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.