Around five years ago, joined Fedora community with the goal to learn more technical stuff, expand my knowledge of Linux and Fedora, so read wiki page and started to get involve into Fedora world. Started by trying to join Infra group but got not attention, there looking around on how to help Fedora a few months later, found and join the Ambassadors group, mentor by Tatica and with Jsimon's help.

Did not have any clue about local community, what to do or how to start, but by coincidence Richard Stalman visited Panama and went to his talk there I meet some local free software people and a few Linux users.

Learning about local groups with my friend Ricardo Chung from Open Suse we join the local community and history start, meet a great Panamanian Free Software advocate like David Narvaez and Diejo Tejera and many others, meeting people at local universities and doing something I'm not good at doing talks about Fedora and Free Software, on that road meet people like Abdel Martinez and others who started the Fedora Panama community, also meeting Latam people and others reading inode0 on IRC and how he lead NA community, I learn that Fedora was beyond the tech stuff and was more about the people, the great people that has only one border the limit of you internet connection, people that jump to help you that is open to teach you,  and make Friends one of the core values of Fedora.

Over the years, we have the opportunity to bring to Panama Fudcon 2011 and with it we learn more about the community the time I spend working with Toshio and Dennis during that brift period show me and others all many things we can learn and can do on the community, talking to Jared face to face show me how we have to be as community members, those moments will always be on my heart, looking at Luis Bazan pushing Itamar show he teach him how to build a package, Gomix experience Fudcon Panama was an event that transient into the live of many local people.

Local community grow and join the Fedora Friends.  While we keep working with other communities and expand our reach to Latam and later became part of FAmSCo serve there for one an half terms, but had a great right.
Leading latam community has been a great opportunity to learn more about people and about my self.

We have enjoy meeting latam and part of the friends we meet at Fudcon Panama, at Fudcon Valencia and Fudcon Cusco, having the opportunity to share with more people what Fedora has teach me and that I have teach others.

I can believe it has been five years now, time flies when you are having Fun the lose "F" missed on Fedora core values. 

This is a some how a resume about this five years there are many things I can say about them, hope you  want me around Fedora for many more years.


I have meet many people, have make many new friends, thanks to all of you who support me and Fedora Panama over this five years, it has been fun.

 

People from Fedora local team meet at CoworkingPty to celebrate the Fedora 20 Release Party, we meet with old friends and new people interested on Fedora.

After a short introduction about Fedora community,  Abdel Martinez presented the new features of Fedora 20 later we talk about Docker.io and play around with it to show its uses.

We enjoy Pizza and cake. Many thanks to Pedro Colmenares and the coworkingpty for hosting the event, and Kiara Navarro for organizing.

 

Thanks to Christoph Wickert. New Fedora pins looks awesome, we got latam batch. Now will repackage and send to other ambassadors around latam.
I have post address for most of latam countries, but now I need Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay.







Gracias Christoph Wickert. Los pins de Fedora que llegaron hoy,  se ven muy bien. Ahora me toca repartir a los países de Latam, tengo direcciones de envió de colaboradores en la mayoría de los países de latam, sin embargo requiero de Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay y Paraguay. Favor algún embajador de esos paises dispuesto a reenviar a sus compañeros me envié su dirección por email.

 

Students at Univesidad Tecnologica de Panama Colon headquarters organize small event, about technology innovation focusing on mobile devices, while it is not a Fedora specific subject we where invited as part of Floss Pa.




Event was ready when we arrive Richard Armuelles talk about Firefox OS and show small app via video conference.


Rafael Agostini local web and mobile developer introduce to us Apache Cordova project. Rafael also explain his experience as developer and the Android market.

We have the opportunity to talk about floss and a bit about Fedora, it was a good opportunity to meet with local community people.





Thanks to Moises Prado for the opportunity and the organization of the event.

 

Many good things happen at Fudcon Cusco, I have the opportunity to share many things with our fellow ambassadors and learn many others too.

Wanted to share part of my thoughts and things we share with the rest of the latam community trough this post.

Communication is key, many misunderstandings happen on meetings and emails that do not happen when we talk face to face, therefore is important to meet at least once a year on Fudcons or other events. But is also important to express our self, on emails that facilitate others to read and have a healthy discussions, some times we just discuss things on IRC and let our thoughts on to a few people, email list exists to share our thoughts and  show our ideas and plans with all ambassadors.

Plans and proposals, while at first we discuss our plans or proposals with a few friends, it is important to have a thread on the email list to spread them to a bigger audience, it is also good to add it to the latam track so we can set time on the meetings and shared it on the meeting. Keep in mind that while we are normally the same group of ambassadors on the meetings our decisions may have impact to others.

It is always good to have a goal, this help us plan ahead and keep a our mind set into it.

Latam region is growing  while we all like to be ambassadors we also need to have more people from latam  into other matters or groups, designers, translators and packagers is only an entry point, while those task are important, I like to see more people from latam on Infra or helping coding on Fedora Apps, while normally like to lead by example my time is limited so I cannot join those groups to help now, but with luck we have others who you can be follow.

We have learn that we can send swags by regular mail to other countries from Panama or Nicaragua, this will help countries that have limitations to get money to make swags, but it take around to weeks once the swags are send to arrive, therefore if you need swags to be send from Panama and Nicaragua please plan ahead. This also means that swags created on FAMA or EMEA can be send to Panama or Nicaragua and from there we can distribute it to other countries.

Let us know who you are and what are you doing, many ambassadors work by their own, many of them are on the ambassadors list, but we don't know who you are and if are active or not, in some cases we don't know all you work, it is not bad to show your word, it  help us know your commitment with Fedora and get you more support if you need it. If you cannot show on the IRC meetings please drop a line on the email list from time to time.

Publish your reports after events if you are sponsor to an event please blog about it, we prefer it to be a blog post linked to Fedora planet, but if it is not shared on the ambassadors list, so we can read it.

About Fudcons

Fudcon Cusco, was intense, big and full of gratifications, we read many comments from people from Cusco on facebook about the greater of the event and how it impact their lives.

While I was never on a Fudcon out of Latam,when organizing Fudcon Panama, I was shown all we require to have a good Fudcon, there are some things that need to be adjusted.

Fudcon on Latam are a bit different from NA or EMEA we have more users than fedorians on the audience, this means we cannot do emphasis on the big fedora subjects we have to bring talks that appeal more to the audience, while we don't know the audience we can have some prepared talks and barcam as style for the fudcons on latam, prepare talks can be about Fedora, Barcamp will help define subjects for the audience and also help the audience participate on the conference which help get more related with  the event.

Fudcon infrastructure, we need to be sure internet is not a matter on the fudcons Neville make emphasis on this on his post, and I agreed, something new bids need to consider.

Good luck to all who will be part of the bids for Fudcon Latam 2014.

Latam Budget  2015

While preparing the latam budget this year we require more information about the local events, what are the events in your countries, how we can help to have Fedora on the event, have talks etc. But the more important thing on the budget is the person responsible for the event, who will take care of the logistics planning, quoting what we need to help Fedora be part of this events. This year FISL was a good example of that. Now we need to start preparing for the new budget so please check the calendar of the events next year and what your think you need quote things and we will see if we get support for all your events, next year.

Having this year events planned ahead, help us to get more support and help more events. On latam this year we have been able to help more people to travel and support more events than any year before, so Fedora has more presents on the region.

Later will have the Spanish version.

 

FudCon Organizers had an extra surprise for us, we got together in the morning and meet with the local support team, to take a bus from the university, we drive for an hour to Urcos where the festival of Oocha Raymi (Water festival), we eat some traditional Inca meals and enjoy the festivity.





In the afternoom some of the play soccer and enjoy our ride home, where we stop to visit more Inca Ruins.



Thanks Alex and Cesar for all your work and all local team who care about the Fudcon and made us feel at home.

 

Day started with lots of expectations, many work shops, and asterisk talk by Jared requested for some university teachers.
While Icaro workshops continue and some talks about Fedora Infrastructure and apps where done.


We were invited to lunch with the president of the university, on a restaurant with a nice view and delicious Peruvian meal, we meet him and talk while he gave us a copy of book Pacarectambo and the origin of the Incas by historian Victor Angles Vargas author of several books about Cusco and the Inca culture.











After some rain and running back to our talks, we meet everyone on the main room to an amazing crowd over 200 people where there to close the event, we all got togeter and thanks the amazing people of Cusco for their love and care on those days, our gratitude and friendship will always be on our heart.

To close the event a traditional folk song was play and old join the dance.

Thanks Cusco, we want to see all as fedora contributors.

 

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It was a fund and long day, running around talks and attending installs.

 

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