Our ambassadors delivered support, outreach, and swag items via Fedora @ SCaLE 22x Linux Conference – a 2025 open-source community event.

At a Glance

• What: A community-run open-source and free software conference in Pasadena, California
• Where: Pasadena Convention Center
• When: 6 – 9 March 2025

Our Field Team

• This reports the activities of the following Ambassadors / Red Hatters / CentOS at the Fedora @ SCaLE 22x Linux Conference:
• Alejandro “Alex” Acosta (FAS: aacosta)
• Brian Monroe (FAS: paradoxguitarist)
• Scott Williams (FAS: vwbusguy)
• Perry Rivera (FAS: lajuggler)
• Iván Chavero (FAS: ichavero)
• Carl W George (FAS: Carlwgeorge)
• Shaun McCance (FAS: shaunm)
• Kate Mulder
• Justin W. Wheeler (FAS: Jflory7) [remote support]

What is SCaLE 22x?

The SCaLE (The Southern California Linux Expo) community Linux event delivered an iconic experience with four days of open source training, exhibits, and general presentations. This year’s conference took place in Pasadena (Los Angeles) area.

This expo drew worldwide guests to discuss AI, Linux, security, embedded, IoT, and more. The Technical Committee (Online Services) Chairperson, Mr. Phil Dibowitz, and Technical Committee (Networking) Chairperson, Robert Hernandez paved the way for a smooth registration.

Conference Highlights

Fedora @ SCaLE 22x Linux Conference – Ready, Set, Go!

Justin Wheeler coordinated and shipped hand-selected swag and marketing items to Perry Rivera. Items included: pens, stickers, commuter mugs, badge lanyards, and more.

Furthermore, the ambassadors gathered up supplies for the conference.

Day 1: Thursday 6 March

Red Hatter and Fedora Ambassador Perry Rivera delivered community marketing items and swag.

In addition, Perry brought the following:

• Snacks for our crews
• Dry-board markers
• Dry-board flipchart easel
• Opportunity drawing tickets
• Scissors
• Gaffers tape
• Glue
• An air steamer (to iron out banner wrinkles)
• And more!

Some of our ambassadors arrived the previous day to avoid traffic, others in the morning, to catch earlier events and workshops.

We checked in at the Red Hat Booth, but things were quiet there. So, a small group of up lunch at Noodle St., which was perfect considering how cold and drizzly the day presented itself.

We reunited in the lobby area and later in the expo hall to discuss next steps. We discovered just how close the Fedora/CentOS booth was next to the Red Hat booth, which facilitated comm and referrals to and from our teams.

The booth received a vibrant free-standing banners this year. We received a great looking table cover, and swag. We also used a flip chart easel to display a QR code for guests to easily scan to pick up a Fedora badge and to display presentation/workshop info.

After dropping things off, Perry helped steam iron the Fedora table cloth to give it the “less travelled less wrinkly look” and put up the flipchart easel. After doing some initial setup, Perry returned some boxes for booth items back to my car to reclaim booth space. Next, some of us reconvened at the KWAAI Summit, new for 2025. Their chair Reza Rassool and crew organized a lively charcuterie mixer.

After the networking event, a small group of us re-convened at Cordova Cafe to reflect on our day.

Day 2: Friday 7 March

We returned to the conference and the Expo Hall this morning to continue unpacking swag, marketing systems, and more. Perry also checked in from to the Red Hat booth from time-to-time to render assistance as needed.

Perry set up a flip chart and glued on a handy QR that users could scan to pick up an e-badge.

Then, Alejandro later wrote in our Fedora scheduled talks, which was handy for guests to take pictures of as they stopped by. Concurrently, Brian and Scott strategically set up swag items. Ivan and Alex, meanwhile routed power cables within the booth.

Meanwhile, Carl and Shaun set up camp for CentOS.

A Grand Exhibit at Fedora @ SCaLE 22x Linux Conference

At 2pm, the Exhibit Hall opened. Initially, we had high traffic coming in at the Red Hat and Fedora booths.

We greeted approximately 450+ this day, discussing key foundations such as Freedom, Friends, Features, First, and topics such as AI on Fedora, bootable containers, gitops for packaging, accessibility, git forge, RISC-V, and more.

To accomodate the masses, we took turns around lunch to keep the booth up and running. Some of us departed to Yard House for lunch.

Upon returning, we resumed exhibiting and handing out swag.

Upon closure of the Exhibit Hall, we headed to UpScale to support Scott’s presentation.

After, we headed over to Cafe Santorini to a fine dinner with Red Hat, CentOS, and Fedora associates.

Next, some of us went to Karaoke night to listen to great music and hear each other sing.

Day 3: Saturday 8 March

We returned to exhibit hall to meet with more of our community and talk about Fedora and tech topics. Perry also time-shared with the Red Hat booth as well.

Later this evening, a few of us attended Game Night.

Day 4: Sunday 9 March

Perry packed up his hotel room early Sunday and then returned to the conference center and the exhibit hall to continue discussions with our Fedora and Red Hat community.

The final day brought in about 250 Fedora booth guests.

Around 2PM, all booths began closing down to pack things up for shipment. We returned the rolling luggage and a banner box over to Kate Mulder for FedEx return.

Afterward, Perry stopped by Leslie Lamport’s insightful closing Keynote, Coding isn’t Programming .

Suggestion Box / Feedback Items for Fedora @ SCaLE 22x Linux conference

Throughout the conference, our booth had a sign-in sheet where visitors could stop by and leave feedback and suggestions about Fedora and related efforts.

From the data reviewed, we collected key findings:

Interesting Topics

• OpenShift: Interest in OpenShift on Fedora, tips on optimizing for kernel.
• Bootable Containers
• How to Get Started in Fedora Contributing
• Aurora – 1 guest also said it has an occasional wake from sleep issue.
• AI/ML
• KDE integration with Fedora – 1 guest said “Thanks!!”
• Guest uses BigLinux distro, but doesn’t run any Fedora (yet)

Documentation

• Interest in documentation and videos for a 4th grade level on getting started with Fedora.
• Interest in documentation and videos and local events for general Fedora development.
• For each event, for the “Convo Count” sheet, it might be handy to send out to ambassadors a cheatsheet with a 4-5 sentence summary and resource links for strategic topics, or perhaps a QR code that guests can scan to find out the latest release’s highlights.
• Interest and videos in how to contribute to Open Source and general Python/bash/github use as it pertains to Fedora.

Releases

• We had two guests still using release 40 (latest version as of this writing is 41). For those that provided their version, no one appears to be using release 39 or below. We did however have one visitor mention they are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (latest version as of this writing is 9.x).
• We had at least 7 guests running 42 beta.

Swag

• We had quite a few guests requesting more swag
• Requests for children-friendly Fedora swag (especially coloring books, kid-themed stickers, etc.)
• Requests for Fedora case badges, key cap covers (both standard and mini)
• Requests for zip-pouches, similar to the Flock ones from previous years.
• Stickers

General Kudos

• Multiple guests said “Way to go!” and “Thanks Fedora Team!”
• One guest said “Smooth upgrades [compared with] any [other] OS”
• One guest wrote “I LOVE Kinoite!! Very cool with a lot [of] extensibility.”
• One guest wrote ” <3 Bazzite“
• One guest wrote “I love the hat distros”
  • Possible ideas for awesome hat-named spins, projects, etc.
• One guest wrote “Keep up the awesome LXDE!!

Feedback

• Modularity: One guest found it helpful when it was around, especially for dnf. Same guest also laments Modularity’s retirement (cross-reference: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/RetireModularity) and cited dnf5 has no Modularity support.
• One guest asked: Will there be a COSMIC DE in Atomic? Possible cross-reference: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/cosmic-desktop-environment-on-fedora/102112
• One guest requested personal AI compatibility and a possible KWAAI AI partnership.
• One guest uses system for home lab stuff.
• 2 guests replied with cat face emojis.

In conclusion, we look forward to seeing you at next year’s SCaLE!

Snaps from Fedora @ SCaLE 22x Linux Conference

Related Posts

• Leslie Lamport – Keynote at Scale, Leslie’s Homepage, Wikipedia Page
• UpSCaLE – SCaLE 22x lightning talks
• SCaLE 22x YouTube Playlists – https://www.youtube.com/@socallinuxexpo/playlists