#197 Request to officially move México to the LATAM region for ambassadors
Closed: no action needed 6 years ago Opened 6 years ago by bt0dotninja.

This ticket was opened in order to all the available information be congruent and avoid more confusions (mainly in the on boarding process).

Mexico is listed as part of NA region in some places like [1], but for Ambassadors functionally works as part of LATAM (I track LATAM meetings with Mexican ambassadors since 2010 [2]).

The Latam ambassadors agreed Mexico is part of latam (I don't found the meeting with is was approved but i found a reference to it here [3] minute 14:55:10 and And need to integrate Mexico as part of Latam is in this reference [4] minute ~23:15)

I hope this request is taken into account :smile:

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/MembershipService/Verification
[2] https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/teams/fedora-latam/fedora-latam.2010-01-07-02.01.log.html
[3] https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/teams/fedora-latam/fedora-latam.2017-11-10-14.00.log.html
[4] https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/teams/fedora-latam/fedora-latam.2017-07-22-22.58.log.html


The regional discussion is probably better addressed in Mindshare, but it is fine to have a Council input on this.
Ambassadors can be moved to LATAM in the Membership verification page, but we should first agree on it. Personally I have no concerns, so +1.
CC'ing @nb as second FAmA.

As far as I know, Mexico has always been considered part of LATAM for Ambassadors. +1 to making this so if it is not reflected as part of LATAM on something.

I see no reason to block this. I believe it is appropriate for this to go through Council. +1

I have something to say on this if I may, since I'm not part of council.

I'm from México, I've been in Fedora since 2008 and this discussion has been brought to the table a few times. I hope this helps to ease coming to a conclusion soon.

I personally don't have any inconvenient in Mexico being part of LATAM, we share a lot of things in common, starting with the language and similar cultures. I don't deny my roots and I could say that I am proud of them.

My personal problem is my location, it represents several issues interacting with LATAM community:

  1. Attending meetings: Differences in timezones are killing me, I'm in UTC-7. Fedora LATAM community decided with majority of votes -which I don't object, that's how democracy works- that meeting were rescheduled every friday at (my) 7:00AM. Even though I'm already up by that time, I'm usually dropping off my kids at school. I haven't been able to attend a single meeting since the time change.
  2. Shipping goods: It is very expensive to ship anything across our southern border, or importing them from any other LATAM country. It is usually cheaper to ship from/to my location to anywhere in the continental USA.
  3. Traveling: Same case, flight tickets are way too expensive to travel even to the nearest country south of Mexico. I live about 250 miles south of US border, the local airport have direct flights to Dallas, Houston and Denver and there are a number of connections in the country that can fly to a lot of major airports in the US, for a fraction of the cheapest flight to Guatemala.

I think we can still interact and stay as part of LATAM, but for practical purposes we should take the previous points into account.

My two cents

I appreciate the input @aacosta and these tickets are open because the Council wants input.

I have something to say on this if I may, since I'm not part of council.
I'm from México, I've been in Fedora since 2008 and this discussion has been brought to the table a few times. I hope this helps to ease coming to a conclusion soon.
I personally don't have any inconvenient in Mexico being part of LATAM, we share a lot of things in common, starting with the language and similar cultures. I don't deny my roots and I could say that I am proud of them.
My personal problem is my location, it represents several issues interacting with LATAM community:

Attending meetings: Differences in timezones are killing me, I'm in UTC-7. Fedora LATAM community decided with majority of votes -which I don't object, that's how democracy works- that meeting were rescheduled every friday at (my) 7:00AM. Even though I'm already up by that time, I'm usually dropping off my kids at school. I haven't been able to attend a single meeting since the time change.

As someone who know has an 8pm meeting 3 weeks of the month for the Council, I feel your pain. I think that meeting times are always hard, but that this shouldn't be a blocker. I also believe you are personally more active in US events (based on event reports I've read) so I don't see why you should attend those meetings. I don't see region as being an exclusion flag preventing participating, just an encouragement for where to direct activities if there is no other reason.

Frankly, I'd love to see moving Mexico to LATAM cause NA and LATAM to work together. This is a model for great things in Fedora.

Shipping goods: It is very expensive to ship anything across our southern border, or importing them from any other LATAM country. It is usually cheaper to ship from/to my location to anywhere in the continental USA.

This is also something not dictated by region. The bulk of LATAM's swag is actually warehoused in Raleigh, NC USA and will be shipped on demand to each event. This allowed us to buy high-quality items in bulk and resolve many of the inter-regional shipping challenges. Needless to say, Mexican events would be serviced from the USA by coincidence here.

Traveling: Same case, flight tickets are way too expensive to travel even to the nearest country south of Mexico. I live about 250 miles south of US border, the local airport have direct flights to Dallas, Houston and Denver and there are a number of connections in the country that can fly to a lot of major airports in the US, for a fraction of the cheapest flight to Guatemala.

This is also a great reason for people to partner across regions. But, for example, if Mexico is a participant in FLISOL that shouldn't be blocked by being in a specific region. Neither should cross border work for individuals who live closer to the southern border of Mexico.

Region is a short-hand organizational tool but should never be being used to stop forward motion. There are tons of countries for which arguments could be made for different regions. It may be the case that thinking regionally is no longer the optimal organizational strategy for Fedora.

Having spent time in both the NA and LATAM community over the years, I can see the points of both @aacosta and @bt0dotninja. I still remember clearly the day at FUDCon Cordoba when a pair of guys from Mexico turned up and participated after riding buses using their own funds from Mexico to Argentina, because they felt more connected to LATAM. I think people should be involved in the pieces of fedora that interest them. I would like to see LATAM and NA closer together. If the bridge to that is Mexico then I think that is awesome. I have to agree with what @bex wrote here.

The Fedora regions mirror Red Hat's region structure, under which "North America" is actually North North America (US & Canada) and Mexico is listed as part of LATAM (https://www.redhat.com/en/about/office-locations#latam).

To the extent that we organize things to match RH, we should keep that aligned. But, I also think that we shouldn't over-emphasize these fairly arbitrary distinctions. (In APAC, would we really want to take the same approach to China, India, Thailand, and Australia?) I think we should either work more globally where appropriate, or more locally where that's appropriate — if shipping between Mexico and the US is cheaper than shipping between Mexico and Chile, let's not handicap ourselves based on distinctions drawn for accounting purposes.

And with all of that said, I think we should close this ticket and move any specific further discussion to Mindshare. Anyone opposed?

Metadata Update from @mattdm:
- Issue close_status updated to: no action needed

6 years ago

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