Fedora Ambassador Steering Committee badge

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, December 08 and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Monday, December 14th. 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 Ben Williams

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

Wow, I really had to think hard about this question.  I have been in channel asking questions and helping others since Fedora Core 1 timeframe , during the Fedora Core 3 timeframe i was made a channel operator for the channel. I continue working in the channel still today helping where i can (IRC nicks Southern_Gentlem, VileGent, kk4ewt).  In the FC5 timeframe I was a founding member of the Fedora Unity Project who worked to provide useful documentation and provided updated respins for the community, I am currently the person that works to provide the updated lives for the community. I have also served as the host for FUDCon Blacksburg 2012.  I have  represented Fedora at several events including but not limited to Scale, Southeast LinuxFest, Ohio Linuxfest,  Fosscon, and talks and Installfest with the Virginia Tech Linux Unix Users Group. and I am currently the East Coast Distribution Coordinator for Fedora Ambassadors North America.

Interest in traditional Linux events seems to be stagnating or even declining. How should the Ambassadors respond to this change?

Well for one we all need to advertise Linux to the general public, it has been about 5 years since there was a push to advertise Linux to the general public.  (example: The Kid Commerical by IBM in 2005)

Our displays at events need to show the public what Linux can do for them for their daily computer tasks.  (examples be it from email, web browsing to using Linux for Amateur Radio Emergency Communications).

It seems the Ambassador activities are disconnected from the rest of the project. What is your way of fixing the issue?

I have seen this for a long time, I would really like to see more cooperation between Documentation, Marketing, Design and the Ambassadors for getting info out to our community.  I don’t know if we need a central Trac or quarterly meeting of all the groups concerned to resolve these communication issues. In the past the Ambassadors had tri-fold brochures that covered different things (Music, Desktop, Publishing, etc.) that could be used by the Ambassador at events.

What is your take on the recent governance reorganization (Council, working groups, budget, etc.)?

Well every organization goes through some sort of restructuring over time, we have a lot of things that have been working and we still have some rough edges on other things so IMHO time will tell what works the best.  As always Fedora will be driven by the ones doing the work.

Closing words

If I am elected to FAmSCo I will do as I have always done by doing the best I can to promote the project, and the people who give their blood, sweat and tears daily for the project.

– Ben Williams (jbwillia)