This post is a brief summary of the team’s highlights over the course of the first quarter of 2024 (January to March). The new year brought new highlights: 

  • Fedora Council Hackfest
  • Fedora Week of Diversity
  • GNOME Collaboration
  • Marketing Team collaboration
  • Fedora Accessibility Working Group 

These highlights will be summarised below.

Fedora Council Hackfest

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Council/2024_Hackfest

The Fedora Council held its annual in-person hackfest in February 2024 for annual planning. The DEI Advisor, Jona Azizaj, represented the DEI Team in conversations about the Fedora Strategy and more. 

The council came out of the hackfest with a new presentation for Fedora’s strategy for the next five years. You can check out that blog post here.

Fedora Week of Diversity (FWD)

https://gitlab.com/fedora/dei/home/-/issues/19 & https://gitlab.com/fedora/dei/week-of-diversity 

Planning is underway for the DEI Team’s next virtual in June 2024. Fedora Week of Diversity is the successor to Fedora Women’s Day, originally started in 2016 as a celebration of the diverse people who make up our Fedora community.

This week will take place June 17-22, 2024. The format for the main event will be a 1-2 day virtual event, with talks, social session and panel discussions. The online event will take place on June 21-22, and on the other days, we will publish the interviews with our community members. We had a CfP for anyone who wanted to submit a talk. Submitted talks are being reviewed now, and the schedule will be posted soon! 

As part of the event, there is a video being crafted to showcase the incredible community that makes Fedora what it is! So keep your eyes peeled! 

GNOME Collaboration

https://gitlab.com/fedora/dei/home/-/issues/31

Following the initial meeting of some DEI Team members with the GNOME community at GNOME Asia 2023, we wanted to continue collaboration with the GNOME D&I team. Jona Azizaj and Justin W. Flory continue to represent the Fedora community there upstream and provide guidance based on experiences with the Fedora DEI Team.

Marketing Team Collaboration

https://gitlab.com/fedora/dei/home/-/issues/33

The DEI Team is working together with the Marketing Team to provide more perspectives and ideas to messaging campaigns. Since the issue was opened, we are working on an outreach timeline for Fedora Week of Diversity and collaborated on a post for World Autism Acceptance/Awareness Day.

Fedora Accessibility Working Group 

https://gitlab.com/fedora/dei/a11y

The Fedora a11y WG was started last year and has continued meeting to discuss what direction the group should go in to better serve the community. Their vision and mission statement has been published on Fedora Docs. The team meets on a monthly cadence, and recaps of the meetings can be found under the DEI tag on Fedora Discussions. 

If you’re interested in attending, you can find connection details and previous notes here.

Looking ahead to 2024 Q2!

Here’s a preview of what to expect from the team in the second quarter of the year:

Fedora Mentor Summit

https://gitlab.com/fedora/dei/home/-/issues/25

Planning is underway for the half-day event focused on mentoring best practices. Mentor Summit programming focuses on workshops and sessions to promote mentorship best practices and to connect mentors and mentees across the Fedora community.

Like last year, FMS will be together with Flock. Flock will be held from Wednesday, August 7th to Saturday, August 10th at the Hyatt Regency Rochester in Rochester, New York, USA. FMS will take place on the Saturday, August 10th.

Stay tuned for the full 2024 Q2 report in an upcoming article. In reflection, the 2024 Q1 was a refreshing and motivating start to a year that saw the continued efforts of the DEI Team after a successful restart in 2023’s Q4. 

Want to get involved? Join the DEI Team Matrix chat room (#dei:fedoraproject.org) and follow the Fedora Discussion tag. We meet twice monthly. Our next meeting can be found on the Fedora Calendar.