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.

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.

Flock, now in its fourth year, is a conference for Fedora contributors to come together, discuss new ideas, work to make those ideas a reality, and continue to promote the core values of the Fedora community: Freedom, Friends, Features, and First.

This year, I am attending as a contributor to the project, giving a talk, and leading a workshop!

Poland: New experience 🔗

Last year, I attended Flock 2015 without having much of an idea of what to expect. Flock 2015 was less than ten minutes away from my then future university, the Rochester Institute of Technology. I was a user of Fedora since 2013, but I had never figured out how to start contributing to the project. To take advantage of this experience, I made plans to move into school early so I could see what Flock was all about.

Fast forward a full year, and a lot has changed. Now, I spend many hours a week working on the Fedora Project in many places. I help lead the CommOps and Marketing teams. I organize and attend events on the US East Coast as an Ambassador. I’m a Google Summer of Code 2016 student for Fedora. When I walked into the conference center last year as a shy student, I never imagined that many of the people I met would become familiar faces in short time.

This year, Flock 2016 in Poland will be a different experience, and I am looking forward to seeing what it will bring. Do you have plans to attend? If so, allow me to share some details for sessions you will want to add to your schedule!

Evaluating our impact in education 🔗

At 17:30 UTC+2 on August 2nd, 2016, together with Jona Azizaj, we will lead a talk titled, “University Outreach – New task or new mindset?”

In early 2015, the Fedora Council proposed a new objective: the University Involvement Initiative. The purpose? Try to increase exposure of Fedora in university settings to gain new users, but also to hopefully gain new contributors. In order to carry this out, is it a new task, or does it need a new mindset? In this talk, we begin looking at the current mindset and marketing thoughts around attracting university students to Fedora. What is working? What isn’t?

We will look at personal experiences among the presenters with getting involved with Fedora as a student for an example. We will focus on how changing the ways we approach reaching out to students might be the best way to begin making an impact on students with Fedora.

If you are someone interested in reaching new audiences of students with Fedora, make sure you work this talk into your agenda.

CommOps Workshop 🔗

As of recently, I will also be leading the CommOps workshop on August 4th, 2016 at 13:30 UTC+2.

This year, for the first time, CommOps will be hosting its own workshop to tackle existing tasks and project items, offer a place for the community to add their own ideas and wishes for what they would like to see, and planning for the future growth of our sub-project. Flock offers a unique venue to do this as it brings together multiple people from different areas of Fedora in the same rooms. This is a great place for us to take advantage of the combined people power to accomplish tasks that would be hard otherwise.

The workshop will be designed to also try to keep remote contributors in mind, where possible, over IRC and possibly other means.

To help organize thoughts and ideas on the workshop in a public and open way, the workshop planned in the open on the wiki. We’re working with other CommOps contributors on shaping how the workshop will run. We hope to have you join us and see what we’re up to in CommOps land!

Thank you Red Hat 🔗

Finally, I want to offer my sincere gratitude and appreciation to Red Hat and the Flock sponsors for sponsoring my travel costs to Flock 2016. As a student, there would not be a way for me to afford making this trip on my own expenses. Thanks to the great folks behind Flock, I will be attending and hope to contribute my worth with the above talk and workshop, as well as throughout the entire conference.

Thank you for granting me this opportunity, and I look forward to seeing many other Fedora contributors next month in Poland!

Image courtesy Alexey Topolyanskiy – originally posted to Unsplash as Untitled.