A spoonful of sugar.

Kevin,

Thanks for your thoughtful posting about being helpful in the Fedora support channels. I think among the keys to understanding what someone seeking help needs — let’s just call this person “Nathan” to make this blog post easier to read — are:

1. Good listening skills
2. Good empathizing skills

Essentially, a good helper need to be able firstly to turn off any immediate reactions or conclusions to which they might jump about Nathan’s situation. Not concentrating on assumptions about Nathan’s problem or skill set allows the helper to concentrate more on the actual facts needed, and elicit them from the person seeking help. Once the helper has a good idea of what Nathan’s problem really is, and what skills to solve it Nathan might lack, it’s easier to decide what level of help is required — or spoon feeding if you prefer.

Then the helper needs to empathize with Nathan to some degree — put himself in Nathan’s shoes, and allow that understanding to guide how he deals with Nathan’s needs. Often people forget this step and as a result the communication can turn a bit sour. But by making the effort to step outside ourselves to determine how Nathan might view our advice, we can increase the effectiveness of our help by orders of magnitude.

Help in any support venue affects not only Nathan, but the helper too — and in addition, even people who are just watching that help happen in the support venue are affected too! The better each individual interaction is, the better the overall environment for everyone, including newbies, experienced users, helpers, and lurkers. And of course, a more positive environment means more fertile ground for encouraging contribution to free software.

Every helper needs to understand his own level of comfort with listening and empathy, and let that guide his interactions with Nathan. That’s what I like so much about Kevin’s blog post. It shows a level of personal insight to determine Kevin’s comfort level and honest evaluation of where he thinks he can be effective as a helper.

All of us who help support people of any kind, regardless of experience level, should have a somewhat regular checkpoint of introspection, where we honestly think about our own effectiveness at listening and empathy. Then we can adjust our dealings with those we support to maximize the constructiveness of our interactions, and thereby have a direct, positive effect on the culture of free software.

Walking tall.

I love the fact that in addition to the millions of Fedora fans around the world, we also have in our community a very special group of hundreds upon hundreds of individuals known as Fedora Ambassadors. These contributors give of their free time to represent Fedora in schools, governments, businesses, and other community groups, and at events of all shapes and sizes.

You’ll see these folks behind (and all around!) Fedora booths at shows, and in front of audiences everywhere, talking about the Fedora values of Freedom, Friends, Features, and First. They are meant to be masters of explaining how sustainable free and open source software and content practices work.

Being an Ambassador means much more than putting your name on a list, though. The Ambassadors are regional, tightly-knit groups in each region that plan and execute events, cover speaking opportunities, build infrastructure, interact with other free software groups, and some of them even develop new code for Ambassador projects! And of course they work with all the other Fedora teams regularly to help the Fedora Project lead the advancement of free software.

I’ve been lucky in my job as project leader to meet many of these people — though there are many more I haven’t met. And while every one of them is unique and singular, they are all of them outstanding people. They take this volunteer work very seriously, and as a result visitors to Fedora booths and audience members at an Ambassador’s session can expect a good listener, a friendly smile, and helpful advice.

Red Hat’s Community Architecture manager (and former project leader) Max Spevack will be giving a class via IRC this Thursday — January 7 at 1500 UTC — about what it means to be an Ambassador, and how to excel at this demanding but rewarding work. Details for how to join in the session are found on the Fedora Classroom wiki page.