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This is a draft document for the creation of a new community contribution opportunity.  Please feel free to edit and leave comments.

Why

We are considering this role because Hyperledger Regional Chapters are organized groups of community members in different parts of the world are offering to help us in ways that we don't currently support.  There are also many regional specific ways people can contribute to Hyperledger.  We've seen this so far in China where local community members are helping work through contribution barriers faced in that region.  Other regions also have barriers – to pick just one are working together to address contribution barriers in their regions.  For example, contributors from South America working together to translate material into Spanish to help people who don't speak English face a language barrier when trying to contribute to a predominantly English-oriented project.

What

contribute to the project.

Official Regional Chapters

There are Hyperledger Regional Chapters in the following parts of the world:

Proposed Regional Chapters

These regions have proposed creating a new Hyperledger chapter:

Starting A Chapter

If you are interested in starting a regional chapter, take a look through the following criteria and then reach out to dboswell at linuxfoundation dot org:

  • The region represents a distinct language or geography of over 50 million people
  • There is a clearly defined vision for what the community in that region wants to do to contribute to Hyperledger
  • There is at least one official Hyperledger meetup that is active in that region
  • There are more than 50 people in the region communicating together about the Hyperledger community
  • There are 2-3 people in the area who are interested in acting as leaders for the chapter and are willing to recruit new members, organize regular meetings (both online and in person) and make sure that the group is working toward the goals that are set in the chapter's vision

The timing of when we go live with a new region will depend on finding the right people to take on the leadership role and having local communities that meet these requirements, so there is no roadmap about when we will launch a particular new chapter.

See below for more information about types of activities a regional chapter could do and how the Hyperledger project can support them.

What activities can regional chapters get involved with?

Possible activities for regional chapters to work on We are proposing to create a new community role (name TBD – more below) for people to act as Regional Coordinators.  Activities for this role can include the following, although it should be noted that this will change over time as community members suggest new ways to contribute:

  • Support local events and organize regional events
    • In order to scale our meetup efforts which are currently being supported by one Hyperledger staff member, we can delegate authority to Regional Coordinators Leads to support local meetups in a regionan area.  They would be empowered to approve new city leaders, but would send requests to remove city leaders (based on some bad behavior) upwards to Hyperledger staff.  This additional bandwidth to support meetups will be critical in an effort to ensure a positive experience for all meetup attendees and for raising the expectations we set for meetup organizers.
    • They would also focus on doing things across cities in their region: for example, if there are special guests in the region they can notify the city leaders there and coordinate a "tour".  Or they could run other types of regional events, including boot campsbootcamps, work sprints, localization drives, hackathons, etc.
  • Address region-specific contribution barriers
    • Tools: There are examples where tools that are used in the Hyperledger project aren't accessible or used in a region.  For example, community members in China don't use Google Docs so information that is posted there is not available to them.  Identifying these hurdles and working with Hyperledger staff is a very important function.
    • Time zones: Many aspects of the Hyperledger community are time-specific and are not equally accessible to everyone.  For instance, the TSC call happens in the middle of the night for many contributors.  Regional coordinators Leads can help address this issue – some ideas have already been floated, such as nominating a rotating list of local community members to stay up late to attend an important meeting and acting as a bridge to give input in that meeting and to take notes back to the local community.
    • Language: Many regions of the world do not use English and this becomes a contribution barrier.  Regional coordinators Leads can work with Hyperledger staff to address this.  For instance, we may decide to translate technical and marketing material into different languages so this information becomes more accessible in a region .  Regional coordinators may also coordinate with our Marketing team to help translate and place material into and can be placed in region-appropriate channels.  Learn more about available Translation Opportunities.
  • Other contributions opportunitiescontribution opportunities
    • Collecting local Hyperledger use cases (collected from local press, local presentations, local networks etc) to share with the wider community through blogs posts, the Blockchain Showcase and other appropriate channels.
    • Working with local universities to help them learn more about Hyperledger and to help get students and professors connected to the community
    • Please add suggestions and ideas for other ways Regional Coordinators Leads could contribute...

Where

We would not immediately put all cities into a region, but would start with a few regions early on and grow from there.  Regions will need to be defined, but we can sketch out likely areas for where we will want Regional Coordinators:

  •     Short term: India, Japan, Africa, South America (and China – which already has a form of Regional Coordinator in place)
  •     Mid term: Australia, Eastern Europe, Israel, Persian Gulf
  •     Long term: North America, Korea, SE Asia (Singapore, Thailand, etc), Western Europe

The timing of when we go live with a new region will be highly dependent on finding the right people (2-3 leaders for each region) to take on this role, so the list above is a starting point for thinking about where we will create regions. 

How

How to support these Regional Coordinators is the big question.  Finding coordinators doesn't seem to be the challenge – we're thinking through this process because we have people in different regions (India, South America, Africa, etc) who are approaching us and expressing interest in this type of contribution. 

What support is available to regional communities?

Support for Regional Chapters Some ways we can support the Regional Coordinators include:

  • Infrastructure: We can create a mailing list and chat channel (following the community-NAME convention), meetings and space on the wiki for each region.  Without this infrastructure the only way we've been connecting people in a region is through emails I send to people in the same region with the subject 'Building the Hyperledger community in NAME'
  • Budget: We could allocate a portion of the Marketing budget towards funding things that would help these regional and local coordinators pull something together.
  • Official community title: "Hyperledger Chapter Lead" is an official community role that someone can place on their LinkedIn profile.
  • Staff time: When Hyperledger staff members travel, they may be available to work with Regional Leads on activities, such as speaking at events.Staff time: We can make ourselves available to Regional Coordinators when we travel so that they can organize a tour with staff members.  We can involve Regional Coordinators in other aspects of our work as appropriate – for instance, would it make sense to have language representatives in the Marketing Committee call to help us bring our marketing efforts to non-English speakers?
  • Training: We can provide free or discounted access to the Hyperledger certifications that the Linux Foundation offers (details to come soon).  This will help make sure that the regional coordinators Regional Leads are knowledgeable and can act as on the ground mentors for the local community/.
  • Swag: We can provide regional coordinators Regional Leads with a swag pack when they join so that they can have a Hyperledger shirt to wear when representing the community and so that they can have swag to take to events that they organize and support.
  • Other ideas for support...

Naming

I personally think that 'Regional Coordinator' as a name is uninspiring and dull and I recommend considering other options. 

To me, this is one of several ways that a community member can act as an official Hyperledger representative.  My recommendation is to broaden the current Ambassador concept and recognize that we currently have selected for just one specific type of representative, a Technical Ambassador. 

We could add the concept of a Hyperledger Regional Ambassador to that list.  I could also see us having other types, such as a Hyperledger Industry Ambassador to recognize the work our SIGs are doing to represent Hyperledger within the many different fields where our technology is being adopted. 

  • swag as needed to support their activities.

Note that support will be based on the activity of a Regional Lead.  People who take this role who are not active, or are not representing Hyperledger in an appropriate way, would not be eligible for support and could be removed from this roleThis builds on a well defined concept of Ambassadors that has been established across many different open source projects.  For instance, the Fedora Ambassador program defines Ambassadors as the representatives of Fedora.