This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Mindshare Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Mat Holmes (theprogram)

• FAS ID: theprogram
• Matrix Rooms: Join, Fedora, Fedora Social, DEI, Mindshare, Design, Council, CommOps, Server, Docs. I also monitor technical channels, but try not to distract people there too much.

Questions

What is your background in Fedora? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

I started with Fedora through Discussion, our Fedora Help Desk. This helped me both learn and teach about Fedora.
Once I found Matrix, I quickly got involved as a member and sponsor with Join, where I to this day very much enjoy meeting and welcoming many new people.
As I continued over the past couple of years, I have progressed to many people facing roles such as helping with DEI and CommOps. I also stick my beak into Mindshare and Council topics while trying to not step on peoples toes.
These days I have started writing Docs such as the Beginners Guide to Fedora and I am now helping with Server where we are developing new Beginners Guides to Server and the upcoming Home Lab.

Please elaborate on the personal “Why” which motivates you to be a candidate for Mindshare

Mindshare suites me very well as I have extensive experience organising events and doing outreach for professional organisations such as Amnesty International Australia and a political party (which I won’t name as politics is too divisive – but feel free to ask me about it).

My personal motivation is that I enjoy working with people in the Fedora community.

How would you improve Mindshare Committee visibility and awareness in the Fedora community?

The role of Mindshare has changed over the last couple of cycles to be more focussed on events. I would promote people to talk early and often to us, so we can put more smaller events on the table.

What part of Fedora do you think needs the most attention from the Mindshare Committee during your term?

I think Mindshare needs a clearer idea of what budget we have to work with, and we need faster responses to ticketed issues.
We also need to improve the accessible roads to ambassadorship, both in person and digital. Taking my skills from Join, I would extend this to being available to help plan broader small group involvement with communities all over the globe.