2017 was a milestone year for Fedora Diversity and Inclusion Team. We experienced structural changes, established new directions and mapped our goals to a long-term plan improving diversity outreach in the Fedora community. The past year included a lot of ‘figuring things out’ – including our engagement within the Fedora community but also beyond. We have come out wiser, driven and more committed to our goal then ever. Read on to know more about our past and current efforts to foster diversity and inclusion in Fedora community.
Diversity drives Fedora
We talked to Fedora community members to know more about what they love about the Fedora Project, the community, and their motivations to contribute. We received wonderful answers and got to know our community better. Here is the link to the first edition of our Fedora community video.
Together with Fedora Ambassadors, we showcased these videos at Fedora booths during events and conferences, with an aim to engage a diverse audience. We are especially proud that we could showcase the first video during FLISoL, the biggest event for Free Software in Latin America (and with Spanish subtitles, thanks x3mboy!).
Let us know your feedback through mailing list or IRC.
P.S. – How many new community members did you get to know through the videos?
Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
Fedora Women Day
For the first time, we organized Fedora Women Day on a global scale. Over the month of September, community members supported by the Diversity Team organized Fedora Women Days in 10 different cities spread over three continents. Locations include Guwahati, Pune, Bangalore, Tirana, Prishtina, Managua, Cusco, Lima and Brno. We had approximately 200 attendees (~40 speakers) with sessions about…
- Talks and discussion about contributing to open source and Fedora
- Career opportunities in open source and how to pursue them
- Networking opportunities including connecting with female contributors in open source communities
A huge thanks to everyone who helped in organizing Fedora Women Day. Hopefully in 2018, we can have some Fedora Women Day celebrations in North America too. Read more about Fedora Women Day celebrations below.
Do you want to organize a Fedora Women Day celebration in your local community? Send us an email via our mailing list or ping us on IRC.
LGBTQA Awareness Day
We also organized an open community call on LGBTQA Awareness Day to celebrate the LGBT+ community in Fedora, as well as recognize and discuss the unique challenges they face. Read more about the community call below:
Outreachy internship program
We had four Outreachy interns over the past year working on development for Bodhi, Fedora Hubs, Design, and more. Read more about what our current Outreachy interns are working on below.
As always, we are committed to supporting programs like Outreachy that bring people from underrepresented groups into FOSS development. Towards this direction, Fedora Diversity Team sponsored Rails Girls Summer of Code for the first time in their upcoming 2018 cycle.
Planning and strategy
The first-ever Diversity FAD took place in early 2017 and was a great opportunity for the Diversity Team to spend time looking at how we can build more inclusive environments for Fedora contributors. We also tackled other issues like understanding who makes up the Fedora community. Our team used this valuable time to work on these issues more personally and intently than IRC or mailing lists provide. Read more about it in our FAD report below.
Hopefully, the community will be able to see the results of our FAD soon, such as the demographic survey.
Looking forward to 2018
Drawing from our experiences in 2017, we better understand how to reach our goal of a diverse and inclusive Fedora community. Here are some D&I initiatives you can expect to see in 2018:
- Improving accessibility and inclusiveness for Fedora events
- Fedora Classroom sessions on topics related to Diversity and Inclusion
- Fedora Appreciation Week (Not sure what this is? Interested? Stay tuned for more info!)
Our Pagure repository contains an updated list of tasks we are currently working on.
Want to get involved?
Group photo from the Fedora Diversity work session at Flock 2017
Want to get involved? We are always looking to involve more community members in our Diversity and Inclusion efforts. Say hello on our mailing list or IRC channel, #fedora-diversity.
Don’t have much time but still want to help?
Give us feedback about the community videos or any of our other initiatives. We would love to hear from you.
Special thanks
We want to thank Brian Exelbierd (bex), our F-CAIC, for all the support and helpful advice throughout the year. Also, Marina Zhurakhinskaya and Laura Abbott, Outreachy coordinators for Fedora who manage the whole Outreachy internship process smoothly. Also, all the community members who helped in organizing Fedora Women Day – we know it’s never easy to organize a event but thanks for being a part of this celebration. Last but not least to the team, we have done so much but still we have so many things to do!
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