< Council | Video Meetings
Transcript of 14 December 2022 Fedora Council Video Meeting
This transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. It was lightly edited for clarity. Time stamps are approximate due to editing.
Video available on YouTube.
Ben Cotton: Welcome to the Fedora Council's monthly video meeting. I'm Ben Cotton, the Fedora Program manager, filling in for Matthew Miller who is traveling today. Our council tries to work asynchronously as much as possible. We do tickets and chat and discussion, but we found that sometimes it's really helpful to have a high bandwidth meeting available to the community, to discuss certain aspects of what's going on in Fedora that we really want to highlight — either that's going really well or stuff where we want to bring attention to so people can help out. For today's meeting, which is December 14th of 2022, we have Justin Flory, who is our new Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator, or FCAIC — basically the community architect who helps guide the Fedora community through all the fun stuff that we do throughout the year. So with that, I will let Justin start his talk.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Thanks. Wow. So I have to think about what I want to put on the agenda for today. So I think maybe for this and I gave a presentation at the release party that I think I might recycle from a bit here but also I just want to leave a lot of time here just for the folks that are here to have some time for Q&A, even talk about some of the up-and-coming things or questions people might have whether it's about our conferences or travel or about things happening in the community, Mindshare, [or] Council. I really want to prioritize that in our discussion today as well. So I'll, I'll go through this presentation. I'll do a condensed version of what I gave at the release party. And then I'll leave the floor open at the end for us to have some open conversation, or Or if no questions and I'll just share a little bit at least on what I'm thinking about three months in on the role.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): But let me go ahead and share my screen. Put this full screen and share a window. Okay, is my screen visible here. Perfect.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): So right, so this is a rehash, I don't know if everyone who is here, saw the presentation at the release party but you know this is just a short introduction about me and also a little bit on my thoughts on what the I think the Fedora story is and what makes fedora so special. Um, so right, there's gonna be two chapters to this presentation. First ones, a little bit about me, my background, what I do in FOSS and open source and how I landed here in the Fedora community. And then the second part is a little bit about Fedora and the community, the project, Fedora Linux and what has helped…what I think has helped keep us here. Doing all the things we do for almost 20 years, which will be next year, 2023, you'll be our 20th anniversary as a project. so,
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Let's start from the beginning. So for me, I first kind of got into open source around…I started using Open Source for the first time probably 2011 and it was in 2013 or so that I was running my own Minecraft game server.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): And at the time I was using Linux, I was using CentOS to run my multiplayer game server so people could log on and play Minecraft with me. And I also use this server software called Spigot which was an open source. Minecraft Server implementation with plugins and mods, people can change stuff in the game, do different kinds of things. So gradually, I made this transition from just being a user or CIS admin basically into getting more involved and entering the community that existed around spigot. This was my first time getting involved in a fast project and at the time I was still a high school student. I was working with people who are so all around the world whether it was UK Australia, South America, we had folks from pretty widely dispersed. But this is my first time, like I actually got to meet these people in person. I was a community moderator on their forum for a number of years. So a community of mostly 13 to 25 year olds and about a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand of them. So it was quite an interesting time our experience being there but we're also I got a little bit of my community management chops and experience too but this was kind of the first part of my chapter is I went from being this consumer of open source to actually being a contributor to being involved in the community spaces.
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Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): So then, as I concluded my high school years and went into university. I also decided that I wanted to spend more time thinking about this Linux stuff because I was using centos. And when I was in high school, I was like, Oh, I'm gonna put Fedora on my laptop because I knew it was the upstream of Centos. So I was like, Oh, I'll use Fedora and then I'll probably know I'll become an expert at Centos, right? I'll just know, all this is admin stuff. I'm using Fedora. It didn't quite go like that, but it definitely helped. So going forward into 2015-2016, I started to spend more time instead of being a lurker and just watching things on the outside of the Fedora community. I started to make some steps on getting involved in the project.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): I always think the way I entered Fedora was a little odd because my first major experience was actually at an in-person event. I wasn't very active virtually or online at first. So, in 2015, I had moved to Rochester New York, which is where my university, The Rochester Institute of Technology, is and that was also where in 2015, we have the US edition of flock that year. So it was happening coincidentally a week before the semester began. So I decided I was gonna move across the country and come up early to see what this fedora flock was all about and that was the first time that I really got. indoctrinated I guess or exposed to all the people and the community that was there behind Fedora because up till then I was maybe looking at Fedora ask and sSome IRC channels. I was lurking in back in the day but this is when I actually got to meet people and put some like nicknames and account names to faces and real names. So over time, I started to also become more involved as an ambassador. I would run events on my university campus or even at other university campuses, like, hackathons running a fedora booth handing out fedora swag back when we did DVD media, which is a an old one, you can see all these Fedora 24 CDs DVDs here and our our old logo swag. See the old, the one laptop per child laptops with. She used the sugar on a stick spin of fedora. The cake was not mine; I just thought that was really cool. I remember seeing that I have a picture of it. That was really cool at the time but the rest were mine.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Um, so this is when I really started to get to know more about Fedora and the community that was there behind this huge Linux distribution. And slowly Fedora started to open some doors for me very early in my career together with the help of some really excellent, great mentors. It's pitch. The big picture here was with Charles Profit at Hack MIT when we did a hackathon event at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Students who are building technology projects, they would come to ask us questions about Linux and advice for building their projects. And Charles was one of my early mentors or helped me kind of be more confident doing some of this event and advocacy for Fedora.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): I also got to travel and see places and meet people who I never would have gotten to know, otherwise you've been including a brief meeting with Jim Whitehurst, the former Red Hat CEO, back in 2017. There's all these things that if you had asked me about where I thought, I was where I thought I'd be or what I was going to be doing in 2015. I wouldn't have been able to guess any of this stuff, but gradually through the people, I met, and by nature of the things that we were doing in Fedora that people were interested in. I got to grow my network, and broaden, my experiences in the project.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): You know, and I kind of underscoring that I've had several great mentors along the way, this was at a hackathon at RIT, this was the first back before. It was the FCAIC. The Community Action and Impact coordinator was the FCL the Fedora Community lead. And this was the first FCAIC was Remy Decausemaker who was a very early mentor for me and kind of help steer me very early on in the Fedora Project community and you know that's always been kind of a theme for me is that It's not always just it's not just been about the the work that we do. But it's also about the people that we do it with together. So fast forward a little bit more 2016. I feel like this is where my Fedora story really started to like accelerate. That's when I had spent about a year since that first conference where now, I wasn't just on the outside, but after that flock in Rochester in 2015,
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Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): I really started to become more like a part of the project, I helped co-found the Community Operations, commops team, then the diversity team — the DEI team. I was leading Fedora marketing for a time, the Join SIG, and probably more things than I should have been doing honestly. But, and 2016, that all kind of manifested is that this time I came to the conference, not as an outsider, or not as a stranger. And these people are all people I've been working with for over a year and it was a really great opportunity for me to like really grow some of those connections. And feel like I was really a part of this big story of our of our project of our distribution and our community.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): And I gave this at the release party, when Marie was transitioning off and I just wanted, like a happy memory of what's where I first time I met Marie was in Fedora at Flock before she was FCAIC and she was also a community contributor. So yeah, you know as I as I continue to going on meeting people and talking about Fedora all all over the world and do my university. I realized that
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): You know, Fedora started to become more than just a project for me. It became this really big part of my of my life of something I really enjoyed doing but also I had made some really great friends friendships that I've maintained all this all this time through through my life. And my world started to open up. I had these chances to, you know, sometimes it was you know, fedora trips like this one in Albania. When we had the open source conference Albania, We're Fedora was a sponsor you'll see the second F cake. Brian X will be here pointing to the Fedora logo. Um, but also personal travel opportunities, too. I had chances to travel to places like India and Southeast Europe places that again, if you had asked me in 2015 where I was gonna end up, I would never have been able to guess, this is what was in store for me, but again, that was a lot of that opportunity of getting to meet people making great friendships and then
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Extending them in ways that go beyond just in fedora. I also found new opportunities across my career. Fedora has been a pivotal part for me and kind of figuring out and finding my open source path. I was an intern with the UNICEF Office of Innovation in 2018. And I was, before I entered the FCAIC role at Red Hat, I was with UNICEF from 2020 to 2022 and I was doing open source work there. I was, I was in a role where I was a coach to teams that were building, open source products. So I guess to kind of backstep, there was a…UNICEF has a venture capital fund where they invest in startup companies from places that UNICEF works in. So, not places like the US, or the UK, or Europe, but other countries, and the requirement for that UNICEF funding is that whatever UNICEF is funding, has to either be mostly or completely free and open source software. So, my role there was being a coach helping these like, people who are doing open source for the very first time trying to build a company. Build a product to think through like, Well, What's this, What's this to know about open source licenses? What kind of business models are out there? How do you build a community? Like What does documentation for an open source project? So in many ways I got to transfer all these things that I many things I learned from Fedora, not all but many I've leaned on Fedora across my career, as an open source model for how communities and fast projects in the virtual space work, and I've been able to apply that in many places in my career.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): I also have pictures from the Meta Brains Foundation which is the steward of the Music Brains Project. Kind of like the Wikipedia of Music metadata and they invited me out to their their team summit in 20. 19 To come in like be a part of their conversations around community engagement and strategy for their project. And again I was leaning on a lot of fedora experience and Skills that I had gained along the way from that.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): So the rest as they say is history; somehow things came full circle. And now I'm here, now wearing a red hat doing some Fedora things which I'm really excited to be in this role to have this chance to work on Fedora full time instead of squeezing it in on the on the side across my life as it's been as a volunteer but there's definitely a lot to understand and learn about the community when you're in this role, too. So it's an exciting opportunity for me to be here and to be helping the Fedora project as this role in this new, new capacity for me.
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Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): But today in general, I would kind of hinted along the way in in the talk that mentoring was a really big part of this that I had some really great people who helped guide me along my way and lots of pictures here from various mentoring. That's happened across Fedora. How Vipul here who's on the call to who's highlighted here in the in the slide. But, you know, beyond just my personal story with mentoring and getting involved in Fedora. I also think that's the way that our story as a project is beginning to shift.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Ben Cotton here has given a talk before, right? Remember open source has won now what or something to that effect. You know the whole idea being that open source isn't this controversial thing? That it was 20 years ago, you know, people don't look at you Bug-eyed, Microsoft isn't calling Linux a cancer anymore, you know, a lot of things have changed in the last 20 years around open source. And so now as more and more people and projects and communities are getting into this open source way. You know, a lot of times they're looking for like I saw this in my UNICEF role is that people want examples, they want to see things, they want to know how other people do these community building and open source things.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): So the story, I think both as it was for me but also with Fedora is a greater shift to mentoring which segues here into chapter 2 of this. Talk is kind of some open thoughts and thinking around what I think are Fedora story is So like what is it that makes Fedora Fedora? We've been here for almost 20 years, so obviously we're doing something right.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): I felt like a good way of summarizing it is that we have a really…we have amazing creativity. In our project. We have a very strong culture around how we worked and how we do things in Fedora. And we have a strong community, our community is the backbone of everything that we've done in the last 20 years. It's part of the DNA of Fedora Fedora wouldn't be fedora without our creativity, without our culture. And without our community So you could call this, our, our common call to care care for our work for what we produce as a community, or our technical excellence as a distribution, We also have our common call to care for each other, as members of this shared community, you know, we're doing work together, but we're also all human beings and some of us do it. As part of our job. Some of us do it, as our as volunteers, but we're all in this, we're all in this together.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): So maybe our common call to care for excellence, across all parts of the project. But we actually spell these things out too in our project. if you've been around in Fedora for a little bit, you probably know or have heard about the four foundations, which are kind of the values of the Fedora Project and the Fedora community. I've always been impressed by these four foundations, just because People, I meet are very other contributors. I mean, are just very attached to these four foundations. They mean, a lot to us, they carry weight, regardless of, you know, all the other things we're doing. I think these four foundations provide us kind of that bedrock that we can build everything else on, you know, it's
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Talking about the culture of the community. I think this is a huge part of it. So I just want to understand each of those four foundations really quick because I think each one is really key to what we do. The first one being freedom, really getting at the fact that Fedora only packages free and open source software by default. We only provide like if you use the out of the box installation, you will have a operating system. That's 99.9% powered by free and open source software. We have some minor exceptions for hardware firmware but you know so people can actually run it on some weird laptop that has locked down drivers or whatever. But that one case aside, everything else is FOSS. We don't ship stuff by default — we don't even package things that are proprietary in Fedora. It's forbidden, we don't do it. And as a result, I think it's transferred to become a large part of our community. That, you know, you can take anything that we're building in fedora and you know that you have that permission, you have that freedom to take it and do other things with it. I also think that goes beyond just what we make what we do. But also into what we use.
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Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): It's not a perfect case but a lot of times Fedora will push hard on using the free and open source software options when it's viable. And when we can, I think a great example to call out here is as it was announced this week, there's going to be a creative Freedom summit in January, that's going to be all hosted and all fast tools, but it's gonna also be celebrating free and open source tools around design and creativity. So I think that's like just one specific example of how this value manifests in Fedora. Beyond freedom, though. Friends is also a big part of it which was kind of the whole thing. I was trying to underscore in the first half of this presentation, that the people that were doing this stuff with together is part of what makes it so much fun and why we do what we do. It's part of
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): that engagement and connection you get as part of this project that the people were doing it with matters, just as much as what we do and what we build together. It's also Having that strong community and also being able to invite other people in to come along and be a part of this journey with us together.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Features is the third foundation. So this one really talking a lot about technical excellence. So really trying to make sure that we're providing a great experience for our users for people who are consuming fedora and various ways downstream, whether it's as a distribution or even in some of our websites and applications and services that we provide for contributors. And even for users, it's really important that we have those latest and greatest features in the distribution. And if you are on the fedora, devel-announce mailing list, you know, it's a great place to get a feel for what's coming. Ben Cotton does again, he does great posts whenever there's a new change proposal in the community, and that's a great way to understand what's coming next in Fedora.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Which also ties into the fourth foundation: first. Is that it's a really important part for us, as part of our commitment to innovation and trying new ideas, and going in places that no distro has gone. Before that, we try to be ahead of the curve on these things. We like to be not on the bleeding edge but on the cutting edge right where we're experimenting with some of the newest latest and greatest technology, but also not compromising on our stability and the deliverables that we produce as a project.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): I also think this goes beyond just distros and also in the community space, the Commops team, the Fedora Diversity team in many ways. Back in 2015, when those teams were founded were first. A lot of open source projects weren't really thinking about community engagement. Well community architecture, they might think about it when it when it's a fire and they have to put it out, but the fedora we've really always trying to prioritize that, you know, the community stuff is just as important. And that's where we can innovate, you know, it's one of our strongest places for innovation. But that said all these four foundations wouldn't mean anything if it weren't also for you. So all the folks who are in the community you know before foundations wouldn't mean anything if people didn't take value from them, people didn't feel like they were important.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): So you know, you listener, whether you're here live in this call or you're watching this in a recording sometime in the future. These are all that you are a part of this fedora story as well. Or you have that option to become a part of this Fedora story.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): So, as I move to the wrap up here, I just want to cover some things that I think are really important to help understand fedora. We, we have a project charter. This charter has a vision statement and a mission statement as well as a community statement, which I really like the vision. A vision statement in general, is kind of like that aspirational dream like, What's the ideal world that you're trying to work towards like what's that, what's that vision? The dream that you're trying to accomplish? And the mission is more of a kind of like more concrete. How you gonna do it, How are you gonna get to that dream vision place? So, I just want to call these out. Is I think they're really excellent or examples. I've used a cross my career as well. So our vision in the Fedora project is that the Fedora project envisions a world where everyone benefits from free and open source software built by inclusive….
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Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): ..and open-minded communities. And our mission statement. How are we going to do that? That Vision Fedora creates an innovative platform for hardware clouds and containers that enables both software developers and community members, to build tailored solutions for their users. So I think this gives a really good picture of, kind of like what we do in Fedora and why we do it in addition to those four foundations. But all those things I just talked about the vision, the mission community statement, the four foundations. You can find that in our project charter, which may be someone here. Can drop a link in the chat or if not. I'll get one after I'm done presenting here.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): But with that, that's all that I had in this presentation. Hopefully, it wasn't too much of a repeat. For those of you who caught this at the release party, but this is a little bit about me and my fedora story, and where I hope that we will continue to go as a project as a community into the future. So you can find more on me, Jwf.io website, and also have a blog or you can find me in the Matrix Space discourse, jflory7 or J W F depending where it is. So we have any time…Oh, we've got about 20 minutes. We got plenty of time here. So take any questions either on this presentation or in general. Just things in in Fedora that people are wondering about and maybe I can try to demystify or talk a little bit about here. Thanks.
Ben Cotton: Okay, thank you Justin. While people are thinking of their questions and if you have a question please feel free to come on camera and ask on the mic or to put it in chat but I'll start off with a softball for. Have you retired your iconic hats? I noticed a lot of the pictures have your hat in there but I haven't seen you in it lately.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Well, if you see me in Raleigh, I I take it when I travel, but when I'm at home, I don't always put the headphones on, or, or jump around, but I do, I don't maybe wear them as often as I once did, but I have the hats and…
Ben Cotton: Excellent.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): They are they are they are still apart. And even got. Now I got the red hat, though. You kind of see like right here.
Ben Cotton: All right, well, I have some some harder questions for you now. A year from now, as you're looking back on your first year as an FCAIC, how will you know if you are successful or not?
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Mmm, that's good question.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Well, I mean, I think a part of this is that, you know, on the Fedora Council side, this came up at Nest also, I think we still have. Well, there's definitely some homework to do here, to open this conversation up a little bit more, but we're having our conversation now about the next five-year vision. A five-year strategy rather for the Fedora project. Trying to think about, you know, if you've been around for a while, you might remember Fedora Dot next, which was when we went from having just one distribution and then we switched to having Editions as this new model. So we're in this process of like that was that was that was even more than five years ago now. So we're in the process of thinking now like well what's this next strategy for fedora? Where do we want to go? Just in these next few years? As a project thinking of that vision and that mission those are still a part.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): To that five-year strategy is a piece and one thing that stands out to me in that, which I also kind of underscored in the presentation is the value of mentoring that we were really wanting to. Like the goal that we've talked about is that, so everyone in Fedora would either be a mentor or have a mentor, maybe a little very ambitious, but I think it's a good ambition to have. So, for me, what I would feel being successful is in the spaces that I'm working in really trying to make it possible for people to have input and engage around areas of the project that maybe it felt tricky to engage with or just sometimes just overwhelming. So there's definitely like going into new the new year. My goal is that I like to have like
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Two different projects. I want to have some project that's very much in the Fedora community space, maybe as an objective or trying to do something that's very visible in Fedora. But I also want to spend now that I'm in, you know, I've spent seven years in Fedora already. Now I'm in this Red Hat role and trying to figure out what does Red Hat think of Fedora, which is no bad things to be clear, but just trying to think about how Red Hat can get.
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Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Better engaged with Fedora. So I'm trying to think about. I want to have one internal project as part of my role, as a Red Hatter and my place of employment. But I also want to have one project that's very visible in the community. I haven't quite figured out what those projects will be. I have a long list of ideas but I'm just one person. So I have to first got to narrow it down, maybe, maybe by six months, in six months, I'll know what the projects will be and then the year long I'll be able to know whether I have like met or delivered on those. But for now the thing that stands out to me is mentoring I would really like to see more people involved in corners of the project that are really important but are maybe under resourced or or maybe just folks are a little burnt out on. I really want to make that mentoring just as important of a value to the project as these, all the other things, our mission and vision and the four foundations. I don't know exactly how I'll know if that was successful other than that, we have people doing mentoring. But you know, that's part of my my thought to sit on I guess is thinking about, how would we measure that? How would we know whether we were successful in trying to build a stronger mentoring culture? Itself.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Maybe I'll have a more specific answer in three months, get back to me.
Ben Cotton: All right. Anyone else have a question?
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): If not,…
Ben Cotton: All…
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): I'm gonna I'm gonna start picking on people here,…
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): you know?
Ben Cotton: I'll say I still have,…
Ben Cotton: I still have some more written down on my little notes here. So you know you're not getting away that easy.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Okay, go for it.
Ben Cotton: So you've mentioned the word burnout a time or two in your last answer and the FCAIC rolee has historically not been one where people stuck around very long, it's human it's very demanding. I think everyone who's had the role would say it's rewarding, but it takes a lot out of a person. What do you see as the plan, both that you can do and that the community can do to try and make this a role where we're not turning through people every few years?
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): The perennial FCAIC burnout question. Well, I mean, I'll lead with that, just with, like, definitely one thing that's been very clear to me, entering this role, is it? There is a lot of things that are coming at you all the time. So I definitely have a renewed sense of appreciation for all the FCAIC’s previous — Remy, Bex, and Marie — for all the amazing work that they've done and things that they've pushed forward. That, you know, aren't exactly part of the job description and the job title, and That's just definitely something that entering this role. Now I haven't even greater appreciation for than I did before. Before I entered the role, even though I've worked with all of them over time.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): The question. Yeah, I think well I know there's a trap that I fall into sometimes for me. And that's that sometimes, you know how something works and how it's set up, and sometimes it's like, Oh, it's just easier if you jump on it and and you do it. But it's really important that when we have those times, or those moments that we take a step back, even if it means that something doesn't happen as fast as it possibly could, taking that time to guide. Someone mentor someone through a task. So, you know, the phrase a teacher person to fish…. “give a person a fish, they eat for a day, teach a person to fish and they eat forever” kind of thing. Here the same thing applies to Fedora and many open source projects. So one thing I hope that I could be a little better about and I would appreciate it too. If people are like you know there's things that they want to better understand or they want to do more in fedora to help, you know. Feel like you're not getting that opportunity to be vocal about it or just try to ask questions.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): you know, sometimes when specially when you've been in in the community for so long, You know, it's easy to kind of go into autopilot. But one thing is that I'm hoping to do here is kind of disrupt that a little bit. So I'm trying to come up with some processes for things that like I have known as like whether it was an ambassador or in commerce or marketing thinking through ways that would make it easier for people to engage in places that
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Maybe haven't been as accessible or as close? And maybe other thing is just a little bit of patience too because I'm definitely trying to like figure out. One thing I've noticed with every FCAIC is that everyone takes a different, spin to it. Like I said, like, You know, Marie and Bex, and Remy, they all did things that went beyond the job description, you know, what was written in the application and what they talked about in their interviews.
00:35:00
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): So I'm trying to think a little bit on what my spin is going to be. And that's this weird thing too is when you've been in the project for so long, sometimes you have to take a step back and question some of your default assumptions. So, maybe the other thing that would help me too is just having some patience as I'm also trying to. I also understand where I can really push things forward as the FCAIC and where I can, you know, make it easier for other people to participate and lead and have those same kind of opportunities that helped me all the way across my career over the last seven years. So, I'm really an open book, you can find me on Matrix or
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Or any of the community spaces, I'm always open for a conversation or a chat. So don't be a stranger either. Have some, maybe so I guess it's have some patience, but also don't be a stranger reach out to me. Say, hello. I'm always happy to talk to folks, and, you know, make sure that's Fedora is working best for, for you and which your goals and motivations are in the project. Kind of around about way of answering that. But it is, it is a tough question because there's definitely, you know, a pattern in that in the role and then there's just like as I'm seeing entering the role now too is that there's just a lot of stuff that's there. Fedoras a big community, a big project, 20 years comes with some baggage. So I'm also trying to find that right balance and hope that you can try to continue our common call to care. As I said in the presentation, Do these things as well.
Ben Cotton: Like any anyone else want to break my interrogation? Or should I go on with the next question?
Ben Cotton: So what, you know, you said you've been around the Fedora community a long time. You've been involved in a lot of different areas. What has surprised you the most in your first few months in the role?
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Hmm. What surprised me the most?
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Hmm, that is a good question. I think it's probably a mix of like understanding who all the stakeholders are like when I was on the outside, as a community member. Like my role was in in that way as a volunteer and that I was just either interested in doing these things. All right? I had great groups of people to work on exciting challenges with but I was kind of in my niche. I spent a lot of time in I guess what you could call the non-engineering or mind share parts of the project where my heart's at — you know, that's why I'm in the more of a community role than an engineering role. But also, you know, Fedora, a huge part of the project is the engineering part. So while I've done a little bit of packaging and I've submitted to change proposal once before,
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): A lot of me right now I feel like it's just trying to better understand that half of the project, he left brain, right brain kind of feeling a bit. So I'm just trying to better understand like sometimes, it feels like those two worlds are totally apart, not always, but sometimes it feels like the engineering stuff is so far from the non-engineering stuff, and Sometimes the differences make sense, but other times, I think we need to have them a lot closer together and sometimes it's surprises me that there are not closer together than they are. Like, I mean, I even kind of saw this when I was running things with fedora marketing but sometimes it's really tough to like, think around how you get the latest and greatest excited. Exciting stuff in the fedora out to our users, out to our community. So maybe that one's not as like surprising for me, but I'm just seeing places like that where I'm like, oh like
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Think about think about fedora badges. We're just starting to have a, a group, a team, a merge around trying to update and modernize the. Fedora badges platform. And you know one thing I think we need to make sure of in those conversations is that the community folks and the engineering folks are hand-in-hand. We have all the designers who are building badges designing the badges and uploading them and creating them without making any code. And then we have people who are, you know, who will work, who work on the software, end of things, and don't work on, you know, never even think about opening Inkscape. So I think you know, like not saying that those people have to do everything together but they should at least be in touch with each other and synced you know, on the same page about like Well what are our goals for the project like for Fedora Badges Project? And where are we trying to take our future one to two year vision for the platform?
00:40:00
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): So that'll be something that's coming up very soon because we're, we have our social tomorrow for free or badges and end of year, social where we're just Tomorrow at mostly, just to get to know folks talk about fedora badges and then kind of look at what's to come in the New Year. But starting in January, hopefully trying to get some of that moving. And so part of that process has been making sure that we have the right people at the, the metaphorical table, right? So we have the designers there with their input. We have the software engineers there with their input and we have some of the infrastructure SIS admin type folks who are also a part of that as well.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): So yeah, I guess that's my surprise is that sometimes I'm like, Oh I thought these things are more connected than they actually were Guess not. So, you know, I think that's part of the challenge as well. Is kind of coming back to that mentoring piece is like, well you know it's important that we collaborate and work together and we make those bridges in the community. So maybe that's something combining it with that five-year strategy with Fedora and that mentorship piece could be a Maybe make it a little bit less surprising for whoever might follow me in this role one day.
Ben Cotton: Okay, I think we'll do last call for questions here. I've run out of the ones that I've written down, so If anyone else has one, how's your chance?
Sumantro Mukherjee: I can go for one. So Justin what I mean this is gonna be as open-ended as you can on this one. So we have had a lot of virtual events and overall there has been a time when we wanted in-person events and seems like they're coming back. What's your is there some light you can shed on the next Flock? Or when it's going to be. And how is that?
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Yes, that is a very big question right now. And some folks might have already seen some of the discussion happening on the Fedora Council, tag on the Fedora discussion site. But with the four minutes that we have left, here's what I can squeeze in about Flock. The short answer is that we do want to make that return to in-person events. In 2023. We've already done some. We did the hatch events which I think we're actually an amazing idea around these kind of like decentralized, ,imi events that were still a part of the global peace. But in terms of like a major single event, we are going to try to pick back up with Flock next year. So, We've been presented with a couple challenges like, you know, we're Covid. Still a thing. And it also has put a burden on a lot of different infrastructures like government and people infrastructures.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Like we had originally been looking at a US flock, but we're back-stepping a little bit because we found there's a lot of challenges for countries where we have a lot of contributors to get visas in a timely way, like, some folks who have one to three years, wait, time just to get an interview for a visa. So like if we did Flock in the US in 2023, we have to tell some people like day one. Like sorry, you won't be able to make it this year and that feels a little weird to me. So, you know, I can't make any promises yet.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): We are looking at Ireland as an option because it solves a lot of those problems in terms of the visa processing time some folks, don't even need visas that would need it for us. Other folks, It goes from like a 10-day processing time. Nothing's final yet, we're in the process now of looking at bid, so actually trying to like Reach out to venues hotels looking at cost options for how we host the event. So, there are things happening, you know, in the behind the scenes right now, to try to
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Make our plans, but the tentative look here is that we are hopefully going to do this in August, August of 2023 and hopefully do it somewhere where we can bring in or have the opportunity to bring in as many folks from across the project as we can. I know that'll be it'll be a different Flock this year. I think it's important to you know, have some expectations that you know we haven't done this in three years. Also, be my first time like I've been to lots of Flocks. I've never been in the in the event organizer hat or doing like a conference organizing. So it's also new work for me and I think it will be different in terms of size like looking at across the the board here at a lot of other in-person events. Most events are running at reduced size or smaller capacity so I don't know for sure what that will look like or what that will mean for Flock. It will look a little bit different but I'm hoping
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Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): I'm pushing that the things that really matter for the conference, the things that anyone who's been to our conferences before have come to know and love about them, our chances to both to do some great work together but also have some fun enjoy our time together face to face because so much of our time is virtual. I'm really hoping that that part will be the same. So stay tuned. They'll be more to come probably in the again, the council tag on the Fedora discussion site is if you want to keep up with the latest news and discussions as they happen, and of course, participate in that as well and share your feedback, that will be the best place to watch for more info about flock. When we have some details locked down, we'll have we'll work on a comm blog post to share to share more with the community, but that's where things are right now. Definitely some details still in the air, but that is the direction we're hoping to go. Thanks for that question.
Ben Cotton: Right. Thank you Justin. And everyone who was here live or was watching on the recording later. This is the part where Matthew would usually ask me what our next guest is. And when the next video meeting is gonna be. So I can tell you that on the 11th of January at 10 am Eastern, we will have Mo Duffy here to talk about the new websites that are in progress. Get Fedora and other various websites are getting pretty long in the tooth and they're getting a pretty significant revamp that will hopefully make it a lot less confusing for people and, you know, bring us into 2023. So it'll be a really exciting update, so I hope to see you then.
Justin W. Flory (J.W.F.): Have a great year end folks. We'll see you in 2023.