Fedora Ambassador Steering Committee badge This is a part of the FAmSCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts on Tuesday, January 10th and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Monday, January 16th. Please read the responses from candidates and make your choices carefully. Feel free to ask questions to the candidates here (preferred) or elsewhere!

Interview with Sylvia Sanchez (lailah)

What is your background in Fedora? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

I started using Fedora 6 years ago with my OLPC netbook.  I knew Fedora from before, while I was helping with the XO netbooks  (OLPC/Plan Ceibal) because they used to come with Sugar, but I didn’t use it myself until I got my own machine.  In 2015 I started contributing to the Project with translations in Zanata and writing articles for Fedora Magazine.

I’ve been speaker in FLOCK Krakow, and attended different Fedora & Open Source events as Ambassador.

I’m currently working on QA testing and translations.

What are the most pressing issues facing Fedora today? What should we do about them?

  1.  Certain myths related to Fedora such as unstable, buggy, hard to use, limited in software offer, good for programmers/nerds only…   We need to show that these ideas aren’t true. How? Organising events aimed to other, non IT people.  Writing articles.  Talking to people.  Not in the way of an evangelist but offering help and support and showing them the advantages for their specific needs.
  2.  Focus more energy in solving bugs and QA testing.  If someone installs Fedora for the first time and, let’s say, the touchpad doesn’t work, what is going to do? Delete everything and fall back to their previous operating system. This shouldn’t happen.
  3.  Reaching distant areas like certain countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  At this moment, I see the project still having a strong presence of US/Western Europe developers.  In this sense, Fedora Magazine with their interview series does a great job to promote contributors from other areas.  But I think we can and we must to do more.

What are the most pressing issues facing the Fedora Ambassadors today? What should we do about them?

My list of most pressing issues would be the following:

  1.  Community troubleshooting and conflict resolving.
  2.  Opening and following up tickets.

Regarding to the second question, I don’t think we will ever be able to completely solve these issues but of course we can work to make things easier.  On the first issue, probably the best we can do is trying to see all sides of every situation and keep in mind any cultural differences that might be complicating the situation.  For the second issue, maybe we should develop some kind of program or alert for ambassadors so we don’t forget to check if certain tickets are still pending.  Clearing the guides to open tickets could be of help, in special with newcomers.  People keep struggling to open tickets and bugs in the correct way.

What are three personal qualities that you feel would benefit FAmSCo if you are elected?

  1.  A very particular point of view and understanding coming from travelling and living en different places with different cultures.
  2.  I don’t lose my mind easily and I don’t get it personal.
  3.  I’m very flexible, I don’t stick to my point of view or way to do things.

What is your strongest point as a candidate? What is your weakest point?

The strongest:  ability to listen even to those I don’t agree and see things from all sides.  The weakest:  I speak too directly and sometimes that’s really a very bad idea.

Interest in traditional Linux events seems to be waning. The motive for a new round of FAmSCo elections was to retool FAmSCo in the new world of post-LUGs and install fests. How do you believe the Ambassadors should respond to this change?

I think is great that people is not that enthusiast as they used to be about this kind of events. It means that Linux is not the strange thing, the gizmo for geeks anymore.  Now people know it and deal with it daily.  So the interest has moved towards events (including workshops, talks, etc) on specific areas rather than install fests and introductory talks.

What are your future plans? Is there anything you can consider a “Mission Statement” as a candidate?

Personally I want to become a Fedora developer and maintainer. Also I have a project of making a nice open source software for libraries (in the sense of a place where books are stored).  More in general, I want to do more to spread the word; specially in places where people is used to pay licenses (usually very expensive licenses) to get good products, show them they can have a stable OS and full featured and up to date software without comprising either their money or their privacy and security.

I have no “Mission Statement”.

Are the Ambassadors disconnected to the rest of the project? If so, what is your solution to fix the issue?

No, I don’t see us disconnected to the rest of the project.

What kind of information should be exchanged between Ambassadors and other groups / sub-projects?

Any kind of information  (except personal)  that help the different groups and the project as a whole to work better and achieve the goals.

Are Ambassadors really up-to-date with the new features of releases? If not, how do you plan to keep them up-to-date?

Yes, I think they are.  Of course, every person has different areas of interest so it may happen that one ambassador is better informed about Gnome last features while another is on design tools.  But all of us know what comes with every new version, and it would very strange if it was otherwise.

What are your thoughts about FOSCo? How do you feel it should look like?

I see it as a hub that communicates and coordinates efforts and objectives from the different groups.

If a past member of FAmSCo, identify a negative factor you noticed while serving. How would you propose to improve on that for the next cycle?

It depends on the specific negative factor I think. I can’t really say something beforehand and in general.

Give a list of goals you hope to have accomplished by the end of your term.

  • Have fixed the reimbursement issues.  It’s been over two years  (from my knowledge)  we’re having problems with payment methods, delays, etc. related to reimbursement and despite we discuss it once and again nothing seems to change.
  • Have everything set up to make the switch to FOSCO smooth.
  • Have no pending major issues.

Closing words

Just thanks.