list? If name is to be changed, "Geeko" sounds awesome, albeit irrelevant, and would get my vote. ~ kknundy P.S. Re-added marketing list. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org
I believe that this change has been made in this way to lets focus on the activities and not on the role I think (but not sure) that the purpose of these changes (names and approval) is to provide an idea of the kind; "No matter the title, if there is commitment, everyone can collaborate on openSUSE." Even in Italian the word "advocate" is very similar to that used for the attorney ("avvocato"), but I think it's a very, very minor problem. Honestly, I never believed so much in the importance of the name ("A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" W. Shakespeare), but the important thing is that people feel part of a community united and active. The sense of community is crucial. I can understand that when things work well, the changes may seem inappropriate or even harmful, but these can be of the basic steps for further improvement, and to enlarge our beautiful community. Obviously, it's just my opinion Alexjan -- Alexjan Carraturo -- Twitter/Facebook/Identica/flickr: axjslack Personal site: http://axjslack.wordpress.com -- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org
On 21 May 2013 10:11, Koushik Kumar Nundy <kknundy@gmail.com> wrote:
TL;DR : Why change the name at all? Why remove vetting of list? If name is to be changed, "Geeko" sounds awesome, albeit irrelevant, and would get my vote.
Why remove vetting? the original Ambassador programme had a confusing contradiction - As well as advocacy of our project and distro, our ambassadors were expected to be established contributors willing to mentor less experienced openSUSE users. The advocacy was seen as a great way of starting out with the Project and contributing for the first time, where as the mentoring and local coordination work *requires* the individual has been involved in the Project for some time in order to know their way around and effectively help others. This contradiction made life very difficult for the Ambassador Welcome team (on which I served) - we'd have people applying to be Ambassadors who had practically no experience with the Project and would therefore not be capable of any form of mentoring or local organisation, but because of the dual-role nature of Ambassadors we'd rubber stamp them anyway. It lead to a situation where we had lots of Ambassadors on the list, some doing great local coordination work and mentoring, many more doing great advocacy, and sadly also a significant amount who signed up but never actually did anything for the Project. The removal of vetting and the focus of the Ambassador programme on advocacy, make it clear its a viable way for new contributors to get started with the Project, and also to better reflect the general nature of the project - Advocating openSUSE is another job that this project needs doing, like Development, Marketing, Artwork, etc. We don't require people to pass through some vetting scheme to get involved in any of those roles in the project, we want to encourage them to roll up their sleeves and pitch in, and make it as easy as possible for them to do so. The mentoring and local organisation functions that were formerly expected of the Ambassadors now sit firmly with the new Local Coordinator role. That's somewhere where we definitely need everyone involved to be established community members. Luckily, openSUSE already has a programme for establishing whether or not someone has provided sustained and substantial contributions to the community, that's the openSUSE Members scheme, so as I'm going through the process of pulling together our new Local Coordinator volunteers, I'm primarily only considering those volunteers who are already openSUSE members. Where a Local Coordinator volunteer isn't a member, but has substantial contributions to the project, I'm encouraging them to apply for membership first - I dont think we need two schemes to recognise and reward our established contributor base. As for changing the name - I thought I'd made that clear already. I feel that Ambassador is a title that carries too much gravitas and assumptions that the person holding the title was assigned the role, and is empowered to speak on behalf of the project. That's not the role of those advocating/evangelising/promoting our project and distro, and Advocate is the best word I could find in the English language to reflect that. If a direct translation doesn't work in the other languages of our project, I'm more than happy to discuss and help find one that better suits your language but still reflects the activities we expect from our openSUSE Advocates. I think Jim's already done a good job with this for Portuguese I dont think changing the name in the English language is a sensible option, and I'm dead set against the idea of titles like 'Geeko' which, while amusing and meaningful to established openSUSE users, is meaningless to those who dont know anything about our project or distro - the very people our Advocates are meant to be reaching out to.. Hope this helps - Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org
On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 3:11 AM, Koushik Kumar Nundy <kknundy@gmail.com> wrote:
On 21 May 2013 15:54, Kostas Koudaras <warlordfff@gmail.com> wrote:
If you are seriously thinking of a rename: What about openSUSE Jedi?
The problem with a pop-culture reference, is that it creates an inside joke, which kind of makes new entrants feel excluded.
Ok I am a Star Wars Fan but afterall, we are geeks...
That might not be a very reasonable assumption in the long run.
2013/5/21 Per Jessen <per@computer.org>:
Greg Freemyer wrote:
On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 3:18 PM, Carlos Ribeiro <carlosribeiro@opensuse.org> wrote:
"Why do I need to talk with openSUSE Advocate, I did nothing wrong, against the law I don't need a Advocate"
That may be a valid concern. I work with lawyers all the time, so I'm used to the word "advocate" being used routinely.
The use of "Advocate" might be controversial, as Carlos states, due to the associated legal implication. While Richard, as a native English speaker, has a very good point, as in we are intending to tell people that we advocate the use of openSUSE (distro ++) , and participation in openSUSE (project).
The discomfort with evangelist is very understandable, because of the bad taste it leaves in the mouth for people who have encountered users of this label first-hand.
I have no issue with "Advocate" (although it also means "lawyer" in my native language). To me, "Advocate" and "Ambassador" both have some connotations of being officially assigned. My favourite is "Geeko" as also proposed by Carlos.
"Geeko", with it's association to openSUSE & Gecko, sonds like a reasonable choice. However, it says nothing about what the role entails. This might or might not be an issue. I personally wouldn't mind being associated with that label, but at the end of the day, it kind of means nothing.
Advocate and Ambassador kind of mean the same thing in English for this use case, but Ambassador sounds kind of more approachable imho. While I understand most of the changes in the program, such as a new distribution system for DVDs/goodies, I fail to see why a name change would be necessary, especially when the new name has an identical meaning for all practical purposes.
Also, I am curious why removing the vetting system was proposed/implemented. It was a very basic screening, and as there are actual costs involved in sending stuff to "Advocates", money that is obviously finite, this would mean we potentially have a system that cannot support itself. I understand that not all the Advocates will be sent event/DVD kits indiscriminately, but do we actually need unvetted labels for every person who tells others, "Use openSUSE"? The promoDVD request page doesn't have a requirement that anyone have an "official tag/post" anyway. IIRC, this wild west approach was tried in the early days of the Ambassador program, which resulted in an insanely long list of names on the wiki, with people that were never seen, or heard from. Isn't it exactly what we are trying to do all over again?
TL;DR : Why change the name at all? Why remove vetting of list? If name is to be changed, "Geeko" sounds awesome, albeit irrelevant, and would get my vote.
~ kknundy
P.S. Re-added marketing list. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
I believe the use of the word "advocate" is appropriate for the new idea of making oneself a promoter of openSUSE through the ambassador program. I believe the "legal" implication is mostly a personal link to the English language. In essence, the problem is not with the word but with a personal understanding of the word. When I first heard the word "advocate" the first thought that came to me was "good!because ambassador does not really fit the role of promoting openSUSE." If you think about it the word "advocate" is a more philosophically linked word to the idea of defense or apologetics. Most of the times, in English, when referring to a professional who does advocacy is "lawyer." Lawyer is the most common word used to describe those who practice legal advocacy. -- Andy (anditosan) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org
On 21 mai 2013, at 23:39, Andy anditosan <anditosan1000@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 3:11 AM, Koushik Kumar Nundy <kknundy@gmail.com> wrote:
On 21 May 2013 15:54, Kostas Koudaras <warlordfff@gmail.com> wrote:
If you are seriously thinking of a rename: What about openSUSE Jedi?
The problem with a pop-culture reference, is that it creates an inside joke, which kind of makes new entrants feel excluded.
Ok I am a Star Wars Fan but afterall, we are geeks...
That might not be a very reasonable assumption in the long run.
2013/5/21 Per Jessen <per@computer.org>:
Greg Freemyer wrote:
On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 3:18 PM, Carlos Ribeiro <carlosribeiro@opensuse.org> wrote:
"Why do I need to talk with openSUSE Advocate, I did nothing wrong, against the law I don't need a Advocate"
That may be a valid concern. I work with lawyers all the time, so I'm used to the word "advocate" being used routinely.
The use of "Advocate" might be controversial, as Carlos states, due to the associated legal implication. While Richard, as a native English speaker, has a very good point, as in we are intending to tell people that we advocate the use of openSUSE (distro ++) , and participation in openSUSE (project).
The discomfort with evangelist is very understandable, because of the bad taste it leaves in the mouth for people who have encountered users of this label first-hand.
I have no issue with "Advocate" (although it also means "lawyer" in my native language). To me, "Advocate" and "Ambassador" both have some connotations of being officially assigned. My favourite is "Geeko" as also proposed by Carlos.
"Geeko", with it's association to openSUSE & Gecko, sonds like a reasonable choice. However, it says nothing about what the role entails. This might or might not be an issue. I personally wouldn't mind being associated with that label, but at the end of the day, it kind of means nothing.
Advocate and Ambassador kind of mean the same thing in English for this use case, but Ambassador sounds kind of more approachable imho. While I understand most of the changes in the program, such as a new distribution system for DVDs/goodies, I fail to see why a name change would be necessary, especially when the new name has an identical meaning for all practical purposes.
Also, I am curious why removing the vetting system was proposed/implemented. It was a very basic screening, and as there are actual costs involved in sending stuff to "Advocates", money that is obviously finite, this would mean we potentially have a system that cannot support itself. I understand that not all the Advocates will be sent event/DVD kits indiscriminately, but do we actually need unvetted labels for every person who tells others, "Use openSUSE"? The promoDVD request page doesn't have a requirement that anyone have an "official tag/post" anyway. IIRC, this wild west approach was tried in the early days of the Ambassador program, which resulted in an insanely long list of names on the wiki, with people that were never seen, or heard from. Isn't it exactly what we are trying to do all over again?
TL;DR : Why change the name at all? Why remove vetting of list? If name is to be changed, "Geeko" sounds awesome, albeit irrelevant, and would get my vote.
~ kknundy
P.S. Re-added marketing list. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
I believe the use of the word "advocate" is appropriate for the new idea of making oneself a promoter of openSUSE through the ambassador program. I believe the "legal" implication is mostly a personal link to the English language. In essence, the problem is not with the word but with a personal understanding of the word. When I first heard the word "advocate" the first thought that came to me was "good!because ambassador does not really fit the role of promoting openSUSE."
If you think about it the word "advocate" is a more philosophically linked word to the idea of defense or apologetics. Most of the times, in English, when referring to a professional who does advocacy is "lawyer." Lawyer is the most common word used to describe those who practice legal advocacy.
-- Andy (anditosan) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org
Bonjour What's in a name? When I am at a booth, I represent my Association (legally registered and with a Memorandum and Articles of Association) nui.fr People see me and the other members as members and representatives (représentants in French) of openSUSE. I am not sure if an accurate translation of advocate will be clear to visitors / ourselves. I believe that openSUSE Representative sounds more appropriate because it covers everything that everybody is saying. Have fun, Jimmy-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org
participants (5)
-
Alexjan Carraturo -
Andy anditosan -
Jimmy Pierre -
Koushik Kumar Nundy -
Richard Brown