Fedora-Council/tickets ticket #429: Update Fedora Council seat title: Fedora Community Architect

[t2dbot (Tickets to Discussion Bridge)]

@jflory7 filed Fedora-Council/tickets ticket #429. Discuss here and record votes and decisions in the ticket.

Ticket text:

@@jflory7

Summary

Update the seat title for “Fedora Community Action & Impact Coordinator” to “Fedora Community Architect”

Background

I was recently working together with @mattdm and @bcotton on our role pages in the Council docs, as part of a review of our documentation. While reviewing the FCAIC role documentation, I took a new look at the role title and whether I felt it was still right. While it does describe the project well, it still doesn’t feel quite right to me, in a similar way that Community Leader didn’t feel right in 2016. I spent some time thinking about the FCAIC role, how it has changed over the years, and what I feel it describes. Since I am still early on in the role, it felt like a good time to consider a title change.

I settled on Fedora Community Architect as the new title for the FCAIC role. In addition to being shorter, I feel like it better describes the role. Community work does not have an industry-accepted job ladder, as is more common with software engineering. Red Hat eventually settled on the title of community architect for community work in its pioneering Open Source communities. I also like Community Architect as a title. There is more literature and examples for others to understand the work.

Ultimately, the goal of changing the name is to better describe the role and what the F.C.A. does in Fedora. The lengthy “F.C.A.I.C.” title usually came with an explanation to others unfamiliar with Fedora and our community culture. F.C.A. is also a handy shortening of the longer F.C.A.I.C. acronym too!

Details

There are two parts:

1. Updating Council role page documentation (changes are ready now)
2. Updating references in other documentation from “FCAIC” to “FCA”

The second part is advantageous because it will also help me better determine the age and relevance of documentation over time. The important things will get updated first, but things that are secondary or outdated will lag behind. As I find outdated content, I can either update, redirect, or retire it.

Outcome

The Community Action and Impact seat on the Fedora Council is renamed from “Fedora Community Action & Impact Coordinator” to “Fedora Community Architect”

[jflory7 (Justin W. Flory)]

An additional motivation of mine with this change is to have a better definition of a junior role and/or internship as a Community Architect in Fedora. Defining it this way is also better for a graduating intern from Fedora when they go to describe the experience, their skills, and accomplishments in a resume.

[t0xic0der (Akashdeep Dhar)]

It makes sense.

It also might let us hire and/or have more than one compensated community-bound role, which can become (or already is) a requirement down the line. I can imagine that multiple community-bound personnel can come together, plan strategy/events, incentivize participation etc. all while documenting SOPs as to how those are done in a lot more effective way.

All I would ask, for now, are clear definitions of what the role means to the Fedora Council, what requirements it fulfils, what their day-to-day involvement would consist of, how folks can reach out to them etc. A lot of it should already be there, but yeah - if they require updating or obsoleting (Is that an actual word?), doing those would help.

[jflory7 (Justin W. Flory)]

@t0xic0der

It also might let us hire and/or have more than one compensated community-bound role, which can become (or already is) a requirement down the line.

There is not a plan for this (yet), but the new year is a good time to set goals and think ahead for the future. I was also thinking about mentoring for an Outreachy internship, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself just yet.

@t0xic0der

All I would ask, for now, are clear definitions of what the role means to the Fedora Council, what requirements it fulfils, what their day-to-day involvement would consist of, how folks can reach out to them etc.

This is a good ask. I have planned updates and changes to make to the FCAIC role page, but I anticipate making them after the name change. You will see a few more PRs from me to the Fedora Council docs.

That said, it is like you say, that not much is actually changing. But going forward, I want better defined buckets/categories of work in the community that the FCAIC—or, FCA—is responsible for in Fedora. @mattdm, @bcotton, and I made a whiteboard map together of our roles last week, and this is an extension of that reflection exercise we did.

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

I’m in support of this. I enjoy the quirky history with the current term, but I spend a lot of time explaining it to people outside of Fedora when making introductions. “Community Architect” might also need some explaining, but it doesn’t cause universal confusion in the same way.

[bookwar (Aleksandra Fedorova)]

Quick +1 for rename.

Better definition is also nice to have, but I wouldn’t consider it a requirement for the rename.

[jflory7 (Justin W. Flory)]

@bookwar

Better definition is also nice to have

I have a pending action item to do some updates to the FCAIC (or, FCA) role page too. It will probably happen after this name change, but before I promote the new title that widely.

[jflory7 (Justin W. Flory)]

After a long while, I put together a Community Blog article to summarize the title change and make it more visible. This can be a reference point in the future for when and why the title was changed. I will ask @bcotton for a publishing date in the CommBlog editing workflow.

Any feedback or pre-publishing comments are welcome here.