On Saturday, August 22, 2026, the Fedora Project joined forces with openSUSE at Data Con LA 2026, hosted on the campus of California State University, Long Beach (CSULB).

Now in its 14th year, Data Con LA is Southern California’s largest gathering of data professionals, students, and practitioners covering data science, AI/ML, and data engineering. While Data Con LA is not a traditional Linux-centric conference, our presence offered a unique, hands-on opportunity to engage a fresh audience of prospective contributors, test our event planning workflows, and showcase Fedora Workstation in action.

As part of our ongoing work to standardize the Fedora Ambassador event pipeline, this report reflects on our operational outcomes, what worked well, and key lessons learned for future event organizers.

1. A Standout Win: “A House with Many Rooms” (Co-Hosting with openSUSE)

Our standout operational victory at Data Con LA was co-locating and sharing table space side-by-side with openSUSE advocates (coordinated with Patrick Finie / mir and Drew Adams).

Rather than maintaining isolated tables, we embraced the philosophy of “A House with Many Rooms.” This cross-community collaboration was an immediate force multiplier:

• Shared Energy & Presence: Combining our presence effectively doubled our footprint and visual appeal, turning our shared booth area into a high-energy focal point in the expo area.
• Seamless Staffing & Rotations: Having four volunteers across both distributions allowed for seamless shift rotations during peak traffic and lunch breaks, completely preventing booth fatigue.
• Cross-Promotion: When attendees visited our table, we engaged them collaboratively by directing people to open source solutions across distros based on their specific technical needs and interests.

For future community organizers planning small-to-medium booths, establishing a shared booth with allied open source projects is an operational model we strongly recommend.

2. Demographics & Lead Engagement

Over the course of the day, our booth engaged approximately 100 visitors (110% of our initial goal), with peak traffic occurring during the post-keynote morning rush (9:30 AM – 11:00 AM) and lunch transitions (12:30 PM – 2:00 PM).

The attendee demographic offered valuable insights into the broader tech ecosystem:

• Student & Alumni Presence: The majority of visitors were CSU Long Beach undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, and local data practitioners.
• First Encounters with Linux: Roughly 10% of attendees were active Linux users; for the remaining 90%, Data Con LA was their first direct introduction to Linux and Fedora.
• Lead Qualification Breakdown:
  • Hot Leads (30): Inquired specifically about Fedora, visited the website, and expressed interest in installing Fedora Workstation or exploring the Join SIG.
  • Warm Leads (20): Asked for links to documentation, Fedora Discussion forums, Matrix channels, or local user groups (such as SGV LUG in Pasadena and SFV LUG in Northridge).
  • General Engagements (10+): Discussed general data industry trends, tech careers, or university studies.

3. The Technical Showcase: Local AI on Fedora Asahi Remix

To connect directly with the conference’s AI/ML focus, we showcased a fully offline, containerized local AI demonstration running on an Apple Silicon laptop.

The Setup

• Hardware: 2020 Apple M1 MacBook Air (8 GB RAM) dual-booting macOS.
• Operating System: Fedora Asahi Remix (Fedora 44 release) running GNOME on Wayland.
• Software Stack: Fedora-native Podman containers running Ollama alongside Open WebUI, exposing a private, ChatGPT-style web interface at localhost.
• Model: llama3.2:1b (sized appropriately for the laptop’s 8 GB memory ceiling).

Why It Resonated

This demonstration served as a major crowd-pleaser across two distinct attendee groups:

1. Data Professionals & Privacy: Attendees expressed fatigue with commercial operating systems that enforce invasive telemetry and proprietary cloud AI features. Highlighting how Fedora enables private, offline LLM inference with zero data leakage resonated powerfully.
2. Students on a Budget: CSULB students loved seeing how Linux can revive older, restricted hardware to deliver a capable, subscription-free AI workspace without requiring expensive cloud API tokens.

4. Advice & Lessons for Future Event Owners

If you are planning to organize a small event (under $150) or booth presence in the next six months, here are four practical takeaways from our experience:

1. Design 100% Offline Demos: Campus and conference Wi-Fi networks are notoriously unreliable, firewalled, or slow. Designing our demo to run entirely inside local Podman containers without requiring an internet connection kept our booth fully functional all day without friction.
2. Account for Outdoor Environmental Factors: Our booth was located in an outdoor expo space. During the afternoon peak heat, direct sunlight caused our demo laptop to heat up, requiring us to tuck it under banners in the shade. Recommendation: Always confirm booth coverage in advance, and pack brimmed hats, pop-up shade, or cooling accessories if outdoor placement is unavoidable.
3. The Power of the Daily User Perspective: You do not need to be a kernel developer or upstream maintainer to staff a Fedora booth. Sharing how you use Fedora day-to-day for work, study, or home projects alleviates “imposter syndrome” and provides relatable, authentic guidance that newcomers appreciate.
4. Keep Swag Requests Lean on Short Timelines: Because our event planning window was short, we kept our Forgejo Mindshare swag request focused strictly on high-impact essentials: stickers, case badges, and pens. Podman and Fedora logo stickers drew in decision-makers and students alike.

5. Next Steps & Wrap-Up

We would like to thank Patrick Finie, Drew Adams, and the openSUSE community for partnering with us, as well as the CSULB organizers for putting together a fantastic event.

Following Data Con LA, our team of Ambassadors Perry Rivera and Rob McBryde are incorporating these lessons directly into the new Small Events Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and preparing for upcoming community participation at SCaLE. Our intention is to share and publish this information in the Fedora Docs website so that other event owners in the Fedora community may benefit from common wisdom from others who have done this work before.

• Want to get involved? Connect with us on Fedora Discussion or drop by the #ambassadors:fedoraproject.org Matrix channel!