MaxSpevack/FY09

FY09 Goals

These are my personal goals for FY09 (March 2008 - February 2009). They are related to my team's goals .

A picture is worth 1,000 words. Look at Fedora 9's usage in EMEA. It is time for us to invest strongly in having a full time community builder and leader over there.

Fedora Goals

Events and Ambassadors

Have a large, multi-day FUDCon (hackfest + sessions) in Europe.

• Organize FUDCon as a standalone event in Q3 (Sep - Nov 2008).
• METRICS: Was this event as good or better as the recent US-based FUDCons? Do a survey similar to the FUDCon Raleigh 2008 survey and compare results. How many people showed up? What technical work was achieved? How much did we spend, and what value did we generate for our money?

Have a presence at the two largest Linux events in Europe.

• Fedora presence at LinuxTag in Q1 (May 2008).
• Fedora presence at FOSDEM in Q4 (February 2009).
• METRICS: How many new contributors did we sign up at these events? Were these the best !LinuxTag and FOSDEM shows that Fedora has been to yet? How much did we spend, and what value did we generate for our money?

Make the Fedora Ambassadors as self-sufficient as possible.

• Be the mentor, assistant, and primary point of contact within Red Hat for the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee and for all Fedora Ambassadors in EMEA.
• Maintain a global event calendar for all Ambassadors worldwide.
• Have a presence at all important events in Europe.
• Set an example for Fedora Ambassadors about how to organize and run an event.
• Set up a template for an Event Report.
• Have local leaders coordinating every event, with me providing help and budget.
• Train Ambassadors to be Fedora spokesmodels.
• METRICS: Are we growing our contributor base? How much did we spend, and what value did we generate for our money? How many events did we attend?

Marketing

Contribute to the creation of a Fedora messaging index that can be used worldwide.

• Be accountable for the localization of that messaging index for all major European languages that Fedora supports.

Find and report Fedora success stories throughout Europe.

• Turn these into Red Hat Magazine articles, and work with Corporate Marketing to figure out the best way to share these stories.

Assist PaulFrields with the Fedora 9 go-to-market plan.

Investigate opportunities to promote Linux, Open Source, and/or Fedora in classrooms and various education curricula.

Technical

Have localized LiveCDs or LiveUSBs of Fedora at every event in Europe.

• Get kickstart files created and approved, and with a local owner of each.
• Get the spins made.
• Mass-produce media when applicable.

Be a catalyst for several community-led engineering efforts.

• A Live USB key tool .
• A web-based tool for generating a custom spin of Fedora.
• Investigate potential between Fedora and Amazon EC2.
• Creation of a Fedora/JBoss spin.
• Lead weekly meetings of the Fedora Websites team.

Red Hat Goals

Generate at least 1 Fedora in the enterprise success story in Europe.

• Work with Europe's sales engineers and marketing folks to identify a large Red Hat customer who has interest in participating in Fedora.
• Bring some of that customer's engineers into Fedora in a way that provides them with additional value that they would not otherwise get from their Red Hat subscriptions.
• Use Fedora to augment their pre-existing Red Hat customer experience.

Integrate with Europe's marketing endeavors. Have a Fedora presence at major Red Hat marketing events, when applicable.

Bring Red Hat's Czech Republic engineers into the Fedora community.

• METRICS: What percentage of Red Hat's engineers in Brno have Fedora accounts? What kinds of things are they contributing to Fedora?

Deliver Community Strategy talk to Red Hat & JBoss folks in Europe.

Be the accountant for the CommunityArchitecture team's budget.

• Keep track of total expenses, expenses per quarter, etc.
• METRICS: Did we stay under-budget for each quarter, and for the year?

Work with the EMEA sales & marketing organizations in any capacity in which I can be useful.

Personal Goals

Relocate to Netherlands in Q1.

• Make sure all immigration, tax, etc. details are sorted out.
• Why the Netherlands?
• Pretty centrally located in Europe.
• Most of the events are in the Western part of Europe (France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany). From the Netherlands, much of this travel can be done via public transportation.
• Some travel will be needed to the Czech Republic. Not a far trip, and easy to get there 2 or 3 times per year.
• English is (comparatively) widely spoken in the Netherlands. From a language perspective, the transition will be easy.
• Red Hat already has an office in the Netherlands, so I will not be totally alone.
• It is a short trip to see several of our more prominent European Fedora contributors.
• Laws for bringing a pet from US to EU are pretty easy.

Start learning Dutch.