Some of the things the Fedora FR team has done

Some of the things the Fedora FR team has done

Over the weekend, I spoke to alot of people in the Fedora FR team about some of the things they've done. So far I've had only an small inkling of the amount of work they've put into promoting Fedora. I think that it's time that the rest of the world knows what they've been up to.

The Fedora-FR group and non profit organisation is concerned with promoting Fedora within the Francophone community. This includes not only France but southern Belgium, some border towns in Germany, northern Africa, half of Switzerland, and any other community that speaks primarily French. As I've written before, the Fedora FR team is on the unique challenge of providing Fedora as a good resource to a population that does not speak English well.

In a nutshell, they've reproduced most of the information infrastructure available to the mainstream Fedora but in French. They have their own:

• Website
  
• Forum
  
• Documentation
  
• Planet
  
• Non Profit Organization
  

The Organisation is made up of:

• 19 Ambassadors
  
• A whopping 14,600 people signed up to the forum
  
• 80 documentation writers
  
• 22 contributors to the French blog.
  

They've put together in the past:

• Powered by Fedora stickers
  
• Fedora pins - I have a few, the quality is excellent
  
• A French Live CD spin
  
• An Online Fedora Schwag store - Including the unofficial Fedora thong.
  
• A PDF Manual for Fedora available for offline reading
  
• Articles in local magazines
  

They've arranged and ran many events for the French Community including at least 3 install fests for every Fedora release. Overall, they are sincerely one of our best and top performing marketing and Ambassador teams in the Fedora world.

This presents a few issues in regards to Fedora as a whole. Firstly, there is a strong overlap between the efforts of Fedora FR and Fedora EMEA. They are both looking to provide an outlet for alot of Fedora resources, including funding of events and running online stores. Even so, the focus of Fedora EMEA is far more corporate than Fedora FR. Most of the members of Fedora EMEA either use Fedora professionally at work, or work for Red Hat. In contrast, Fedora FR is made up mostly of community members who use Fedora for fun. The bar for membership is alot lower in Fedora FR, and they actively encourage people who participate at events to sign up for membership. One thing that we certainly can work on though is better communication and collaboration between Fedora FR and Fedora EMEA.

My weekend in Paris has been quite enjoyable so far. I can certainly say, without a doubt, that everyone in the French speaking Fedora community is quite hospitable, and more than happy to welcome visitors. If you can speak French, I really highly recommend visiting this community. It is definitely a very valuable experience. I would like to thank the entire community for hosting me this past weekend.