This year the annual Flock to Fedora conference was finally in person again. It happened in Clayton Hotel Silver Springs (Cork, Ireland) and it also offered the online streams for those who couldn’t attend in person. There was also CentOS Connect happening at the same time. As Community Platform Engineering (CPE) Team is part of those communities it was there and gave a few talks as well.

2nd August – First day of Flock

On the first day of the conference, the folks from the CPE Team were part of five sessions. We were mostly giving updates about various projects the CPE is part of. At the end of the day Aoife Moloney was hosting a Pub Quiz, which was really fun. It was great to see so many people in person again.

Fedora Websites and Apps Revamp Community Initiative Retrospective

Time (UTC): 10:00

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emoBQPmJdvQ

Speakers: 

  • Akashdeep Dhar (t0xic0der, gridhead)

Few words from speaker(s):

This was the first talk in the “Fedora Is For Everyone” category and was organized in the Tivoli hall. The talk went fairly well for the most part – although the last few slides had to be rushed to completion in the absence of enough time. It covered topics like the story of the Fedora Council community initiative, the outcomes and outputs from it as well as the learnings that can be derived from the endeavors. The audience had questions about the future collaboration efforts with other teams such as Cloud SIG, about the use of artificial intelligence software in generating the artworks for the slide deck and about the purpose of using of four distinct languages (i.e. English, Hindi, Bengali and Irish) in the slide deck.

More information can be found at https://apexaltruism.net/day-one-part-ii-flock-to-fedora-2023/ 

State of Community Applications and Infrastructure

Time (UTC): 11:00

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b3E_A_wLXA

Speakers: 

  • Akashdeep Dhar (t0xic0der, gridhead)
  • Aoife Moloney

Few words from speaker(s):

This was the third talk under the “Fedora Leads In Linux Distribution Development” category and was organized in the Harbour 06 room. Aoife had brought along some Red Hat themed and Community Platform Engineering themed swags to distribute in the audience as we wanted to make the presentation as interactive as possible. We spoke about the apps and services the CPE team maintains and runs, and also gave  a small overview of the makeup of the team itself – where some members are based, the type of work we do and recent team accomplishments like the delivery of the new Fedora Messaging Notification service. The audience, mixed with contributors to Fedora Infrastructure and other parts of the community, actively participated in the discussions. One of the community members, Nick Bebout even remarked that the Fedora Infrastructure consists of both employed as well as volunteering contributors – and opened up for folks to participate in the community, which indeed felt like a welcome thing to do.

More information can be found at https://apexaltruism.net/day-one-part-iii-flock-to-fedora-2023/ and https://apexaltruism.net/day-one-part-iv-flock-to-fedora-2023/ 

What’s new in the land of release-monitoring.org? 2023 Edition

Time (UTC): 13:30

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxoej_qSNeE

Speakers: 

  • Michal Konečný (mkonecny, zlopez)

Few words from speaker(s):

There weren’t many people attending my talk (probably the other talks at the same time were more interesting). But the talk went well. I started with a small magic trick and continued with a story. I made part of the talk interactive as well, so the audience was having fun. I presented what happened till the last Nest and compared this with the previous year. I even got a few interesting questions at the end. I think the talk went well and I’m looking forward to creating another one for next year.

State of EPEL

Time (UTC): 15:30

Speakers: 

  • Carl George (CPE) (carlwgeorge)
  • Troy Dawson (tdawson)

Few words from speaker(s):

This is our annual “State of Fedora” given at Flock or Nest.  We say what EPEL and its community did in the past year, and what we expect in the future.  The talk was fairly well attended, possibly because of the wonderful presenters, possibly because it was the last talk of the day and there wasn’t anything else.  I think the two highlights of the talk were Troy’s stats that listed all 100+ distributions using EPEL, and Carl’s EPEL 10 section.

Fedora Pub Quiz: Flock edition

Time (UTC): 19:30

Speakers: 

  • Aoife Moloney (amoloney)
  • Stefan Mattejiet (smattejiet)

Few words from speaker(s):

It has become a yearly tradition that there is a pub quiz at Nest with Fedora, so finally, after several years of covid-restricting travel, we were able to bring the live version to Flock to Fedora in Cork, Ireland this year. And as it was the first in-person event in a while, it had to be the best one yet! I along with my colleague Stefan Mattejiet organized a quiz with a twist – attendees of the conference were invited to sign up four teams of six to take part in the quiz, and then the fun began. The four teams oriented themselves around a standing table, complete with a chalk board to name their team, and a buzzer to press. Our teams were:

  • The Saboteurs
  • Team South 
  • Team Dev-Null
  • Team Craic

Then the ‘twist’ was explained 🙂 

The quiz would have a series of questions on Fedora, general knowledge and Ireland. Teams must wait to hear the question, and then they could hit their buzzers to answer. Whoever buzzed in quickest got to answer. If they were wrong, the remaining teams could buzz in again, but as the folks around the Fedora project are pretty clued up on all things Fedora and general knowledge, we didn’t have many wrong answers. We did need to make sure each team had an ‘Irish Support Person’ for the Ireland-themed questions though, in the interest of good sportsmanship 🙂 And now for the twist: to create a more engaging and fun atmosphere for not only the contestant, but for the audience as well, we introduced the concept of a Challenge Round. The team who buzzed in and answered the question correctly then got to choose a card, face down from a deck, that had an activity challenge that the team could either choose to complete for a bonus point, or pass to another team of their choosing to try to complete. The twist on this though is that whichever team does the challenge and if they fail, that team then loses a point. Teams could also choose an audience member to complete their activity for them if they wished, which meant there was a lot more inclusivity and fun for the spectators. It was a LOT of fun! The challenges came from the game Beat That and most participants were successful, with the Friendship element of Fedora shining through the game by some teams offering the challenge round to other teams who were lagging behind on points….which was definitely not a ploy to defeat the competition thoroughly, it was most assuredly those folks just being nice…!

But there can only be one winner, and the decision came to a nail-biting finale in a tie-break question. Team South faced off with Team Craic, and the final question was ‘What is a group of Pandas called?’. Team craic were straight off the mark with their buzzer, but alas their answer was incorrect! So Team South now had a chance! Jonathan Wright of Alma Linux swore he knew it and so his team trusted his confidence and Jonathan landed the win for his team with the funniest answer I have ever heard; A group of pandas is called…an Embarrassment! 

Team South were invited to choose from a selection of silly but somewhat useful prizes such as a self-stirring mug, a hip flask, a hot-dog themed pencil case and other fun stuff. And of course our audience participants received a prize too for their participation.

The night ended in good spirits with folks tired from laughing and enjoying themselves throughout the quiz with a twist, and we cannot wait to bring the quiz back to Flock in 2024! 

3rd August – Second day of Flock

On the second day of the conference the CPE Team took part in 3 sessions. Either as part of the FESCo and Design team or presenting about Communishift.

Meet your FESCo

Time (UTC): 8:30

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc7VxNwgpfo

Speakers:

  • Kevin Fenzi (CPE) (nirik)
  • David Cantrell
  • Neal Gompa
  • Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek

Few words from speaker(s):

The panel was pretty interactive and we had some great questions and some nice answers. I hope everyone gained a better understanding of FESCo’s viewpoint and what it does.

Authorising OpenShift Hosted Projects to Community Members

Time (UTC): 11:00

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bhXFv6xn3o

Speakers:

  • Lenka Segura (lenkaseg)
  • David Kirwan (saffronique)

Few words from speaker(s):

We presented an operator that we made to handle the authorization of OpenShift hosted projects to Fedora community members, and how the solution is portable to any other project. The talk was confirmed to happen in the last minute, and we opted for a lightning talk format. Although there was finally space for a discussion, since the talk happened just before lunch, there were no questions.

Design Clinic with the Community Design Team

Time (UTC): 14:30

Speakers:

  • Jess Chitas (CPE) (jesschitas)
  • Paul Power
  • Máirín Duffy
  • Emma Kidney (CPE) (ekidney)

Few words from speaker(s):

There were a few attendees. Everyone was involved in helping improve designs that were brought to us. Troy Dawson brought a character he has been creating for EPEL, which was enjoyable to help with. We also had Greg Sutcliffe from Ansible requesting icons for Ansible’s Matrix rooms – which is currently underway.

4th August – Last day of Flock

On the last day of the conference the CPE Team participated in 3 sessions. There was plenty of discussion about mentoring (one of the goals for Fedora). We also hosted a hackfest for Fedora Infrastructure, where we were talking about onboarding, mentoring and documentation.

Keynote: Fedora Mentor Summit kickoff and reflection on mentoring in Fedora community

Time (UTC): 07:30

Speakers: 

  • Amita Sharma
  • Jona Azizaj
  • Sumantro Mukherjee
  • Akashdeep Dhar (CPE) (t0xic0der, gridhead)

Few words from speaker(s):

This belonged to the Fedora Mentor Summit track and was organized in the Tivoli hall with a good strength in the audience presence. Being the second iteration of the Fedora Mentor Summit and the first iteration of the event being in person as a satellite event to Flock To Fedora 2023, this event began with a bang with Amita Sharma delivering a keynote on the importance of mentorship within the Fedora Project community. Akashdeep Dhar helped out with being the facilitating moderator for the hall and giving the opportunity for the attendees to project their questions and opinions on the matter.

Panel: Mentoring and mentorship best practices in Fedora

Time (UTC): 8:00

Speakers:

  • Amita Sharma
  • Adam Williamson
  • Jess Chitas (CPE) (jesschitas)
  • Kevin Fenzi (CPE) (nirik)
  • Máirín Duffy
  • Jona Azizaj

Moderators:

  • Akashdeep Dhar

Few words from speaker(s):

The moderator did an outstanding job asking the panel questions as well as taking them from the audience. There were a lot of great angles on mentoring and how we could improve it in Fedora. There was some thought about finding a middle ground between a formal program like outreachy and a completely informal mentoring process most of the Fedora Project community uses now. The panel shared a number of great stories from their mentoring and being mentees.

Hackfest: Infra and Releng onboarding, mentoring and documentation

Time (UTC): 10:00

Speakers:

  • Kevin Fenzi (nirik)
  • James Richardson (jrichardson)

Few words from speaker(s):

We had a large and engaging crowd before Lunch (and much less so after :). The workshop started out with a bit of history and a framework of items we wanted to discuss and then jumped right into interactive questions and discussion. We took a bunch of notes and will be writing up a plan for documentation and outstanding questions for everyone.

Epilogue

As you can see we had plenty of fun at the Flock and we will for sure be at the conference next year. Looking forward to seeing you next year!

If you want to read more about Flock 2023, see fedoraproject Flock 2023 wiki.