#190 FAmNA meetings moving to Bi weekly over next few months
Closed: Completed 6 years ago Opened 6 years ago by award3535.

During the upcoming few months we will have a lot of days that families will be traveling and holidays. Meetings will be held on the following days 9 and 30 November, 7 December, 4 and 25 January 2018. Since attendance has been low and there are no events until March of 2018, I am moving to these dates for meetings. For event planners you must have your event ready in all aspects when pitching your budget request.


Metadata Update from @award3535:
- Issue tagged with: meeting

6 years ago

Does this mean that NA has no plans to undertake any activities (and as a consequence) spend any money for the remainder of this FY?

I need to know this for budget management purposes.

@bex I have no idea, since there are some things that we as FAmNA need to clear up with meetings and events. Also we have only a handful of very active ambassadors right now. I know there are a lot more out there they either are busy during that time or they just are not participating at the current time. Unless someone speaks up, I guess than yes, since there is no events planned past LISA 2017, and the consequence they will have to live with. But I would like the active members of NA to post their opinions in this ticket since they do not attend meetings on a regular basis. I understand that two individuals maybe three are at LISA 2017, it does not answer for the other dozen or so who are available. Here is what I would like this ticket to accomplish, 1. To identify which ambassadors in NA are active and able to attend at least one meeting a month, 2. If the time slot is sufficient because the west coast complains that they cannot make the time of 6pm west and for the east coast 9pm is late enough I have gotten feed back with Tuesdays are not good for most, and the weekends Friday through Sunday are not available, so that leaves Monday, Wednesday and Thursday - being that could go to a 930pm time to help the west coast folks with a better time, but it still doesn't fix the attendance problems, 3. Identify at least one person that could chair the meeting once monthly (I have a LUG meeting on the 3rd Thursday each month) and would like a break every once in a while, 4. Ambassadors that have other roles to either step up and get involved in identified functions as NA ambassadors or give up the responsibility to someone else. I understand that a lot of Ambassadors have other functions within the Fedora Community and could be overwhelmed with that particular project which also could be the reason for low attendance with meetings. Also during the holiday season it is difficult enough to get meetings accomplished because people are busy with family (completely understandable) and we have in the past had no meeting from the Thanksgiving holiday through the new year.

Please give us a couple of weeks for this to set in with NA Ambassadors, then I will give you an answer.

@bex The only item that I see that will effect Q4 money will be SCALE x18 which happens in March 2018 which falls in Q1 FY2019 budget which some of the cost will come out of Q4 FY 2018

Metadata Update from @award3535:
- Issue assigned to award3535

6 years ago

Hey all, to answer some of the questions by @award3535 from my PoV…

  1. Thursday night meetings are difficult for me this year
  2. I hope to propose an event for WiCHacks on Feb. 10-11, 2018 (need to confirm I'll be physically present before committing)

Instead of comments here in this ticket, a WhenIsGood might be a helpful way to gather what times work for the most people. If you'd like, I could create this and communicate it with the mailing list to try to help us pick a new meeting day / time. Otherwise, Monday and Wednesday evenings (EDT) are the only weekday evenings that work for my schedule.

I watch the mailing list and try to keep up with meeting minutes, but I am unable to participate at our meeting time. I still consider myself an active Ambassador, though, as far as a "head count" goes. If the meeting time worked for my schedule, I could help chair meetings regularly.

For either @award3535 or @bex, what other roles / responsibilities with FAmNA's organization need help or support?

@jflory7 you were never in question about participation, NA realizes that you were busy. The problem exists that most of the meeting times and days just does not seem to work. We have tried Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Mondays, but it just seems to cause more problems for other people. Realizing that you cannot please everyone all the time, but I would like to get a majority of folks on the same page, thus the creation of this ticket. This needs to be public for FAmNA and we need to get back on track as a group. The last meetings going back a few months only shows one ambassador from the west coast joining the meeting, and that is juggler. Just a year ago about this time our meetings were running over because of the amount of participation and events, and those same individuals are still ambassadors, so where did they go. So for the event you plan on going to we need to have everything set up prior to the January meetings.

As an update, @award3535 and I talked on the phone earlier this afternoon. Here's some of what we discussed.

Alternating meeting dates

To maximize participation, we discussed the idea of bi-weekly meetings (i.e. two meetings a month), with one at a "East Coast-friendly" and another at a "West Coast-friendly" time. @award3535 would be able to chair the East Coast-friendly meeting, but a volunteer would be needed for the West Coast-friendly meeting.

This lets more people participate in our meetings at a time that works best for them, since there are three time zones that we currently have active Ambassadors split across.

New policies

To support the alternating meeting times, new policies for event / budget approval in FAmNA need to be considered. Alternating meeting times might mean more participants overall, but less people at each meeting. Andrew and I discussed event approval requirement ideas:

  • Meetings with quorum: 5+ Ambassador votes and Treasurer vote required to approve event
  • Meetings without quorum: Treasurer vote and FCAIC (currently @bex) votes required to approve event

More emphasis would go to leaving votes in tickets instead of meetings. It's also possible that four Ambassadors in a East Coast meeting vote +1 to a ticket, and then a West Coast Ambassador votes at a different time.

Finding the best times

To help us gather times, we asked FAmNA Ambassadors to fill out a WhenIsGood survey (see: here) to find what times work for the most people. We asked for votes by Friday, November 3, 2017. After that day, we will move forward with choosing new meeting dates / times for FAmNA.

The results matrix for what times work for what people is found here.

Hello,

I agree with the alternating meeting schedule as long as the responses to the survey and/or this ticket justify it and drive participation up as a whole. The reason I say that is because if the other ambassadors are not attending for reasons other than meeting time conflicts, we may inadvertently further reduce participation.

+1 for more voting on tickets. I assume we will have deadlines by which all votes must be in for each ticket that warrants it.

@award3535, though I have limited experience, I am happy to help in any way I can.

@bex in addition, even if we do not have any more events, I think we would still want to spend the rest of our budget. We need to reorder our swag that we usually keep on hand, I believe we are getting pretty low.

@nb @paradoxguitarist Both of you did not answer the bigger question in this ticket and how we got here. In order for us to use that remainder of the funds you must show up to meetings and propose events, swag, etc... since participation is down and we don't have enough ambassadors showing up to meetings to vote on items then its really pointless to purchase swag. Please answer the other question at hand first, then we can discuss budget

@award3535 I've already mentioned a few times that I would not be able to make any meetings on Thursday nights for the foreseeable future.

I made sure to mark my availability on the whenisgood link in an effort to contribute before commenting about the budget, though the urgency of that topic seems higher than our meeting time.

I'm not clear on what else you want us to answer on as your original post for this ticket is informative/declarative rather than quizzical:

I am moving to these dates for meetings. For event planners you must have your event ready in all aspects when pitching your budget request.

It seems like this has already been decided. Are you calling a vote? Other than submitting information for when we should meet what are you looking for?

@paradoxguitarist we are moving to a West coast meeting and an east coast meeting that would clear up time and day issues and going to only two meetings per month one east and one west and ther will be some ground rules applied once this happens. So it would be in your best interest to find a meeting day and time once per month

@paradoxguitarist to answer your question about set dates for meetings, yes I set them since there was no one there to help run meetings or propose meeting dates.

So it would be in your best interest to find a meeting day and time once per month
@paradoxguitarist to answer your question about set dates for meetings, yes I set them since there was no one there to help run meetings or propose meeting dates.

@award3535 It comes across like you're upset about participation to the point where we can't address other issues that are coming up here. I already mentioned that I've filled out the survey prior to any comments, and I know that we said we're waiting until the 3rd to collect results.

You've put in a TON of work, and while I don't find @nb 's comment off topic in the slightest, I DO care about what you're looking for. It seems pretty clear that you aren't satisfied with what I've put forward so far. You also said: "Both of you did not answer the bigger question in this ticket and how we got here." and I don't know how to answer that before Friday, after we've collected everyone's availability.

My question "Other than submitting information for when we should meet what are you looking for?" was quite literal.

How else can we help?

@bex The only item that I see that will effect Q4 money will be SCALE x18 which happens in March 2018 which falls in Q1 FY2019 budget which some of the cost will come out of Q4 FY 2018

Given the amount of money that NA has left, lets shift as much of this expense into FY18 as possible. Please work with me to ensure that is done.

New policies
To support the alternating meeting times, new policies for event / budget approval in FAmNA need to be considered. Alternating meeting times might mean more participants overall, but less people at each meeting. Andrew and I discussed event approval requirement ideas:

Meetings with quorum: 5+ Ambassador votes and Treasurer vote required to approve event
Meetings without quorum: Treasurer vote and FCAIC (currently @bex) votes required to approve event

I encourage you all to stipulate that the Treasurer vote is administrative. The vote is just an acknowledgement that there is money in the budget. I don't think the Treasurer should have veto power outside of budgetary overrun.

Also, remember that we try to keep budget.fedoraproject.org up to date so everyone already knows if there are budget concerns and if we need to ask the council for additional funding.

@bex in addition, even if we do not have any more events, I think we would still want to spend the rest of our budget. We need to reorder our swag that we usually keep on hand, I believe we are getting pretty low.

I think this is a great idea. I'd like to find out more about how the current swag is warehoused as there are some new options that may make shipping things like this easier (or at least make it easier to store larger volumes).

I see in this ticket a lot of struggling to find a good meeting time. Perhaps we could think about ways to eliminate some of the meeting requirements? Would more votes in tickets help? Would using the Mindshare structure to shift some of the mechanics help? Are the meetings strategy sessions or just vote collections? Could we shift the topics to maximize the synchronous time value?

Do we know if participation is actually down or if this is truly the sum total of active ambassadors? It may be that we are waiting on people who are not active to respond.

@bex @paradoxguitarist Justin and I came up with probably the best alternative that will take care of 90% of these issues. We are going to two meetings a month, one for west coast and one for east coast. For many years we have been struggling to find the best possible time to get most participation possible. Even we have tried various times and days we are not able to connect for max participation. As a trial, splitting into the two meetings per month seems to be the best way to catch everyone that wishes to participate at the best possible time. With that said, I will continue to run the east coast meetings with the input from the data call processed, the west coast will have to figure out who will run the meetings and what time for them is the best to get maximum participation on their end. My suggestion is to have @lajuggler run the meetings on the west coast since he seems to be one who attends most of the meetings and has a sense of what is going on with @paradoxguitarist being the co-leader if not the leader depending on what they decide. By splitting the meetings it will give more flexibility for leadership to tailor meetings to fit time and dates for them and the same goes for us on the east coast. With the time difference, a west coast meeting time would and can make it very late for us on the east coast. Also ambassadors are involved in other areas of the project and it could conflict with FAmNA meeting times as well. @bex I agree with my vote only being an administrative vote for funding availability for the west coast and that is exactly why I want to move that direction since ambassador participation is very low from the west coast due to east coast time/day issues. From what I have heard in the past most are driving home at 6pm west when its 9pm east. Thus its time for the west coast ambassadors to step up their game and take control of their own meeting time and day. I can be emailed or made action on west coast meetings to check budget remaining for events.
@paradoxguitarist @nb As for swag, I have no idea what remains in your regions as @bex inquired earlier. Since the last bit of swag ordered was dice at an event in the Northwest, key-chain tags in the Midwest, and the stickers I had made last FY. There were a lot of discussions to purchase usb keys for handing out vice pressed media, T-Shirts, etc....
@paradoxguitarist I am not upset, but disappointed in overall participation, and the reason being shows that until an event pops up that we never hear from individuals until they want something pushed through which backs up @bex statement that we just collect votes. There is a lot of things going on that we as ambassadors need to discuss and clear up for NA within the project. For example; event planning takes a little more involvement and thought process to what Fedora's focus on the event rather than just creating a page and asking for funding. If you want an example you can contact me offline and I will provide examples.
@bex as for active ambassadors that was FAmSCO's initiative and I do not know where they are at with the ambassadors. I also understand that they may be involved in other areas but as a courtesy or protocol at least attend a meeting more than once per 12 months (some even longer) thus the reason for splitting meetings and making them only twice per month (one west and one east) could show an improvement in attendance and productivity. Now some of the survey shows times during the work day for east/west which is not available for those who are not allowed to conduct business outside of current work or access chat software from workstations on the job. Also I believe we need to send an email out to the ambassadors list FAmNA to reach as many as possible drawing attention to this ticket.

I'm in favor of coming up with a different time for West Coast to approve things. I have a recurring time conflict with the current meeting time and it seems easier to work things out regionally than trying to accommodate over a 3 hour time zone difference.

+1 to @award3535's suggestion

I like the idea of rotating East / West coast times. I also realize that many of us are busy and no matter what time is set it might be difficult to make meetings. With three kids and my robotics team duties I am very busy in the fall / winter time period.

For me I try to stay up on things by reading the mailing list and making comments when I feel I have the ability to have input. If I know important topics are being discussed or voted on I put more importance on making it to the meeting.

the only thing i can foresee that we are basicly out of swag and we really need to think of rebuilding that for the new year
Ben

  From: Brian Exelbierd <pagure@pagure.io>

To: vaioof@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2017 4:02 AM
Subject: [ambassadors-na/tasks] Issue #190: FAmNA meetings moving to Bi weekly over next few months

bex added a new comment to an issue you are following:
``
Does this mean that NA has no plans to undertake any activities (and as a consequence) spend any money for the remainder of this FY?

I need to know this for budget management purposes.
``

To reply, visit the link below or just reply to this email
https://pagure.io/ambassadors-na/tasks/issue/190

currently we have 3 shippers (east coast, Central and west Coast) Swag is u=
sually divided between the 3 locations. usually the EC and WC are the busie=
st and when they need something=C2=A0 get get shipped from the central.

  From: Brian Exelbierd <pagure@pagure.io>

To: vaioof@yahoo.com=20
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2017 5:51 AM
Subject: [ambassadors-na/tasks] Issue #190: FAmNA meetings moving to Bi we=
ekly over next few months
=20

bex added a new comment to an issue you are following:
``

@bex=C2=A0 in addition, even if we do not have any more events, I think w=
e would still want to spend the rest of our budget.=C2=A0 We need to reorde=
r our swag that we usually keep on hand, I believe we are getting pretty lo=
w.

I think this is a great idea.=C2=A0 I'd like to find out more about how the=
current swag is warehoused as there are some new options that may make shi=
pping things like this easier (or at least make it easier to store larger v=
olumes).
``

To reply, visit the link below or just reply to this email
https://pagure.io/ambassadors-na/tasks/issue/190

=20

@jbwillia I agree on ordering more swag, but the meetings are just as important to get the items that we desire pushed through. My concerns is we want things but don't want to show up to meetings ( I am speaking about those who are not as involved as they should be). We are the largest group yet we only have a handful that are active in the ambassadors area of the project. We are just spinning our wheels and going nowhere without meetings. The proposal for splitting the meetings into a west and east coast gives us a little more flexibility within the project, and by moving to only two a month gives ambassadors a more flexible and meaningful meeting. So with one meeting a month east and one a month west is very workable.

@jbwillia As an update, @award3535 and I talked on the phone earlier this afternoon. Here's some of what we discussed.

Alternating meeting dates

To maximize participation, we discussed the idea of bi-weekly meetings (i.e. two meetings a month), with one at a "East Coast-friendly" and another at a "West Coast-friendly" time. @award3535 would be able to chair the East Coast-friendly meeting, but a volunteer would be needed for the West Coast-friendly meeting.

This lets more people participate in our meetings at a time that works best for them, since there are three time zones that we currently have active Ambassadors split across.

New policies

To support the alternating meeting times, new policies for event / budget approval in FAmNA need to be considered. Alternating meeting times might mean more participants overall, but less people at each meeting. Andrew and I discussed event approval requirement ideas:
•Meetings with quorum: 5+ Ambassador votes and Treasurer vote required to approve event
•Meetings without quorum: Treasurer vote and FCAIC (currently @bex) votes required to approve event

More emphasis would go to leaving votes in tickets instead of meetings. It's also possible that four Ambassadors in a East Coast meeting vote +1 to a ticket, and then a West Coast Ambassador votes at a different time.

Finding the best times

To help us gather times, we asked FAmNA Ambassadors to fill out a WhenIsGood survey (see: here) to find what times work for the most people. We asked for votes by Friday, November 3, 2017. After that day, we will move forward with choosing new meeting dates / times for FAmNA.

The results matrix for what times work for what people is found here.

FAmNA is moving towards a more effective and streamlined meeting schedule which should enable maximum participation for all three regions. As detailed in past meeting it is difficult for both east and west coasts to have a common meeting time that facilitates a good time to conduct meetings. The new process will have two meetings per month. One meeting will be chaired by the designated individual for the west coast, and one meeting chaired by a designated individual from the east coast. Each meeting is open to any NA ambassador who wishes to attend. The following guidelines should be followed;

  1. Meeting Announcement: FAmNA meetings are to be announced by email via the ambassadors mailing list by the chair at least one week prior to the commencement of the meeting and include meeting time and day. Meetings can also be announced at the end of a current meeting with the next meeting day/time with a reminder emailed on the ambassadors mailing list.

  2. Meeting conclusion email must be sent on the ambassadors mailing list at the end of each meeting.

  3. Ticket/Voting with respect to Attendance: When a meeting does not have enough ambassadors to vote on a project or event, it causes delays and be frustrating to plan and pitch events. Current rules have a requirement of 5 Ambassadors with a positive vote to approve events/projects will remain in effect. If there is low attendance at the meeting, the issue can be sent to the opposite meeting for final vote. This will require an update in the ticket for the opposite meeting requires vote for event approval. For example, an event on the east coast only has 4 votes (four ambassadors attending the meeting) an update in the ticket must be entered stating the next meeting for the west coast requires a vote on their meeting (and vice versa). Email sent to the ambassadors mailing list should also include the request for opposite meeting vote requirement. All events require a minimum of 5 ambassadors’ approval, and the Treasurer has the final thumbs up or down when the budget is involved. The treasurer vote is not a vote to approve or disapprove event approvals, just as a check for available funding. The treasure can stop event/project planning until budget will support what is being requested.

  4. Meeting time and day are determined by the regional ambassador and/or meeting chair for west and east coast. Central time zone ambassadors will have to attend one or both meetings as desired since the time difference is not as drastic as east and west coasts.

  5. Meeting format: FAmNA will continue to hold the same meeting format for each coast as follows; Meeting Name, Roll Call, Announcements, Tickets, and Open Floor.

  6. Event planning guidelines will be revised to reflect Mindshare initiatives.

  7. By moving towards this type of format will require more work and initative on our ambassadors. Event wiki pages and event information must be ready prior to the meeting voting. If you do not have your information posted on a wiki when asking for a budget, ambassadors should not approve the event. Wiki and pagure ticket must include the required items. This responsibility rests with the regional ambassadors for North America.

January 2018 FAmNA will begin the two meeting a month initiative with one west coast run, the other east coast

These procedures look great. Where will they get posted?

Brian,

I will create a wiki page for them as well as updating the event
planning process to include the mind-share initiatives for event planners.

On 12/1/2017 4:01 AM, Brian (bex) Exelbierd wrote:

bex added a new comment to an issue you are following:
These procedures look great. Where will they get posted?

To reply, visit the link below or just reply to this email
https://pagure.io/ambassadors-na/tasks/issue/190

--
V/R
Andrew Ward
award3535@fedoraproject.org
award3535@tds.net
award3535@gmail.com

January 4th FAmNA meeting will be chaired by award3535 at 2100 east. The next meeting will be up to the West Coast Ambassadors to determine a meeting time and day. The guidelines are listed in the following link: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAMNA_Bi-Weekly_meeting_Guidelines

Metadata Update from @award3535:
- Issue untagged with: meeting

6 years ago

Closing ticket pending any other information

Metadata Update from @award3535:
- Issue close_status updated to: Completed
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

6 years ago

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