Preface 🔗

When I started writing this in January, I read freenode’s “Happy New Year!” announcement. Even though their recollection of the year began as a negative reflection, the freenode team did not fail to find some of the positives of this year as well. The attitude reflected in their blog post is reflective of the attitude of many others today. 2016 has brought more than its share of sadness, fear, and a bleak unknown, but the colors of radiance, happiness, and hope have not faded either. Even though some of us celebrated the end of 2016 and its tragedies, two thoughts stay in my mind.

One, it is fundamentally important for all of us to stay vigilant and aware of what is happening in the world around us. The changing political atmosphere of the world has brought a shroud of unknowing, and the changing of a number does not and will not signify the end of these doubts and fears. 2017 brings its own series of unexpected events. I don’t consider this a negative, but in order for it not to become a negative, we must constantly remain active and aware.

Secondly, despite the more bleak moments of this year, there has never been a more important time to embrace the positives of the past year. For every hardship faced, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Love is all around us and sometimes where we least expect it. Spend extra time this new year remembering the things that brought you happiness in the past year. Hold them close, but share that light of happiness with others too. You might not know how much it’s needed.

First year of university: complete! 🔗

Many things changed since I decided to pack up my life and go to a school a thousand miles away from my hometown. In May, I officially finished my first year at the Rochester Institute of Technology, finishing the full year on dean’s list. Even though it was only a single year, the changes from my decision to make the move are incomparable. Rochester exposed me to amazing, brilliant people. I’m connected to organizations and groups based on my interests like I never imagined. My courses are challenging, but interesting. If there is anything I am appreciative of in 2016, it is for the opportunities that have presented themselves to me in Rochester.

Adventures into FOSS@MAGIC 🔗

My involvement with the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community at RIT has grown exponentially since I began participating in 2015. I took my first course in the FOSS minor, Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development in spring 2016. In the following fall 2016 semester, I became the teaching assistant for the course. I helped show our community’s projects at Imagine RIT. I helped carry the RIT FOSS flag in California (more on that later). The FOSS@MAGIC initiative was an influencing factor for my decision to attend RIT and continues to play an impact in my life as a student.

I eagerly look forward to future opportunities for the FOSS projects and initiatives at RIT to grow and expand. Bringing open source into more students’ hands excites me!

I <3 WiC 🔗

With a new schedule, the fall 2016 semester marked the beginning of my active involvement with the Women in Computing (WiC) program at RIT, as part of the Allies committee. Together with other members of the RIT community, we work together to find issues in our community, discuss them and share experiences, and find ways to grow the WiC mission: to promote the success and advancement of women in their academic and professional careers.

Also, hey! If you’re a female high school or university student in the Rochester area (or willing to do some travel), you should seriously check this out!

Google Summer of Code 🔗

Google Summer of Code, abbreviated to GSoC, is an annual program run by Google every year. Google works with open source projects to offer stipends for them to pay students to work on projects over the summer. In a last-minute decision to apply, I was accepted as a contributing student to the Fedora Project. My proposal was to work within the Fedora Infrastructure team to help automate the WordPress platforms with Ansible. My mentor, Patrick Uiterwijk, provided much of the motivation for the proposal and worked with me throughout the summer as I began learning Ansible for the first time. Over the course of the summer, my learned knowledge began to turn into practical experience.

It would be unfair for a reflection to count successes but not failures. GSoC was one of the most challenging and stressful activities I’ve ever participated in. It was a complete learning experience for me. One area I noted that I needed to improve on was communication. My failing point was not regularly communicating what I was working through or stuck on with my mentor and the rest of the Fedora GSoC community. GSoC taught me the value of asking questions often when you’re stuck, especially in an online contribution format.

On the positive side, GSoC helped formally introduce me to Ansible, and to a lesser extent, the value of automation in operations work. My work in GSoC helped enable me to become a sponsored sysadmin of Fedora, where I mostly focus my time contributing to the Badges site. Additionally, my experience in GSoC helped me when interviewing for summer internships (also more on this later).

Google Summer of Code came with many ups and downs. But I made it and passed the program. I’m happy and fortunate to have received this opportunity from the Fedora Project and Google. I learned several valuable lessons that have and will impact going forward into my career. I look forward to participating either as a mentor or organizer for GSoC 2017 with the Fedora Project this year.

Flock 2016 🔗

Towards the end of summer, in the beginning of August, I was accepted as a speaker to the annual Fedora Project contributor conference, Flock. As a speaker, my travel and accommodation were sponsored to the event venue in Kraków, Poland.

Months after Flock, I am still incredibly grateful for receiving the opportunity to attend the conference. I am appreciative and thankful to Red Hat for helping cover my costs to attend, which is something I would never be able to do on my own. Outside of the real work and productivity that happened during the conference, I am happy to have mapped names to faces. I met incredible people from all corners of the world and have made new lifelong friends (who I was fortunate to see again in 2017)! Flock introduced me in-person to the diverse and brilliant community behind the Fedora Project. It is an experience that will stay with me forever.

To read a more in-depth analysis of my time in Poland, you can read my full write-up of Flock 2016.

Maryland (Bitcamp), Massachusetts (HackMIT), California (MINECON) 🔗

2016 provided me the opportunity to explore various parts of my country. Throughout the year, I attended various conferences to represent the Fedora Project, the SpigotMC project, and the RIT open source community.

There are three distinct events that stand out in my memory. For the first time, I visited the University of Maryland for Bitcamp as a Fedora Ambassador. It also provided me an opportunity to see my nation’s capitol for the first time. I also visited Boston for the first time this year as well for HackMIT, MIT’s annual hackathon event. I also participated as a Fedora Ambassador and met brilliant students from around the country (and even the world, with one student I met flying in from India for the weekend).

Lastly, I also took my first journey to the US west coast for MINECON 2016, the annual Minecraft convention. I attended as a staff member of the SpigotMC project and a representative of the open source community at RIT.

All three of these events have their own event reports to go with them. More info and plenty of pictures are in the full reports.

• Going to Bitcamp 2016
• HackMIT meets Fedora
• SpigotMC goes to California for MINECON

Vermont 2016 with Matt 🔗

Some trips happen without prior arrangements and planning. Sometimes, the best memories are made by not saying no. I remember the phone call with one of my closest friends, Matt Coutu, at some point in October. On a sudden whim, we planned my first visit to Vermont to visit him. Some of the things he told me to expect made me excited to explore Vermont! And then in the pre-dawn hours of November 4th, I made the trek out to Vermont to see him.

Instantly when crossing over the state border, I knew this was one of the most beautiful states I ever visited. During the weekend, the two of us did things that I think only the two of us would enjoy. We climbed a snowy mountain to reach an abandoned fire watchtower, where we endured a mini blizzard. We walked through a city without a specific destination in mind, but to go wherever the moment took us.

We visited a quiet dirt road that led to a meditation house and cavern maintained by monks, where we meditated and drank in the experience. I wouldn’t classify the trip has a high-energy or engaging trip, but for me, it was one of the most enjoyable trips I’ve embarked on yet. There are many things that I still hold on to from that weekend for remembering or reflecting back on.

A big shout-out to Matt for always supporting me with everything I do and always being there when we need each other.

Finally seeing NYC with Nolski 🔗

In no short time after the Vermont trip, I purchased tickets for my favorite band, El Ten Eleven, in New York City on November 12th. What turned into a one-day trip to see the band turned into an all-weekend trip to see the band, see New York City, and spend some time catching up with two of my favorite people, Mike Nolan (nolski) and Remy DeCausemaker (decause). During the weekend, I saw the World Trade Center memorial site for the first time, tried some amazing bagels, explored virtual reality in Samsung’s HQ, and got an exclusive inside look at the Giphy office.

This was my third time in New York City, but my first time to explore the city. Another shout-out goes to Mike for letting me crash on his couch and stealing his Sunday to walk through his metaphorical backyard. Hopefully it isn’t my last time to visit the city either!

Finalizing study abroad 🔗

At the end of 2016, I finalized a plan that was more than a year in the making. I applied and was accepted to study abroad at the Rochester Institute of Technology campus in Dubrovnik, Croatia. RIT has a few satellite campuses across the world: two in Croatia (Zagreb and Dubrovnik) and one in Dubai, UAE. In addition to being accepted, the university provided me a grant to further my education abroad. I am fortunate to have received this opportunity and can’t wait to spend the next few months of my life in Croatia. I am currently studying in Dubrovnik since January until the end of May.

During my time here, I will be taking 12 credit hours of courses. I am taking ISTE-230 (Introduction to Database and Data Modeling), ENGL-361 (Technical Writing), ENVS-150 (Ecology of the Dalmatian Coast), and lastly, FOOD-161 (Wines of the World). The last one was a fun one that I took for myself to try broadening my experiences while abroad.

Additionally, one of my personal goals for 2017 is to practice my photography skills. During my time abroad, I have created a gallery on 500px where I upload my top photos from every week. I welcome feedback and opinions about my pictures, and if you have criticism for how I can improve, I’d love to hear about it!

Accepting my first co-op 🔗

The last big break that I had in 2016 was accepting my first co-op position. Starting in June, I will be a Production Engineering Intern at Jump Trading, LLC. I started interviewing with Jump Trading in October and even had an on-site interview that brought me to their headquarters in Chicago at the beginning of December. After meeting the people and understanding the culture of the company, I am happy to accept a place at the team. I look forward to learning from some of the best in the industry and hope to contribute to some of the fascinating projects going on there.

From June until late August, I will be starting full-time at their Chicago office. If you are in the area or ever want to say hello, let me know and I’d be happy to grab coffee, once I figure out where all the best coffee shops in Chicago are!

In summary 🔗

2015 felt like a difficult year to follow, but 2016 exceeded my expectations. I acknowledge and I’m grateful for the opportunities this year presented to me. Most importantly, I am thankful for the people who have touched my life in a unique way. I met many new people and strengthened my friendships and bonds with many old faces too. All of the great things from the past year would not be possible without the influence, mentorship, guidance, friendship, and comradery these people have given me. My mission is to always pay it forward to others in any way that I can, so that others are able to experience the same opportunities (or better).

2017 is starting off hot and moving quickly, so I hope I can keep up! I can’t wait to see what this year brings and hope that I have the chance to meet more amazing people, and also meet many of my old friends again, wherever that may be.

Keep the FOSS flag high.

Arriving in Anaheim 🔗

I arrived in Anaheim early in the morning on Friday, September 23. Unlike last year when I flew in on the first day, I had some time to get to my hotel, settle in, and meet the team before the action began. Michael Dardis, the project lead, and Jordan Taylor, a fellow community moderator, were already in California. Michael was visiting from Australia and Jordan flew in from the UK. They decided to take advantage of the opportunity to travel and see some of what the west coast has to offer.

After checking into our room and leaving our luggage, we went to scout the convention floor and see what we would be facing on Saturday and Sunday. The convention was held in the Anaheim Convention Center, which was a large venue to accommodate over 12,000 attendees. I checked myself in as an Agent, or in other words, a convention volunteer. After getting our badges and goodies, the team visited some of the various food trucks outside the convention center. Without much of a delay, we began meeting various others from the Minecraft community. One of the people we spent the most time with over the weekend was Ryan Michela, a former developer of the Bukkit project. He would join us for most of the weekend as an honorary Spigot team member.

As the day began to close, we traveled through Anaheim to see if we could find a spot to host our annual tradition of a community meal, and that we did!

Spigot hits the MINECON floor! 🔗

Saturday morning started bright and early as some of the team members had meetings with other people in the community, and I had my Agent shift for the Hypixel Arena for most of the morning. My shift mostly consisted of directing people to and from various computer stations for a tournament bracket of various mini games. This was probably one of the most high-pace jobs for the volunteers as it was low-light and required constant vigilance to cycle new players into open stations. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the experience and met some cool members of the Hypixel team and other Agents along the way.

After my shift ended, I reunited with the rest of the team as we explored everything MINECON had to offer. It was a different experience than last year since SpigotMC did not have a booth, but we watched some interesting panels and talked with various fans throughout the day. Those of us on the floor had brought plenty of SpigotMC swag, from t-shirts to flyers to wristbands. By the end of the convention, we had distributed around 20 t-shirt packages and nearly 500 wristbands.

Minecraft mods for teaching 🔗

One of the big highlights of the weekend was the “Using Minecraft Mods for Teaching” panel. Our project lead, Michael, was one of the panelists to speak. The panel covered the various methods and tools from Minecraft and the community. These methods and tools help enable teachers and mentors to introduce programming concepts to children and grow interest in computer science.

Asking about open source 🔗

As some in the team joked that they knew I would bring it up, I asked the panelists about the role of open source in Minecraft and computer science education. Through my own experiences, I believe the game is a powerful medium to empower children to begin thinking critically of their digital world, and not only to think about it, but to begin shaping it. Open source fits well with this because kids can read how others did a particular task or project and learn by example. Arun Gupta, the panel moderator, took lead on the question and talked further about how open source is an important part of the puzzle.

Encouraging girls into programming 🔗

Lastly, a question I did not expect to hear but was glad to hear it was from Nina Arens, an educator and part of the Living Computer Museum in Seattle. Her question specifically targeted how to help more young girls get interested in what is traditionally a male-dominated environment. While the discussion was hard to come to a definitive solution in the time of the panel, I was happy to see this question raised. The discourse for raising interest in computer science in children needs to include these types of questions. The role of diversity in tech is an ongoing issue and needs more exposure even in places where it’s not traditionally asked. Thank you, Nina, for asking some of these hard questions during the panel.

For more coverage of these points, you can watch the full panel above.

Community dinner 🔗

Tradition calls for the SpigotMC team to organize an annual meal for our community members. This year, we settled on the California Pizza Kitchen as our venue. Because of a range of complications, we were unable to reserve ahead of time. On Friday night, Michael, Jordan, Ryan, and myself did a trial run of CPK and decided we would host there. The view was beautiful from the outside tables, with the sun setting right down the middle of the boulevard. We went ahead and booked the reservation the day of.

Night of food and fun 🔗

On Saturday, after the convention floor closed up, we began gathering the team members and some of the community together from the convention center and walked over to the restaurant. Some people were waiting there or joined us shortly after we arrived. Overall, I think the total number of attendees was close to 40 people. We didn’t have cool name badges like last year, but it was an enjoyable event and I was happy to meet so many amazing people from the community in-person. If you attended our dinner, thank you again for coming out and I hope the team will get to see you again!

Furthermore, one thing I find worth noting is the kind generosity that I have come to know from Michael. At the end of the evening, he left one of the most generous tips to the (awesome) wait staff at the California Pizza Kitchen. The manager had to come out and verify that the amount was correct before charging it. It was clear this made their night. For these reasons and plenty of others, I am happy that Michael is the person leading the SpigotMC project.

Open education 🔗

One of my most interesting conversations was with Christie Fierro, part of the YetiCraft team and an educator at the Tacoma Community College in Tacoma, Washington. I quickly found that Christie and I shared many of the same interests and engagement with using open source and open content to empower students and build better curriculum in education systems. The big project she was helping drive was a Minecraft seeing eye dog to help engage blind students.

Another one of the big goals she was helping drive was Creative Commons-licensed textbooks and material for courses. This was fascinating for me to hear about and I enjoyed learning how the open world is continuing to have a larger presence in education. Thank you Christie for the great conversation and discussion, and I hope we can collaborate together in the future with some of the open work at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Meeting my server staff 🔗

This event report wouldn’t be complete without noting the opportunity I had to meet one of my Minecraft server staff members. For over four years, I created, manage, and run the CrystalCraftMC Minecraft server network. One of the people who has been around for almost the entire time is Justin Natzic. Justin is now a moderator on the server and has helped complete projects like a Mob Arena, where players fight endless waves of monsters and bosses to receive prizes and loot. Together with the rest of the team, Justin helped lead and develop challenging waves to keep players on their toes.

Sunday night dinner 🔗

On Sunday night, I went to dinner with him and his father. We had to chance to reminisce about four years of memories, brainstorm some new ideas for the server, and enjoy the chance to finally meet each other in-person. I am fortunate to have an awesome team of volunteers like Justin help with my Minecraft server. Without my staff team, CrystalCraftMC would never have made it this far. I look forward to a chance where I might see him again, on the west coast or otherwise!

A double special thanks goes to him and his father for driving me to the airport, where I ended up racing through the airport with lights turning off behind me. I made my flight by about two minutes… no more, no less. I appreciate that I had them to drive me there, because I wouldn’t have made it back in time for my 10:00am class on Monday otherwise!

Saying goodbye 🔗

The end of the weekend was difficult for me. A couple of weeks after MINECON, I officially announced my resignation from the SpigotMC team. While I was still a staff member during MINECON, I had given this thought for a while and knew that this would likely be my last convention as a team member. SpigotMC is a major part of my life. From the project, I discovered the world of open source software and learned about various other things from the community. My experiences afforded by the SpigotMC project even influenced my choice in university and degree.

Special thanks go to FOSS@MAGIC at RIT for helping sponsor some of my travel costs to this convention. Without the support of the university, I would never have been able to attend. Extra big thanks goes to Stephen Jacobs for helping me navigate attending the convention even after the last-minute rejection of my panel.

Parting words of advice 🔗

Throughout the years that I served, I have met many incredible and inspiring people. I am happy to know that the team behind the SpigotMC project are some of the best people I have met in open source. Even though my time is up, SpigotMC is in great hands and I know that its leadership will make the right decisions, even when it is hard to do. As I said to some of the others in the community, the absence of one giant gives way to the rise of others. I hope that with my passing, more members of the community will answer the call of building the community forward and caring for the SpigotMC family.

My other parting words for anyone reading is to always keep an open mind. What we learned as a moderation team is that no matter what decision we make, there will always be someone who thinks it is the wrong decision. It is impossible to make everyone happy. But the team is thoroughly committed to do the best job we can. So if there is ever something that frustrates you, spend time considering how decisions impact others. Try to think through our motivations for making the decisions we make. If you still disagree, instead of only complaining, help build a collaborative solution for how to make it better. This kind of feedback is always welcome. And should you ever feel stuck, my email inbox is always open. You can reach me at jflory7 [at] spigotmc [dot] org.

Thanks, team 🔗

I was incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to California this year and meet my fellow SpigotMC team members. I am thankful that I was able to see all the team members one last time and help wave the “SpigotMC flag” for another MINECON. Thank you everyone who has been a part of my journey through the world of Minecraft and SpigotMC. It has shaped my life immensely. Saying goodbye after all this long feels impossible to do. So instead…

So long. See you soon.