Open source projects are built online and a lot of their community members are placed all over the world. Even though projects have people from around the world, this doesn’t stop ambitious community members to organize open source conferences or events in their own cities. Whether they’re focused generally to open source or for a specific project, you can find a variety of conferences, hackathons, workshops, or meet-ups all over the world. Fedora benefits from having Ambassadors to attend these events to introduce Fedora and spread the word about the community. It’s not uncommon to see Fedora participating in these events, and Linux Weekend 2017 in Tirana, Albania was not an exception.

From March 25-26, 2017 in Tirana, Albania, nearly 130 people attended the first-ever Linux Weekend 2017. Linux Weekend was organized by Open Labs Hackerspace at the Universiteti Politeknik i Tiranës as an introduction to Linux for beginners. Throughout Tirana, universities have a strong focus on Windows or macOS operating systems and little focus is given to Linux. Open Labs community members wanted to organize an event that would promote Linux as an open source alternative and demonstrate some of its benefits over proprietary environments. The event collected representatives from various communities, including Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, NextCloud, MusicBrainz, and more.

Organizing Linux Weekend 🔗

The Open Labs community is not unfamiliar to organizing open source events in Tirana. Their portfolio includes Fedora release parties, OpenStreetMap map-a-thons, Wikipedia edit-a-thons, and Fedora community meet-ups. However, these events have been targeted towards people who already had prior interest or knowledge about open source communities. The organization and planning for Linux Weekend began in the middle of January as an idea to introduce Linux to complete beginners.

Planning and organizing Linux Weekend was a community effort. Jona Azizaj is a board member of Open Labs and a Fedora contributor, and was involved as an organizer for the event. “This was the first edition of Linux Weekend, so the main focus is to raise awareness about Linux and open source. We wanted to educate beginners and spread the word about the choices that are available,” Azizaj explained. The two tracks for the event were full of talks and workshops to introduce attendees not only to Linux, but also various software and applications of what someone can do with Linux.

Many of the attendees were students who had either heard of Linux in their classes or from their peers. Other attendees included industry professionals or other open source community members. Several representatives of Fedora from different parts of the community were in attendance as well. Ambassadors, designers, and translators were available to answer questions and teach newcomers about Fedora.

Albanian students learn Linux 🔗

Since the focus of the event was to teach newcomers about Linux and how it can be used, Linux Weekend was organized to be an introduction to various parts of the Linux ecosystem. Representatives from Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, Linux Mint, and elementaryOS gave introductions to the operating systems and their communities. In addition to distributions, there were also sessions on open source licenses, NextCloud, text editors, MusicBrainz, and more. The benefit of these sessions were demonstrating the different ways Linux can be used to accomplish various tasks.

In addition to the various sessions during the weekend, there were three community booths for Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Mozilla. Attendees had a chance to get swag from each project and also talk with representatives about their own experiences or how to get started using their project.

Sidorela Uku was both an attendee and a speaker at Linux Weekend. Her talk, “Programming in Linux, editors, and tools”, introduced various text editors and other tools to help customize any Linux distribution to someone’s needs or personal preferences. In addition to sharing her own knowledge, she was also excited to discover new things. “I wanted to attend the talks and workshops to learn as much as possible. I also wanted to figure out the next steps to find a project and get involved as a contributor,” Uku explained. “I also wanted to share the things I know with others to help them get started with Linux.” This was Uku’s first time speaking at an event and she looks forward to more open source events in Tirana in the future.

Fedora contributors introduce community 🔗

Various members of the Fedora community were also in attendance. Some of the Fedora presentations over the weekend introduced the project to newcomers, detailed the translation efforts to bring Fedora to Albanian, and also guided attendees on how to make their first steps as contributors. The Fedora presence aimed to help give newcomers a taste of the operating system but also to show the impact someone can have if they decide to contribute.

Mariana Balla was one of the first speakers on Saturday morning with her talk titled, “Introduction to Fedora Project and how to be a part of the community”. She started with localizing Fedora into Albanian in early 2016 and more recently started to become an advocate as well. “Fedora is one of the most used distributions, and it was great to have Fedora here to spread the word and show what our community is all about,” Balla said. “One thing I hoped to show in my talk was that technical skills aren’t required to contribute to Fedora. There’s so many things that aren’t code that people can help with!” One of the highlights of Balla’s presentation was breaking down the different sub-projects in the community and how they contribute to making Fedora what it is. One site that was mentioned was whatcanidoforfedora.org, a site anyone can click their way through to find an area that interests them.

One key contribution area that was important for the local community was localization. Many attendees and speakers alike thought it was important to have software translated into their native language. Anxhela Hyseni is a Fedora Ambassador and led the workshop on “Translation of Fedora”. “It’s important for Albanians to have software in Albanian because we are Albanians!” Hyseni laughs. “People are better able to understand Fedora and it makes it more accessible for us to have it in our local language.” She hopes that attendees left Linux Weekend with plenty of new contacts in the open source community and a better idea of what Linux is all about. She and others also helped Linux newcomers install Fedora 25 as a dual-boot or for virtual machines in the installfest on Saturday morning.

Wrapping up 🔗

After two days of talks, workshops, and hallway discussions, the final talk finished around 4:00pm on Sunday. Azizaj closed out with some final words of encouragement and thanks for attendee participation.

The presence of Fedora, open source software, and its philosophy was present during the entire weekend. Between stickers, install media, and brochures from community tables and the various presentations during the weekend, participants and organizers felt the event was worthwhile. “We had limited time to plan, but it was important to bring Linux to people to introduce the philosophy, show them how to use it, and also how they can give back,” Anxhelo Lushka, an event organizer and Fedora contributor, explained. “We hope attendees had new experiences and learned something new and useful for the real world, for jobs or studying. We also hope we convinced them to contribute and give back, even if in a small way.”

Now that Linux Weekend 2017 is finished, the organizing team is switching their focus to Open Source Conference Albania (OSCAL), the largest open source conference in the region.

Find Fedora near you 🔗

Open source events are happening all around the world, and Fedora might be closer to you than you think! Check for local user or meet-up groups near you to get involved in some of these events. Meetup.com is a great way to find local events happening in your community. You can also keep an eye on what Fedora is up to by following us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or Instagram.

We hope to see you at an event in the coming future!

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.

Today, I am pleased to announce my new role as the Fedora Magazine editor-in-chief. After deciding to shift focus to other areas of the Fedora Project, I am receiving the torch from Ryan Lerch. Ryan has helped lead the Magazine, edit pieces from other contributors, contribute his own pieces, and decide strategic direction for the Magazine.

He leaves big shoes to fill, but I hope to offer my own leadership, creativity, and direction in coming years as well. I’d like to thank both Ryan, Paul Frields, and Remy DeCausemaker for their mentorship and guidance towards becoming involved with Fedora and the Magazine. I’m excited to have the opportunity to help guide the Fedora Magazine in how it fits with the rest of Fedora.

History of the Magazine 🔗

The Fedora Magazine began in late 2013, replacing the former publication, Fedora Weekly News. The Magazine delivers all official news and announcements for the Fedora Project, covers how-to guides on using software available in Fedora, and other general tips and tricks for using Fedora. The Magazine has had a large number of contributors assist in getting it off the ground and to where it is now.

A special thanks goes out to Ryan, Paul, and Chris Roberts for helping bring the Magazine to where it is today. There are surely many more names than these too worth mentioning, but it would be impossible for me to cover them all here.

Write for the Magazine! 🔗

Want to write your own article for the Magazine? Know a useful piece of software you want to share with other Fedora users? Want to write about how using Fedora made something easier for you? Or maybe your own “top 5” list of tools for doing an everyday task? Come write for us! If you’re interested, check out this guide about writing an article, and then how to write a pitch for the Magazine team to review.

Book by Sergey Demushkin from the Noun Project.

Deliverable items 🔗

The last deliverable items from my project are two (2) git patches, one (1) git repository, and seven (7) blog posts (including this one).

• Git patches (ansible.git and infra-docs.git)
• Git repository
• Blog posts

Closing plans 🔗

At the end of the summer, I was using a private cloud instance in Fedora’s infrastructure for testing my playbooks and other resources. One of the challenges towards the end of my project was moving my changes from my local development instance into a more permanent part of Fedora’s infrastructure. For these reasons, I had some issues with running them in a context and workflow specific to Fedora’s infrastructure and set-up (since I am not a sponsored member of the Fedora system administration group).

My current two patches were submitted to my mentor, Patrick. Together, we worked through some small problems with running my playbook in the context of Fedora’s infrastructure. There may still be some small remaining hoops to jump through for running it in production, but any remaining changes to be made should be minor. The majority of the work and preparation for moving to production is complete. This is also something I plan to follow up on past the end of the GSoC 2016 program as a member of the Fedora Infrastructure Apprentice program.

My patches should be merged into the ansible.git and infra-docs.git repositories soon.

Reflection on GSoC 2016 🔗

As the program comes to a close, there’s a lot of valuable lessons I’ve learned and opportunities I’m thankful to have received. I want to share some of my own personal observations and thoughts in the hopes that future students or mentors might find it useful for later years.

Planning your timeline 🔗

In my case, I spent a large amount of time planning my timeline for the project before the summer. Once the summer began, my original timeline was too broad for having smaller milestones to work towards. My timeline on the student application was more broad and general, and while it covered the big points, it was difficult to work towards those at first. Creating smaller milestones and goals for the bigger tasks makes them easier to work through on a day-by-day basis and helps add a sense of accomplishment to the work you are doing. It also helps shape direction for your work in the short-term and not just the long-term.

For an incoming Google Summer of Code student for Fedora (or any project), I would recommend creating the general, “big picture” timeline for your project before the summer. Then, if you are accepted and beginning your proposal, spend a full day creating small milestones for the bigger items. Try to map out accomplishments every week and break down how you want to reach those milestones throughout the week. I started using TaskWarrior with an Inthe.AM Taskserver to help me manage weekly tasks going into my project. But it’s important to find a tool that works for you. You should reach out to your mentor about ideas for tools. If possible, your mentor should also have a way to view your agenda and weekly tasks. This will help make sure your goals are aligned to the right kind of work you are doing for an on-time completion.

I think this kind of short-term planning or task management is essential for hitting the big milestones and being timely with your progress.

Regular communication 🔗

Consistent and frequent communication is also essential for your success in Google Summer of Code. This can be different depending on the context of how you are contributing to the project. For a normal student, this might just be communicating about your proposal with your mentor regularly. If you’re already an active contributor and working in other areas of the project, this might be spending extra time on communicating your progress on the GSoC project (but more on that specifically in the next section).

Regardless of the type of contributor you are, one thing is common and universal – be noisy! Ultimately, project mentors and GSoC program administrators want to be sure that you are spending the time on your project and making progress towards accomplishing your goals. If you are not communicating, you will run the highest risk of failing. How to communicate can vary from project to project, but for Fedora, here’s my personal recommendations.

Blog posts 🔗

Even for someone like me who spends a lot of time writing already, this can be a difficult thing to do. But no matter how hard it is to do it, this is the cornerstone for communicating your progress and leaving a trail for future students to learn from you as well. Even if you’ve had a difficult week or haven’t had much progress, take the time to sit down and write a post. If you’re stuck, share your challenges and share what you’re stuck on. Focus on any success or breakthroughs you’ve made, but also reflect on issues or frustrations you have had.

Taking the time to reflect on triumphs and failures is important not only for Google Summer of Code, but even looking past that into the real world. Not everything will go your way and there will be times where you will be face challenges that you don’t know how to resolve. Don’t burn yourself out trying to solve those kinds of problems alone! Communicate about them, ask for help from your mentors and peers, and make it an open process.

IRC check-ins 🔗

Whether in a public channel, a meeting, or a private one-on-one chat with your mentor, make sure you are both active and present in IRC. Make sure you are talking and communicating with your mentor on a regular basis (at a minimum, weekly). Taking the time to talk with your mentor about your challenges or progress is helpful for them so they know what you’re up to or where you are in the project. It also provides a chance for them to offer advice and oversight into your direction and potentially steer you away from making a mistake or going into the wrong direction. It is demotivating when you’ve spent a lot of time on something and then later discovered it either wasn’t necessary or had a simpler solution than you realized.

Make sure you are communicating often with your mentor over IRC to make your progress transparent and to also offer the chance for you to avoid any pitfalls or traps that can be avoided.

Hang out in the development channels 🔗

As a Fedora Google Summer of Code student, there are a few channels that you should be present in on a regular basis (a daily presence is best).

• #fedora-admin
• #fedora-apps
• #fedora-summer-coding
• Any specific channel for your project, e.g. #fedora-hubs

A lot of development action happens in this channels, or people who can help you with problems are available here. This also provides you the opportunity to gain insight into what the communication in an active open source project looks like. You should at least be present and reading the activity in these channels during the summer. Participation is definitely encouraged as well.

Balancing project with open source contributions 🔗

I think my single, most difficult challenge with Google Summer of Code was balancing my proposal-specific contributions with the rest of contributions and work in the Fedora Project. I believe I was a minority of Google Summer of Code students who applied for the program as an active member of the project almost a full year before the program began. Additionally, my areas of contribution in Fedora before GSoC were mostly unrelated to my project proposal. My project proposal mostly aligned with my intended degree and education I am pursuing. A lot of the technology I would be working with was new to me and I had minimal knowledge about it before beginning the summer. As a result, this presented a unique set of challenges and problems I would face throughout my project.

The consequences of this were that I had to spend a lot more time researching and becoming familiar with the technology before advancing with creating the deliverable items. A great resource for me to learn about Ansible was Ansible for DevOps by Jeff Geerling. But I spent more time on learning and “trying out the tech” than I had anticipated.

This extra time spent on research and experimentation were in tandem to my ongoing contributions in other areas of the project like Community Operations, Marketing, Ambassadors, the Diversity Team, and as of recently, the Games SIG. Balancing my time between these different areas, including GSoC, was the biggest challenge to me over the summer (along with a separate, part-time job on weekends). A separation of time to different areas of Fedora became essential for making progress on my project. What worked well for me was setting short-term goals (by the hour or day) that I wanted to hit and carry out. Until those goals were reached, I wouldn’t focus on anything other than those tasks.

Special thanks 🔗

I’m both thankful and grateful to those who have offered their mentorship, time, and guidance for me to be a member of the GSoC Class of 2016. Special thanks go to Patrick Uiterwijk, my mentor for the program. I’ve learned a lot from Patrick through these past few months and enjoyed our conversations. Even though we were both running around the entire week, I’m glad I had the chance to meet him at Flock 2016 (and hope to see him soon at FOSDEM or DevConf)! Another thanks goes to one of my former supporting mentors and program administrator Remy DeCausemaker.

I’m looking forward to another year and beyond of Fedora contributions, and can’t wait to see what’s next!

Although my report comes a little late, it comes with a lot of thought and reflection over the week at Flock. I participated as a speaker for my talk with Jona Azizaj titled, “University Outreach: New task or new mindset?” I also worked with Bee Padalkar on running the Community Operations (CommOps) team workshop for planning our own future tasks in coming months and knowing what issues or topics the community had in mind. And lastly, due to last-minute scheduling issues, I helped plan and organize the Diversity Panel with Amita Sharma and many other incredible contributors.

Without further ado, this is my analysis and report on the events at Flock 2016. And for anyone wondering what “żegnajcie” in the title means, Google Translate tells me that means “farewell!” in Polish.

General experiences around Flock 🔗

As a second-time visitor to Flock, I was a little familiar with the conference structure. Joe Brockmeier made a call for volunteers to help transcribe talks over IRC. I signed myself up to help transcribe all the talks and workshops I was attending to help cover them in the “CommOps-style” way that I run meetings. This proved effective and I hope that my transcriptions were useful both to those who wanted to keep up with Flock from home and attendees who wanted to remember specific parts of talks after the conference ended. You can find an index of all talks and their transcriptions on the wiki.

The event organizers did an effective and incredible job of planning the fine details for the conference. When I arrived on August 1 at the airport, Rafał Lużyński greeted me and provided a ride from the airport to the hotel. Along with us at the airport was Bee Padalkar, Amita Sharma, Stephen Gallagher (thanks for sharing a plane ride with me!), and Ryan Lerch. Throughout the entire conference, I was always amazed at the hospitality and constant willingness to help by all the local organizers. For traveling in a country where the language was completely foreign, I never felt too confused or had a difficult time. I remember when Rafał helped translate the menu options for me at the restaurants we ate at on the first day, which was a major help for finding vegetarian choices. My impression on Kraków and then Poland is high and I hope to return again someday in the future.

Overall, the “i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed”, as the saying goes. I am impressed by and thankful for the hard work that went into organizing this conference. The work of the organizers is one of the most important roles of the entire conference as it enables us to come together as a community. Events like Flock are powerful in many ways, and it would be easy for a conference to fall towards the “lousy” side of the scale. But the organizers, volunteers, and staff behind Flock help make the conference an amazing experience for all attendees. It’s difficult to explain my appreciation for this work that enables so many incredible experiences and magic to come together every year.

My participation at Flock 🔗

Unlike last year’s Flock, I also participated as a speaker. In all, I helped organize and plan three different talks and workshops, which are detailed individually as follows.

University Outreach: New task or new mindset? 🔗

My first talk was on Tuesday. Together with Jona Azizaj, we presented on the topic of outreach to students and university staff and faculty for the Ambassadors program. The talk structure was past, present, and future. We begin by looking at past efforts and trying to see what we could learn by things that have happened before now. Then, we looked at how Fedora is doing in working towards the University Involvement Initiative and what tactics are effective now. We also focused on areas of student outreach with the events we are attending now. Everything up to this point was more of presenting information.

After running through the past and present, we presented the direction for moving forward with improving our outreach to universities, high schools, and their students and faculty members. We broke up the main points into four big topics: on-boarding, mentorship, focusing on not just students, and improving visibility. We presented some of our own thoughts on these topics and then opened the floor for community ideas and brainstorming.

My original plan for this talk was to present more hard information on how to begin moving forward sooner than later (e.g. “less talking, more acting!”). However, I had made plans and expectations for an EDU FAD to happen in late July, which at the time, would be the place where resources and guides were created focusing on this specific topic. But due to sudden complications, the FAD never happened. The resources I hoped to have were not available. So the end of this talk was a valuable time for attendees to leave their own thoughts and ideas on generating these resources and what kind of areas we should focus on first. The room was packed, and many people with diverse ideas had something to offer. The feedback was at times harsh, but I appreciated the directness towards coming up with solutions and the interest in the topic (after all, a full room says a lot more than an empty room).

A super big and special thanks goes to both Ardian Haxha and Jona Azizaj. Ardian was originally the other co-speaker for this talk, but was unable to attend Flock due to visa issues in Kosovo. Jona willingly stepped up as an interested member of the community to help deliver the talk and her help was greatly appreciated and helpful.

Once the videos of Flock are uploaded, I hope to review the comments and feedback from the talk once more and begin converting the ideas into action.

Diversity Panel 🔗

The first-ever Diversity Panel was originally headed by Fedora’s Diversity Adviser, María ’tatica’ Leandro. But due to medical concerns, María was unable to make it to Flock. Amita Sharma stepped up to help lead and organize the panel this year. Amita reached out to me for help as a fellow member of the Diversity Team, along with several others at the conference.

I was invited to take part, but I didn’t get to spend as much time answering questions or offering ideas as I would have liked to. I helped organize and establish a remote call with María to participate from her home and also helped document the panel with some picture-taking. I feel I have to say this because the picture I’ve seen shared the most from the panel has me looking down at my phone while the other panelists look deep in thought! At that exact moment, I was replying to messages with María to help troubleshoot some audio problems and help her identify who was speaking.

Overall, I feel the panel was a great success and I hope to see it become a regular part of Flock every year. We were able to target and name issues that the community feels needed focus in terms of diversity. Awareness was also raised for the incredibly large and diverse community we have. I hope together we can work towards breaking some of the stereotypes of Linux and open source communities, starting with our own. Big thanks (and hugs!) to Amita for helping organize the panel at the last minute, and a round of applause for all the panelists (Matthew Miller, Marina Zhurakhinskaya, Sylvia Sánchez, Bee Padalkar, Jona Azizaj, and Marie Nordin).

CommOps workshop 🔗

The Community Operations (CommOps) workshop was originally headed by Fedora’s Community Lead, Remy DeCausemaker, but due to an opportunity of a lifetime, he left his position at Red Hat and was unable to make it to Flock. Together with Bee Padalkar, we took over responsibility for this workshop.

Together, we helped plan out the key areas of focus we wanted to have for the workshop. We decided to focus on on-boarding discussions with community members and planning ahead for tasks we wanted to work on in the coming year. We created and developed some slides to help structure the workshop. Most of our preliminary planning work was done in an Etherpad, but some of the general structure and outlining exists in our wiki planning pad.

In the literal last minute before the talk began, Remy reached out to me and we patched him in for a brief audio introduction over Google Hangouts. He added some background and context to the work happening in CommOps over the past few months. Even with the suddenness of the arrangement, I was glad to have Remy with us for a time as we launched into the workshop. Unfortunately, it was only after his words we realized that our recording hadn’t started. So his words will live on in our minds and memories forever instead.

The on-boarding discussion was shaped by those who were in attendance, but as I anticipated, even a few people would be enough to begin discussion to know areas that need extra focus and attention. Two areas we spent a good amount of time covering and reviewing were the Python SIG (thanks to Miro Hrončok) and the Ambassadors (thanks to Christoph Wickert). We collected a lot of feedback and notes on these two specific teams. Until the workshop, the Python SIG wasn’t on the CommOps radar, and knowing that they could use some help and assistance with on-boarding new team members is the exact type of feedback that was perfect to hear. I knew the Ambassadors would be a large one to tackle, but we were able to get some added context and feedback from a FAmSCo member and veteran Ambassadors to help steer the direction for how that discussion and subsequent actions will be shaped and directed.

We also spent some time collecting feedback on “wishes” for community metrics that would be helpful to understand both our impact and areas that we could spend more time focusing on. Most of this part of the discussion was lead by CommOps metrics genius Bee. You can see some of her past work on her blog (like her FOSDEM analysis). One area that would be better to understand is the Globalization and translation parts of the project. It would also be powerful to measure contributions by location for translations. The example used was if a small number of translations begin appearing in a new language, we can spend time providing resources and help to new contributors, with the goal of helping spur organic growth and interest in translating Fedora to that local language.

Of course, there are hundreds of different ways we could spin this story on metrics, but hopefully with the information we gained, we can begin directing focus at specific areas and teams. Bee has already started reaching out to Fedora’s G11N team!

Again, I’d like to reserve a very special thanks to Bee for helping organize, plan, and execute this workshop. I didn’t originally anticipate being tasked with this and I had never organized something like this before. Having her help was a lifesaver and I think together we turned it into a productive and informative session. I’m looking forward to another year and beyond on working with her throughout the Fedora Project.

What Flock was for me 🔗

The context differences between my first and second Flock are immense. At the first Flock, it was a stroke of luck that it happened to be hosted in the same city as where I was already planning to move for attending my university. At Flock 2015, I was a newcomer and even an outsider. I didn’t know anyone in the conference, I didn’t know the city, and I had only ever wished to contribute up to that point. But I hadn’t done much leading up to Flock 2015 other than observe. But even at the conference last year, there was one thing that was evident to me even as an outsider. The community is strong. The community is together. It was clear that the relationships within Fedora also extended outside of Fedora. I remember seeing people have a heated discussion about Fedora, or spend an entire workshop focusing on a particular issue… and after all the work was done for the day, they would walk out, have dinner together, buy each other a drink, and celebrate. There were smiles, there were hugs, there was a true air of friendliness across the entire conference. I didn’t have to be much of a contributor to see that, even then.

Changing roles 🔗

Now, at Flock this year, the roles were reversed. Since becoming involved in Fedora around September and October of 2015, I slowly became immersed and absorbed into the community that I had watched and observed from the sidelines at Flock 2015 (and a year or so before then). But instead of watching this time, I became a participant. IRC names become names, and names become faces. In place of giving karma cookies, we shared real cookies, high-fives, hugs, and our thanks for each other. We had intense discussions on real issues or dilemmas in our project and our community. We built solutions and addressed tricky topics, we challenged each others’ ideas, we focused on how to improve the thing we spend so much time working on, either paid or volunteering.

And then we would walk around the city, jump on a river boat, visit a brewery, or hit the dance floor together. We smiled, we laughed, and we enjoyed the rare opportunity to eliminate the factor of distance and spend time with our community members. There’s an air of incredibleness to this that makes it difficult to describe. But when you’ve experienced it, you know exactly what it feels like.

Difference in saying goodbye 🔗

The one major difference between Flock 2015 and 2016 for me, outside of changing roles from an observer to a participant, was something I wasn’t expecting. Unlike the previous year where saying goodbye was driving a couple of miles to my apartment and thinking about all the things I saw and experienced, this time it was saying goodbye to new friends, shared memories, and an empowering sense of community. The names in IRC weren’t just usernames, but they were faces… people. They were conversations, they were walking around together in a foreign city, they were sharing the view of a beautiful sunset on a river. It was remembering that we’re all humans with unique ideas, perspectives, and personalities, even if the tools we use to communicate make it easy to forget that.

Saying goodbye at the end of the week was far harder than I anticipated, and it made me crave the opportunity to close the factor of distance again at the soonest possible opportunity.

On a more personal note 🔗

To this end, Flock came at the right time for me this year. Over the past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time working across all different areas. My weekdays focused on Fedora and Google Summer of Code, my weekends woke me up at 4:00am for my weekend job at a local coffee shop in my hometown, and any extra time I could sneak goes into managing my now four-year-old Minecraft server community, CrystalCraftMC. Before that, I finished my first year of my undergraduate degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and I’m preparing to move back up to Rochester this week.

As much as I may have tried convincing others and myself that I wasn’t at least a bit burnt out, it was definitely beginning to wear on me. Anyone who has experienced burnout knows what the feeling is like. It’s different in how it affects all of us. But I was reaching that point through this summer. But Flock helped remind me of all the different people who are involved in this incredible project and why we’re doing the work we are doing. Anyone who isn’t familiar with open source will always question why we spend so much time working on something without being paid for it. But it’s more than just that. It’s more than a financial thing. The reason anyone volunteers willingly to open source is rarely ever to meet a financial or monetary goal. This is also a difficult thing to describe, and I hate to write something off as “you have to experience it to know what I mean”, but maybe this applies in this situation.

On that note, Flock served as a vital reminder for me about why I choose to involve myself with the Fedora Project. And it helped show me that the answer I need to take away isn’t to contribute more, but it’s to contribute enough for me. The several times someone in the community came up to me personally and said, “Hey, thanks for all the work you’re doing” or something along those lines was incredibly powerful and moving to me. And that helped provide value for all the contributions and time I spend in Fedora. I want to make sure that I am at my best where I am able to contribute without burning myself out and away from Fedora. The unique opportunity of being in the same physical place with so many other Fedora contributors added that context for me. And who knows, maybe this realization from Flock saved me from hitting a wall at some point in the future. But now, I am confident and ready to continue with another year, and beyond, of Fedora contributions.

Thanks for having me 🔗

I am incredibly thankful and grateful to be a part of the Fedora community. The opportunity to attend a conference like Flock with sponsorship in a country I’ve never been to before was an incredible experience. Without a doubt, it’s something that will stay with me for a long time. There are so many people I have to thank for helping open a door or offer pointers and tips for getting involved. There’s the Fedora Magazine team, the CommOps team and its original founder, the Marketing team, the Ambassadors (both globally and locally), the Diversity Team… to list names would both be incredibly time-consuming and unfair (because I’m beyond sure I would forget some name of someone who did have an impact on me getting involved).

I would like to give special thanks and appreciation for the companionship and friendliness of Amita, Bee, Jona, and Giannis during Flock. We probably spent a large part of our time at the conference together and I have a deep appreciation for the opportunity to get to you know you all personally, not just as fellow contributors but as true friends. I anticipate the next time we can all be together in the same space again!

Looking ahead 🔗

2016 is past halfway complete and we’re on track towards a speedy arrival of 2017. But there is a lot to do before we get there. Flock has helped give the opportunity for the community and all of its teams to find their direction and aim for the next few months and to work towards that. I am refreshed, reinvigorated, and ready for another year of noting all the #info, answering the calls for #help, and taking on #action items to build and grow the Fedora Project forward.

See you in channel, on the mailing lists, or wherever our paths will collide next… as I’m sure they will.

Next steps for GSoC 2016 🔗

My last steps for the project are moving closer to production. Earlier this summer, the best plan of action was to use my development cloud instance for quick, experimental testing. Once a point of stability is reached, it would be tested on a staging instance of the real Fedora Magazine or Community Blog. Once reviewed and tested, it would work its way to production for managing future installations and upgrades for any WordPress platform in Fedora.

When the time comes to move it to production, I will file a ticket in the Infrastructure Trac with my patch file to the Ansible repository.

One last correction 🔗

One sudden difficulty I’ve found is using the synchronize module in my upgrade playbook. Originally, I was copying and replacing the files using the copy module to carry out this, but I found synchronize to offer a better solution, using rsync. However, after switching, I ran into a small error that had me hung up.

When running the upgrade playbook, it would trigger an issue with rsync requiring a TTY session to work as a privileged user. I found a filed bug for this in the Ansible repository. Fixing it required setting a specific flag in the server configuration when using rsync. To avoid doing this, I altered my upgrade playbook to not avoid dependence on a root user for running, and instead using user and group permissions for the wordpress user. I’m working through smoothing out a few minor hiccups with the synchronize module during today, mostly dealing with the directory not being found when executing the module, even though it exists.

Flock 2016 🔗

On Sunday, I’ll be flying out to Poland for Flock 2016, Fedora’s annual contributor conference. During Flock, I’ll meet several other Fedora contributors in person, including my mentor. We plan to set up the staging instance either later tonight or during Flock, depending on how time ends up going.

I’ll also be delivering a talk and hosting a workshop during the week as well! One of the workshops I’m hoping to attend is the Ansible best practice working session. I’ll be seeing if there’s anything I can glean to build into the last week of the project during the workshop.

Documentation 🔗

The first complete draft of my documentation for managing WordPress installations in Fedora’s infrastructure is available on my Pagure repository. The guide covers deployment, including upgrades, as well as more notes about working with the playbooks. As my project work begins to finish, the documented procedure is an outline for the final work. It will also be expanded as I close out the project.

Installing new WordPress site 🔗

After testing on my development instance in the Fedora cloud, my playbook is able to successfully install multiple WordPress sites to various hosts (pending one caveat for automatically setting up MySQL databases). I was able to spin up multiple sites quickly and easily to a point where I was satisfied with how it worked.

A few challenges I faced in this part were figuring out templating the right information into the WordPress configuration file. I was originally going to try using a variable file, but due to the issue of storing private information, I was trying to use external variables. After revisiting the idea with Patrick, I’m going to use a variables file with the information for each hypothetical installation. This file will then be stored in the private Ansible repository that holds server and application credentials.

Determining SELinux flags and contexts was also challenging. I had to learn which ones to apply to WordPress for basic functionality to still work (particularly for things like uploading media files to the server and letting WordPress cron work as expected). I’m not wholly satisfied with how I implemented it yet, as I want to dig more into setting the contexts with different parts of modules like unarchive and file, if possible.

Upgrading and master 🔗

The last significant task to handle is writing the playbook for handling upgrades for WordPress installations. There were two options originally available. The first option would be to allow upgrading via the WordPress admin panel. The second option would be writing a playbook to handle the upgrade. We opted for the second method as this will allow the files on the web server to be read-only, which will serve as an extra measure of hardened security.

I hope to have a playbook created in the next week to tackle upgrading an existing WordPress installation to a newer version. This will be the last significant task of my proposal, before I begin taking what I have so far and finding ways to integrate it into Fedora’s infrastructure.

One of these smaller but important tasks will be writing a “master” playbook to orchestrate the entire process of setting up a machine to run it (and referring to the necessary roles). Some of these roles I’ll be referring to are the httpd and mariadb roles.

Moving towards Flock 🔗

With Flock fast on approach, I’m hoping to have the majority of my project work finished and completed before that time frame. Anything past Flock should mostly be tidying up or fully documenting any changes made in the last stretch. This is my target goal at the moment! I’m looking forward to being a part of Flock again this year and meeting many members of the Fedora community.

Understanding background 🔗

My project proposal originated from a discussion based on an observation about managing the Fedora Magazine. Fedora’s infrastructure is entirely automated in some form, often times using Ansible playbooks to “conduct” the Fedora orchestra of services, applications, and servers. However, all the WordPress platforms within Fedora are absent from this automated setup. This has to do with the original context of setting up the platforms.

However, now that automation is present in so much of the Infrastructure through a variety of tasks and roles, it makes sense to merge the two existing WordPress platforms in Fedora into the automation. This was the grounds for my proposal back in March, and I’ve made progress towards learning a completely new technology and learning it by example.

Initial research 🔗

The second resource is, as one would expect, the Ansible documentation. The documentation for Ansible is complete and fully explanatory. Usually if there is an Ansible-specific concept I am struggling with learning, or finding a module for accomplishing a task, the Ansible documentation helps point me in the right direction quickly.

Research into practice 🔗

After making some strides through the book and the documentation, I began turning the different concepts into practical playbooks for my own personal infrastructure. I run a handful of machines for different purposes, ranging from my Minecraft server, a ZNC bouncer, some PHP forum websites, and more. Ever since I began using headless Linux servers, I’ve never explored automation too deeply. Every time I set up a new machine or a service, I would configure it all manually, file by file.

First playbook 🔗

After reading more about Ansible, I began seeing ways I could try automating things in my “normal” setup. This helped give a way to ease myself into Ansible without overwhelming myself with too large of tasks. I created repositories on Pagure for my personal playbooks and Minecraft playbooks. The very first one I wrote was my “first 30 minutes” on a new machine. This playbook sets up a RHEL / CentOS 7 machine with basic security measures and a few personal preferences ready to go. It’s nothing fancy, but it was a satisfying moment to run it in my Vagrant machine and see it do all of my usual tasks on a new machine instantly.

For more information on using Ansible in a Vagrant testing environment, check out my blog post about it below.

Moving to Minecraft 🔗

After writing the first playbook, I tried moving to focusing on some other areas I could try automating to improve my “Ansible chops”. Managing my Minecraft server network is one place where I recognized I could improve automation. I spend a lot of time repeating the same sort of tasks, and having an automated way to do these tasks would make sense.

I started writing playbooks in the adding and restarting Minecraft servers based on the popular open source server software, Spigot. Writing these playbooks helped introduce me to different core modules in Ansible, like lineinfile, template, copy, get_url, and more.

I have also been using sites like ServerFault to find answers for any starting questions I have. Some of the changes between Ansible 1.x and 2.x caused some hiccups in one case for me.

Using Infrastructure resources 🔗

After getting a better feel for the basics, I started focusing less on my infrastructure and more on the project proposal. One of the key differences from me writing playbooks, roles, and tasks for my infrastructure is that there are already countless Ansible resources available from Fedora Infrastructure. For example, to create a WordPress playbook for Fedora Infrastructure, I would want to use the mariadb_server role for setting up a database for the site. Doing that in my playbook (or writing a separate role for it just for WordPress) would increase the difficulty of maintaining the playbooks and make it inconvenient for other members of Fedora Infrastructure.

Creating a deliverable 🔗

In my personal Ansible repository, I have begun constructing the deliverable product for the end of the summer. So far, I have a playbook that creates a basic, single-site WordPress installation. The intention for the final deliverable is to have a playbook for creating a “base” installation of a WordPress network, and then any other tasks for creating extra sites added to the network. This will make sure that any WordPress sites in Fedora are running the same core version, receive the same updates, and are consistent in administration.

I also intend to write documentation for standing up a WordPress site in Fedora based on my deliverable product. Fortunately, there is already a guide on writing a new SOP, so after talking with my mentor, Patrick Uiterwijk, on documentation expectations and needs next week, I will be referring back to this document as a guide for writing my own.

Reflection on GSoC 2016 so far 🔗

I was hoping to have advanced farther by this point, but due to learning bumps and other tasks, I wasn’t able to move at a pace as I hoped. However, since starting GSoC 2016, I’ve made some personal observations about the project and how I can improve.

• Despite being behind from where I wanted to be, I feel I am at a point where I am mostly on track and able to work towards completing my project proposal on schedule.
• I recognize communication on my progress has not been handled well, and I am making plans to make sure shorter, more frequent updates are happening at a consistent and regular basis. This includes a consistent, weekly (if not twice every week) blog post about my findings, progress, commits, and more.
• After talking with Patrick this week, we are going to begin doing more frequent check-ins about where I am in the project and making sure I am on track for where I should be.

Excerpt from GSoC 2016 evaluation form 🔗

As one last bit, I thought it would be helpful to share my answers from Google’s official midterm evaluation form from the experience section.

“What is your favorite part of participating in GSoC?” 🔗

“Participating in GSoC gave me a means to continue contributing to an open source community I was still getting involved in. I began contributing to Fedora in September 2015, and up until the point when I applied for GSoC, I had anticipated having to give up my activity levels of contributing to open source while I maintained a job over the summer. GSoC enabled me to remain active and engaged with the Fedora Project community and it has kept me involved with Fedora.

The Fedora Project is also a strong user of Ansible, which is what my project proposal mostly deals with. My proposal gives me a lot of experience and the opportunity to learn new technology that not only allows me to complete my proposal, but also understand different levels and depths of contributing to the project far beyond the end of the summer. With the skills I am learning, I am being enabled as a contributor for the present and the future. To me, this is exciting as the area that I am contributing in has always been one that’s interested to me, and this project is jump-starting me with the skills and abilities needed to be a successful contributor in the future.

GSoC is also actively teaching me lessons about time management and overcoming challenges of working remote (which I will detail in the next question). I believe the experience I am getting now from participating in GSoC allows me to improve on myself as an open source developer and contributor and learn important skills about working remotely with others on shared projects.”

“What is the most challenging part of participating in GSoC?” 🔗

“The hardest part for me was (is) learning how to work remotely. In the past, when I was contributing at school, I had resources available to me where I could reach out to others nearby for assistance, places I could leave to focus, and a more consistent schedule. Working from home has required me to reach out for help either by improving how well I can search for something or reaching out to others in the project community about how to accomplish an objective.

There are also different responsibilities at home, and creating a focused, constructive space for me to focus on project work is an extremely important part of helping me accomplish my work. Learning to be consistent in my own work and setting my own deadlines is a large part of what I’m working on doing now. Learning the ability to follow and set personal goals for working on the project was a hard lesson to learn at first, but finding that balance quickly and swiftly is something that is helping me move forward.”

Bad puns aside, I am actually enormously excited to announce that I am participating in this year’s Google Summer of Code program for the Fedora Project. If you are unfamiliar with Google Summer of Code (or often shortened to GSoC), Google describes it as the following.

Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on bringing more student developers into open source software development. Students work with an open source organization on a 3 month programming project during their break from school.

I will work with the Fedora Project over the summer on the CommOps slot. As part of my proposal, I will assist with migrating key points of communication in Fedora, like the Fedora Magazine and Community Blog, to Ansible-based installations. I have a few more things planned up my sleeve too.

Google Summer of Code proposal 🔗

My proposal summary is on the GSoC 2016 website. The full proposal is available on the Fedora wiki.

The What 🔗

The Community Blog is becoming an important part of the Fedora Project. This site is a shared responsibility between CommOps and the Infrastructure team. Unlike most applications in the Fedora infrastructure, the Community Blog is not based off Ansible playbooks. Ansible is an open-source configuration management suite designed to make automation easier. Fedora already uses Ansible extensively across its infrastructure.

My task would consist of migrating the Community Blog (and by extension, Fedora Magazine) to an Ansible-based set up and writing the documentation for any related SOPs.

The Why 🔗

Ansible is a useful tool to make automation and configuration easier. In their current set up, the Community Blog and Fedora Magazine are managed separately from each other, and are managed by a single member of the Infrastructure team. By moving them to Ansible-based installations and merging the WordPress bases together, it provides the following benefits:

1. Makes it easier for other Infrastructure team members to fix, maintain, or apply updates to either site
2. Prevents duplicate work by maintaining a single, Ansible-based WordPress install versus two independent WordPress sites
3. Creates a standard operating procedure for hosting blog platforms within Fedora (can be used for other extensions in the future)

Thanks to my mentors 🔗

I would like to issue a special thanks to my mentors, Patrick Uiterwijk and Remy DeCausemaker. Patrick will be my primary mentor for the slot, as a member of the Fedora Infrastructure team. I will be working closest with him in the context of my proposal. I will also be working with Remy on the “usual” CommOps tasks that we work on week by week.

Another thanks goes out to all of those in the Fedora community who have positively affected and influenced my contributions. Thanks to countless people, I am happy to consider Fedora my open source home for many years to come. There is so much to learn and the community is amazing.

Getting started 🔗

As of the time of publication, the Community Bonding period is currently happening. The official “coding” time hasn’t started yet. Without much delay, I will be meeting up with Patrick and Remy later today in a conference call to check in after the official announcement, make plans for what’s coming up in the near future, and become more acquainted with the Infrastructure community.

In addition to our conference call, I’m also planning on (formally) attending the next Fedora Infrastructure meeting on Thursday. Shortly afterwards, I hope to begin my journey as an Infrastructure apprentice and learn more about the workflow of the team.

Things are just getting started for the summer and I’m beyond excited that I will have a paid excuse to work on Fedora full-time. Expect more check-ins as the summer progresses!

Today, I received the Pizzelle badge in Fedora Badges. I was awarded with Pizzelle after a short “karma storm” in the EMEA Ambassadors meeting. After finding out I was awarded the badge, I had a light bulb sort of moment. As of this month, it has been a year since I first found myself wanting to get involved with the Fedora Project. I remember seeing the announcement for Flock 2015 and how that was right next to my soon-to-be university, the Rochester Institute of Technology. I remember lazily dismissing the idea of taking any further steps into Fedora until after Flock 2015. And now, a year later, I’m reflecting back on crazy of a past few months it has been.

What is a pizzelle? 🔗

If you’re not aware already, Fedora has a unique system of rewarding positive contributions in the community through karma.

Karma is a unique way of rewarding positive interactions and actions in Fedora with a friendly, quantifiable number. In any official Fedora IRC channel, Fedora contributors can give any other contributor Karma by adding ‘++’ after their nick (i.e. jflory7++).

This “positive” karma is distributed by zodbot in the form of “cookies”. A contributor can give another contributor a “karma cookie” once a release cycle before they are able to give another one. For reaching certain milestones of karma cookies, contributors are awarded badges via Fedora Badges. Fedora uses this as a method to promote positive behavior in the community as well as help support and build community in Fedora. This reflects upon the “Friends” part of the Four Foundations of Fedora.

The Pizzelle badge is awarded to a user after received 50 cookies from other users in Fedora.

Thank you! 🔗

A special thanks goes out to all of those who have helped mentor and guide me towards contributing to Fedora. There’s really too many names to list, and everyone has impacted me in their own unique way. I hope that through my contributions, I can return the kindness and support that so many others have shown me.

I think karma is cool because it’s a simple way users can show their appreciation for others. The more karma you receive, the more you realize that it really is like karma – the more you give, the more you get back out of it. If you put forth the effort and willingness to help others, those same others will return the favor to you in one form or another.

Special shout-out to the CommOps team for working on some awesome tasks in Fedora! I don’t know if I’d be as deep in Fedora if it weren’t for the folks behind CommOps.

My Year in Review 🔗

With an hour left until the New Year, there never seemed a better time to begin writing my Year in Review article. While it is a stereotypical kind of thing to do, I also think it’s a great opportunity to reflect on the gifts, changes, and special occasions that this past year has presented to me. 2015 is special to me in many ways because it marks a significant milestone in my life of moving away from home and beginning my journey into full adulthood.

There are many important and special people in my life that have made this year incredible, and I want to reflect and make note of this.

</high school> <college> 🔗

This past May, I graduated from high school. Looking back, it’s interesting to see how much has changed in my personal life and even in my own interests. Some friends have come and gone, but there are an important core of people who have always been present in my life, and I am privileged to have been one to know them deeply over the past four years.

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t until my junior year when I realized that I wanted to spend my life working in computer science. I remember when I walked into the classroom of my AP Computer Science teacher asking how I could get going with only one year left. Now, here I am immersing myself in digital technology in countless different ways. I feel like I am where I am meant to be.

These four years haven’t been easy either. I worked hard to get to the place I wanted to go. Despite quite a few personal challenges, I was fortunate enough to afford an education here at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Just in the semester and a half that I have been enrolled here, I’ve met countless people who have affected my life and helped shape the direction of where I’m going in the world. Special shout-out to the FOSSbox and RITlug, and everyone involved with both.

Coffee and Doughnuts 🔗

For most of 2015, I worked a not-so-typical job at Dutch Monkey Doughnuts in my hometown. Dutch Monkey is an important part of my town and they have helped create a name for people visiting the region. They’re well-known for their homemade doughnuts and Counter Culture Coffee, both of which are legendary within their own right.

During my time at Dutch Monkey, I was able to attend workshops and classes at the Counter Culture Coffee Training Center in Atlanta. Throughout the eight or nine classes I took, I was able to further my understanding and appreciation for an extremely complex and fascinating beverage. My appreciation and love for coffee has become a part of my being. The coffee industry is a wild and exciting place, and it is very much an ethical hotbed of all kinds of issues. I joke to myself that if sysadmin doesn’t work out, the coffee industry could always make a good fallback…

I was also fortunate to have some awesome co-workers who helped make the 4am shifts a little more enjoyable. Special shout-out to Jordan Hughes for the long talks about music, the music industry, and so many other things. I learned a lot from you and you’ve had a big impact on my own music tastes.

MINECON and SpigotMC 🔗

This was single-handedly one of the most profound events of the year for me. If you weren’t aware, I am a community moderator for the SpigotMC project. I have been a moderator since April 2014. Spigot is my true first open-source project, even though I wasn’t a contributor of code, but a community builder (or so I like to think).

MINECON announced 🔗

In February of 2015, Mojang announced that MINECON 2015 would be happening in London, England. Instantly, I thought there would be no way I would ever be able to afford a trip overseas for a two-day convention. However, I found the application for a MINECON Agent, which is the small group of “interns” that volunteer to help set up and prepare MINECON for over 10,000 people with the Mojang team. The only benefit to being an Agent was a waived ticket cost (around $120 last year). I applied for the program, unsure of what would come of it, doubtful I would be able to go even if I were accepted.

April rolls around, and I finally hear back from Mojang! “Congratulations, you are now a MINECON Agent!” It was difficult to believe at first, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to go regardless.

Getting in gear for MINECON 🔗

I began talking with the rest of the team at SpigotMC. We were also getting in gear for MINECON 2015 and were planning to attend as an organization with our own booth. We had arranged to have a booth and most of the team knew who was going to be there. Michael, our project lead, would be in attendance, along with Matthew, the other lead developer; Jordan, another community moderator like myself; Cindy, our local wiki staff, IRC staff, and contributing developer, or also the official “Spigot Mom”; and Miguel, our witty Spigot volunteer who has an ambiguous position with Spigot. Cindy’s son Alex was also going to be in attendance.

I didn’t think I would be able to attend. However, a very unique set of events happened one after another, and suddenly, the possibility of me attending MINECON this year began to materialize. Thanks to awesome people behind Spigot, I was fortunate enough to make it out to this year’s convention. When I figured out that I would be going to London, I was beyond stoked.

Going to London and MINECON 🔗

I would be there from Saturday, July 4 to Wednesday, July 8, 2016. Saturday and Sunday were the days of MINECON. Together with the team, we helped represent the SpigotMC project among thousands of convention-goers. We had brochures, bracelets, and a video running in the booth for visitors to take and see. I met some incredible people from our community, and I am privileged and honored to have met some incredible people there.

Thanks to Michael being the incredible individual he is, we went to a few dinners and meet-ups with others in the Minecraft community. I met two of the major Minecraft developers, Nathan (Dinnerbone) and Erik (Grum) and countless others in the YouTube and development community. It was almost unbelievable. The entire time I was in London, the experience felt surreal. Six months before this, I would never have believed any of this would ever have happened.

The Monday and Tuesday we were there, Cindy, Jordan, Alex, and I went around London doing our proper duty as tourists. We went to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, rode a double-decker bus, went to the Queen’s castle, and indulged in what Jordan called a “proper British meal”. On Monday night, Jordan treated me to a short trip around London hopping between bars (although everything closed so early)! We ended up crashing in some late-night diner, had a meal, and headed back for the next round of sightseeing on Tuesday.

Thanks to the team 🔗

This was truly a life-changing experience that was bestowed upon me. I was honored and privileged to have met the other members of the Spigot team that I’ve been working with for the past two years. I wouldn’t trade my time in London for anything else, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to help host the crew this upcoming MINECON if it ends up in the northeast US.

Open Source and Fedora 🔗

I have used the Fedora operating system on my laptop since December 2013. I began using it on my desktop I built in November 2014. I have used this operating system for almost two years and I never had thought too much about the community behind the Fedora Project. I knew that it was a large and complex community, but I was never sure where to take the first step. I had always wanted to be an Ambassador, but questioned my usefulness or whether I was a right fit for the program.

Flock to Fedora! 🔗

I learned that Flock, Fedora’s annual contributor’s conference, was to be hosted in Rochester, NY in 2015 from August 5th to the 9th. I would be moving right next door to Flock just a week after the conference! After contacting a pair of people who seemed knowledgeable about the details back in February 2015, little did I know I was setting in motion an entirely new track of events in my life. The two gents I emailed, Remy DeCausemaker and Prof. Stephen Jacobs (SJ), helped give me advice on travel details and how I would get myself into Rochester in time for Flock.

Come August, I am back from MINECON, packing my bags for Rochester, and ending my last few days at Dutch Monkey. When I arrived in Rochester with my mother, it was an exciting and new experience, something I had looked forward to for a long time. Once Flock rolled around, I was almost instantaneously immersed in the Fedora community, and over the course of the week, I would begin to feel a part of a Project that I had questioned how to enter for almost a year.

The talks were fantastic, the speakers were passionate, and the community was welcoming. I was jump started into Fedora at Flock 2015, despite walking in a stranger. At first, I questioned whether coming was such a grand idea. It was obvious everyone knew someone already and I was only an excited Fedora user and fan. These were the people who did all the heavy-lifting to make this operating system and its community run. What was I doing here?

I distinctly remember Pete Travis (randomuser in IRC) coming up to me, introducing himself and asking me a few questions. In retrospect, I probably looked like I was feeling a bit out-of-place. He and I began talking a bit about his role in Fedora and some of my little experience in open source. After he spoke to me, I began to feel a little more attached to the conference. After a while, I began speaking up at some of the talks I attended, or trying to share some of my perspective or thoughts as an outsider. These were the stepping-stones that got me involved with the project.

One thing about all else stands out to me about the conference. I remember Remy saying to me towards the end (with minor paraphrasing), “You should check out this Community Operations thing that’s coming up soon. It’s going to be awesome.”

Fedora Magazine 🔗

Over the course of the next few months at RIT, I started working with Paul Frields, Ryan Lerch, and a few others on the Fedora Magazine. I began contributing as a writer, with my first article about using Spigot on Fedora. As time went on, I began helping as an editor, revising and reviewing other people’s articles to help get them published for the Magazine. By the end of 2015, I believe I would come to establish myself as a permanent member of the editorial team behind the Magazine.

CommOps 🔗

Additionally, during the months after Flock, I would follow up on what Remy told me, and I checked out this whole Community Operations (shortened to CommOps) thing. It was in the early formation stages, but the core idea behind CommOps was that they were the supporting team to offer support to all the other sub-projects in Fedora. Or in my eyes, a team focused on building and supporting the community with resources and assistance. This was something I thought I could contribute to. My programming skills were not at a level where I’d feel comfortable hacking on to Fedora either on the Infrastructure or as a Packager. But CommOps was that kind of thing that hooked me from the start. I wanted to help build Fedora up, and I could see what exactly CommOps was trying to target and how it was wanting to fix the long-term issues.

Now, months later, my involvement with CommOps has resulted with many tickets filed and many tickets closed. It has been a productive time while I have been with CommOps, and I never feel like there is too little to do. Our horizon is vast and there is much work to be done… 2016 offers great promise to the success of our sub-project, which in turn offers great promise to the Fedora Project. I am looking forward to seeing where this year takes us. I am also happy to work with such an awesome and dedicated group of people as those behind the CommOps team. There are too many to name, but I’m thankful for the leadership of Remy to keep us all together, focused, and driven.

2016 🔗

2016 will have a lot of ground to cover over 2015, but there is a large potential for this to be done. My own personal story with open source continues to grow, and I am beyond excited for what the future may bring. I am exposed to a unique group of people and minds here at RIT, and I am actively pursuing the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) minor.

This self-reflection has turned into a much longer post than I anticipated, but I think this reflection is necessary and useful for my own purposes. Taking a moment to reflect on the events of the past year helps remind me what it’s all about and why I’m doing what I’m doing, especially at the times where everything seems confusing and I begin to question what I’m doing. But the path is illuminated and I am driven to succeed. There are a lot of things at stake for me and my family, and I hope to be able to meet many personal goals and better support the people closest to me in my life.

I would also like to give a special thanks to all the people who have made this year so incredible for me, and for those who have ridden the ride with me. There are so many names to list, and it’s hard to come up with this list in the dark hours of the morning when I know I should be sleeping. But to all of those who play a special and important role in my life, I want you all to know that none of what has happened to me would be possible without your support. Your continued guidance, counsel, and companionship teaches me much and inspires me greatly. My only wish is that I will someday be able to repay all the good deeds that others have bestowed upon me. If not to the original giver, I hope to someday inspire others and help others in the same way you all have shown and taught me. Maybe this is less of a 2016 thing and more of a “crystal ball into the future” moment… but I think it’s worth mentioning regardless.

Thanks for a fantastic 2015. I’m looking forward to seeing where 2016 takes us next.

The Extra! Extra! badge is categorized as a “Content Badge” and is defined in this Trac ticket. But what’s the real scoop behind the Extra! Extra! badge?

In short, the Extra! Extra! badge is awarded to Fedora contributors that write an article for the Fedora Magazine, the premiere publication offered by the Fedora Project. The Fedora Magazine offers user-oriented content relating to the Fedora Project, whether it’s a how-to on using some awesome software, a major event report, or other cool things happening in the Linux world.

How do I earn “Extra! Extra!”? 🔗

Earning Extra! Extra! requires a good idea and a willingness to write about it! To write your own article for the Fedora Magazine, you should start by shooting a brief introduction to the Marketing mailing list.  Tell a little bit about yourself, what you’re interested in, and maybe why you want to write for the Magazine. After you introduce yourself, you will be granted contributor privileges on the Magazine!

You can learn more about the process for writing for the Fedora Magazine on their walkthrough page.

The first step to getting your article published and syndicated is by proposing a pitch for your idea. A pitch is a short, brief summary of what you want to write about and how you want to go about it. This helps make it easier to approve articles and prevent you from wasting your time writing an article if there is a reason that your idea isn’t suitable for the Magazine. Get started by learning how to write a good pitch!

After your pitch is ready, send a link to your article to the Marketing mailing list announcing that it is ready for review. All pitches and drafts are reviewed weekly at the Magazine editorial board meetings.

Once your article is given the “OK”, you are free to begin drafting your article and move towards publication. After your article goes live, you will be manually awarded the badge!

The “Extra! Extra!” tl;dr 🔗

1. Introduce yourself on the Marketing mailing list, explaining why you want to write for the Magazine and what your idea for an article is
2. Once you are promoted, start a pitch to be reviewed by the editorial board, email to list when done
3. When your pitch is approved, begin drafting and move towards publishing
4. After publishing, badge is manually awarded by Magazine editors

This information is also on the Magazine “How to write an article” page.