On behalf of the Fedora Design Team, I am excited to invite the Fedora community to the Creative Freedom Summit January 17-19th, 2023. This free virtual event focuses on promoting open source creative tools, features, and benefits of use. The Summit is open to anyone interested in learning more about open source tools, how and why to use them, as well as connecting with other creatives working in the open source ecosystem.

To attend the event, join the Creative Freedom Summit Element chat. The Element chat is where you can watch the live stream of the sessions, connect with others, and get updates about the event. The event will also be streamed live to the Creative Freedom Summit LinuxRocks Peertube Channel.

How it came about, and goals of the Creative Freedom Summit

After Nest this year, I had the idea to do a “Fedora Design Week”. The Fedora Design Team is an active and exciting team to be on! I wanted to share that energy with Fedora and the greater open source ecosystem by coordinating an event. After I kicked off my idea with a Mindshare ticket and gathered some interested folks, it evolved to become the Creative Freedom Summit. Through thoughtful discussion, the Summit organizers narrowed down our goals to:

  • Promote open source creative tools
  • Spread knowledge of how to use them
  • Connect creatives across the FOSS ecosystem

We also have some secondary goals:

  • Promote the Fedora Design Team as a welcoming group
  • Create a potential onboarding path for new design contributors
  • Spread information on how to use creative open source tools in communities

I wrote about our process and invited more volunteers to join us with a Discussion post.

What we are planning for the Summit

The Summit organizers have been meeting to craft this unique virtual event. We hope many will find it informational and valuable for networking. Each of the three days will feature informational sessions on various tools and topics related to Open Source creative software. We are also including social sessions to connect with other participants at the event. We are still in the process of confirming all of the speakers, but in the meantime, feel free to check out the draft schedule for the event. The Summit will have talks from creatives about exciting software features and topics, such as:

  • Martin Owens on Inkscapes multi-page feature
  • Jakub Steiner on geometry nodes in Blender
  • Ryan Gorley on building a creative company with free software
  • Ashlyn Knox and Emma Kidney on how Fedora uses Penpot
  • Madeline Peck on Krita & Fedora’s wallpaper design
  • Saptak S on Creating Accessible and Privacy Centric Products
  • And more, to be confirmed!

In line with our goals, we will use free software platforms to run the event. We will live stream the Creative Freedom Summit using Jitsi in the Summit Element chat, as well as the Summit LinuxRocks Peertube Channel. Recordings will be available after the event on the Summit Peertube Channel and the Fedora YouTube Channel, for those who are unable to attend.

Share this invitation, and join us for the Creative Freedom Summit!

In the next month we will set up a website, announce the finalized schedule, and promote the event in relevant networks. Make sure you save the dates (January 17-19th), join the Summit Element Chat, and bookmark the Summit LinuxRocks PeerTube Channel. Share this invitation with anyone who might be interested in the Creative Freedom Summit. We look forward to connecting with you at the event!

A big thank you to the community volunteers who are putting in wonderful efforts to organize the Creative Freedom Summit: @duffy @jesschitas @ekidney @smeragoel @madelinepeck @nekonya3 @joseph @isagordillo