Home is a suitcase 🔗

I began the third year of my degree and moved for the fifth time in two years when I made it back to Rochester in August. This time, I found somewhere to ideally live longer than only a few months of the year. I moved into a house with a few other roommates with more space than I’ve had before. For the first time in a while, it’s somewhere I’ve made to feel like home.

This move came months after I ended a semester of a study abroad program and lived in a city for an internship. Most of 2017 made my suitcase feel like a home, but it afforded many unique experiences.

Croatia: Study abroad 🔗

From January to May 2017, I participated in a study abroad program with my university to Dubrovnik, Croatia. RIT has full campuses in both Zagreb and Dubrovnik. This made planning the semester abroad easy, but also encouraged me to go somewhere I might not have gone otherwise.

My choice to study in Croatia was well-rewarded. On paper, I earned 12 credit hours, but I took away more than what I learned in class. My most important lessons came in the form of midnight bus rides to Albania, photograph exhibits capturing genocide in Sarajevo, and hugs from normally faraway friends in Czechia. My time abroad began a process in finding myself that has continued since my time in Europe.

DevConf 2017 / Fedora Diversity FAD 🔗

At the beginning of the year, the Fedora Diversity Team held a “Fedora Activity Day” (FAD) event in Brno, Czechia. If you’re outside of the Fedora community, think of a FAD as a focused, in-person team sprint. Together with our team in-person and remote, we mapped out our goals and plans for 2017 and set out to continue the work we began nearly three years ago.

In addition to the work we accomplished together, it was fulfilling for me to see my teammates that span three continents. I spent a week with not only my teammates but also my friends. The days we get to spend together are a privileged few in the year, and it was fulfilling and motivating for me to spend some of our time together in a way that wasn’t Pagure tickets or IRC meetings.

Read more about our team sprint in this event report:

https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/fedora-diversity-fad-2017/

FOSDEM 2017 🔗

In February, I attended the Free and Open Source Software Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM) for the first time. FOSDEM is the largest open source conference in Europe, bringing together over 8,000 open source enthusiasts, contributors, and leaders from around the globe.

I had the privilege to attend as a member of the Fedora community, so my time was between the Fedora booth to meet the community and catching interesting talks. I also gave a talk of my own on the main track, What open source and J.K. Rowling have in common! I gave this talk to a smaller audience at DevConf, but the FOSDEM audience was considerably larger.

In retrospect, my original talk topic is relevant but I have ideas on how I could have delivered my message more effectively. Regardless, it was a learning experience for me to present in front of a new audience. Public speaking opportunities filled my youth, both in theater and in presentations, but I had never presented to a technical audience before (let alone on a non-technical topic). The experience at FOSDEM helped build my understanding and I hope to return with a new topic someday in the future.

Exploring the Balkans 🔗

Outside of open source and Fedora, my time in Croatia included a lot of time outside of Croatia. When many of my roommates went to explore the wonders of Western Europe, I lost my heart in the shadows of the Balkan mountains. My spring break was a solo trip split between Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina and Tirana, Albania.

Sarajevo 🔗

The three days I spent in Sarajevo were short but significant. I was truly alone on this visit and it was up to me to make the most of it. Originally, I was skeptical to go alone, but I knew that I would never have a better opportunity to go. My fascination with Sarajevo stemmed from a year of studying European history in high school, and knowing the cultural significance of Sarajevo as a meeting point of western and eastern cultures. In the end, I decided to go, and I was rewarded for it.

Most of my trip in Sarajevo consisted of museums. I visited various museums, ranging from eighteenth to twentieth century history. The most rewarding for me were the Galerija 11/07/95 and the Tunnel of Sarajevo. The gallery documented the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995 by the Serbian armed forces. The exhibit was eye-opening and perspective-shifting. The Tunnel of Sarajevo, sometimes called the Tunnel of Hope, is another perspective-shattering experience. The museum introduces the tunnel used during the siege of Sarajevo during the 1990s, when Serbian forces surrounded the city for an almost four-year siege. The tunnel was the only way for citizens and resistance forces to contact the outside world and keep the resistance alive. A small part of the tunnel is preserved, and the other artifacts make it a gripping experience (not to mention it’s a short drive out of the city, so you also have a chance to mentally prepare and later unpack the experience).

Tirana 🔗

I visited Tirana, Albania four times on my trip abroad. In Tirana, my heart was captured by the people there. For years, I read about the Open Labs Hackerspace community based in Tirana and I always imagined an opportunity to see it in person. I actually remember my first encounter with their community was an Ada Lovelace Day event report. And somehow, the circumstances shifted where I was able to meet their community and immerse myself in the culture, if only for a short time.

During my times in Tirana, I participated in the first-ever 48 hour hackathon to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the first edition of Linux Weekend, and the annual Open Source Conference Albania (OSCAL).

https://fedoramagazine.org/students-fedora-linux-weekend-2017/

India 🔗

At the end of my study abroad experience in Croatia, a unique opportunity presented itself to me. I did not buy my return airfare back to the US before I left for Croatia. When price-checking for my trip back, I noticed it was a few hundred dollars extra if I decided to spend a week in India before flying back to the US.

I booked the tickets.

The last day of my classes finally came, and the next day, I was traveling further east, to Mumbai (or Bombay, if you prefer). I had the great fortune of having two great friends who invited me to the homes of their families during my trip. I visited Bee in Mumbai and Amita in Pune, all split across a single week!

My trip to India was eye-opening. For years, I’ve had a fascination with Eastern culture and philosophy, but it was something completely different to experience. Bee and her family took me to the Global Vipassana Pagoda, a personally fulfilling experience for me. We visited the Bandra–Worli Sea Link, Shree Mahalakshmi Temple, and several other places in Mumbai. I remember walking through the streets more than anything.

In Pune, Amita and her family showed me their favorite places. I had a chance to meet many other Fedora friends in Pune too. One of my favorite memories of Pune was a historic gurdwara. Amita took me and the others in our group to visit. For a moment, I finally got to see something I’ve only read about right in front of my eyes. The history and reverence in these places was absorbed into my mind.

I never expected an Indian visa stamp in my passport in 2017, yet it happened. I’m equally filled with wonder at how the circumstances unfolded as I am grateful this experience sneaked into my year.

Chicago: Urban experience 🔗

After my semester abroad and visiting India, I was whisked back to the United States, only to pack up once again for another new experience. From June to August, I lived in Chicago, Illinois to work an internship at Jump Trading. Chicago had a feeling of nostalgia for me because much of my father’s family has origins tracing back to Chicago. But I would find myself losing more of my heart in Chicago than I realized.

The internship 🔗

I worked with a fantastic team of people on exciting projects. Professionally, my time in Chicago was motivating and empowering. I was provided the opportunity to learn and also contribute. I walked in with a dreadful feeling of imposter syndrome and left feeling more confident in my own learning abilities. Docker, Kubernetes, and time-series data became a part of my daily work life, when I had little to no knowledge before then.

By the time my internship finished, I helped contribute to our team’s goal of standing up Kubernetes and contributing a few patches in Kubernetes projects like Minikube. I have great mentors to thank for not only direct, technical assistance but also motivational mentorship and empowerment too.

Everything else 🔗

There was more to Chicago than only the work too. Before long, I felt like a true Chicagoan, traveling the subways into the Loop, catching free concerts in Millennium Park, and indulging in the Chicago tradition of deep-dish pizza.

Unlike other cities I’ve visited, like New York City, Chicago felt easier to integrate into. The culture was notably “slower” than the fast-pace life of NYC, London, or Washington DC. I discovered Middle Eastern markets that became a regular part of my weekends, made friends with the baristas at a local coffeehouse, and had the privilege of hosting friends from three continents for short stays.

I left Chicago and was offered a new contract for the following summer in 2018. I’m looking forward to be back in June again.

Year of Fedora 🔗

2017 was full of time and effort spent in the Fedora community. In addition to the Diversity FAD, I was elected to the Fedora Council (on my third attempt), attended the annual Fedora contributor conference, Flock, and also narrowed my scope for contributions.

When I began contributing to Fedora, I was contributing to many things. Marketing, community operations, Fedora Badges, Fedora Magazine, Ambassadors, Games SIG, Join SIG, the Diversity Team, and maybe a few more things. After a while, I realized my contributions carried great width but poor depth. In 2017, I “reconfigured” my time in Fedora to focus in on the areas where I felt my time yielded the highest impact. This is Fedora CommOps and the Diversity Team.

I resigned as Fedora Magazine editor-in-chief and also formally stepped down from other teams. It made me sad, but I knew it was the right decision for me. I’m happy to spend more time working in fewer projects at a greater depth and focus than I had before.

Flock 2017 🔗

Flock, Fedora’s annual contributor conference, was held from Aug. 29 to Sep. 1 in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Every year, Flock is an empowering experience for me because of the face-time I get with the people I spend much of my year working with remotely. This year was no different, and many new faces were mixed in with the old ones.

The highlights for me were in three forms: the CommOps session, the Diversity Team session, and the Fedora Magazine session. Together with Sachin Kamath, we led the CommOps session. You can read more about our session here:

https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/metrics-docs-flock-2017/

The Diversity Team and Magazine sessions were also valuable for both teams to get feedback from the rest of the community. In the Diversity Team session, we had many active participants outside of our team that reminded us the importance of narrowing our focus for higher impact. I also attended other interesting sessions held by the community, like the future of fedmsg by Jeremy Cline.

CommOps FAD 🔗

Towards the end of 2017, I worked together with our team in CommOps to organize our own team sprint, or FAD, in 2018. We successfully planned the event and organized it in Brno, Czechia, similar to last year’s Diversity FAD.

More details on this will be found in its own event report!

ListenBrainz indie study 🔗

In my fall semester of 2017, I took on an independent study to further explore the ListenBrainz project. ListenBrainz is an open source social platform to document the music you listen to over time. If you’re familiar with Last.fm or Libre.fm, it’s a similar concept, but the focus is more on the data than the social features. ListenBrainz is supported by the MetaBrainz Foundation, also the guiding body for the more well-known MusicBrainz project.

In my independent study, I had a chance to contribute documentation and community tools (like issue / PR templates), as well as explore how the project gathers and builds metrics. I didn’t make my original milestone of major code contributions to the project, but I better understood the community and tried to help in the areas of low coverage, like documentation.

The experience was insightful for me and provided me an excuse to work on something that I am genuinely passionate about. Music is a powerful part of human culture, and the MetaBrainz Foundation takes a serious approach to documenting music, especially in a technical sense. ListenBrainz represents an opportunity for us to better explore and understand ourselves through our music listening habits. I hope someday that ListenBrainz will be a platform for data journalism and research about music. That’s my dream.

Opensource.com community moderator 🔗

At the beginning of 2017, I was brought on board as an Opensource.com community moderator. Together with other community moderators and site staff, I help contribute new content and source new writers to the site. My invitation to the community moderator team came shortly after the announcement that I received the 2017 People’s Choice Award. When Rikki Endsley invited me to the team, it felt like a natural alignment to my passion for storytelling.

All Things Open 2017 🔗

I was invited to All Things Open, an annual open source conference in Raleigh, by the Opensource.com team. The day before the conference, I met the rest of the team and other community moderators at the Red Hat HQ in Raleigh. We spent the day locked into a room together to hash out plans and goals for the next year. It was a productive opportunity for the team to work together and also a great opportunity to meet the other members of the community.

Some of my best takeaways from this experience were catching coffee with other community moderators, meeting Jim Whitehurst to talk about Opensource.com, and giving my talk, What open source and J.K. Rowling have in common, for the final time.

I hope I have the opportunity to go again next year to meet the awesome team behind Opensource.com. (If you haven’t considered before, come and write for us too!)

Happiness Packet Challenge 🔗

Another unusual milestone for my 2017 was the first rendition of the Happiness Packet Challenge. I was introduced to the Happiness Packets website in 2016. Happiness Packets are an easy way to say thank you to someone who has had a positive impact on you. I came up with a challenge to my friends and network to write one Happiness Packet a day, every day, for a week.

I followed up with the team behind the project to evaluate the impact of this idea, and I was pleasantly surprised. Here’s the number of messages sent for the two weeks prior to the Happiness Packet Challenge, followed by the week of the challenge:

• Week starting 2017-03-27: 2 sent
• Week starting 2017-04-03: 35 sent
• Week starting 2017-04-10 (challenge week): 72 sent

You can read more about the challenge in my original blog post. Keep an eye out for it again in 2018.

https://jwfblog.wpenginepowered.com/2017/04/happiness-packets-challenge/

Living openly 🔗

Earlier in this post, I alluded to how I felt like I began to find myself when I was abroad. My study abroad experience was the beginning of a longer process that leads into present day.

In April, I went public with my depression, both to help take a weight off my shoulder and to be a voice for others who are afraid to speak up. I was always concerned of the reaction from publishing something like that, but I was met with nothing but loving-kindness from friends and strangers. It gave me new confidence to live more openly and wear my values in the open.

The story continued in October, when I decided to delete my Facebook and Instagram accounts.

https://medium.com/@jflory7/cut-the-plug-deleting-facebook-and-instagram-6cbe7c86d9c9

I considered this for a couple of years before, but I pulled the trigger in October. Like many others, it felt almost too much of a task to disconnect myself from this huge network of people and friends. But the negative impacts of it were draining me and trapping me. Since I deleted my accounts, I’ve noticed a positive impact in overall levels of happiness and awareness. However, I don’t think the social media accounts alone are the reason for this.

In the near future, I hope to do a follow-up post to my decision to cut away from the Facebook and Instagram machines. Keep an eye out for more.

2018 🔗

It’s already February in 2018 when I finished this post. This year, I thought it would be the year when I get the post out closer to the new year, but somehow I always slip. In either case, it gives me a chance to take in some of the new opportunities and excitement of the new year before reflecting and looking back.

This year, I’m working an internship with UNICEF to help lead on open source community engagement and supporting the non-technical areas of their MagicBox platform. In the one month I’ve been doing this, I feel like I have tens of articles I could write about, but the experience is still maturing for me.

I also have another round in Chicago to look forward to over the summer. I’ll get to work with the same team as last year on similar projects, and I’m looking forward to going back.

As for the rest, who knows what’s to come? So many things that made 2017 what it was were the things I didn’t expect. The surprises in life are the salt to the regiment of daily life, and add flavor and spice in unexpected ways. I have no idea what my 2018 Year in Review will look like, and that’s okay. I’m looking forward to seeing what will make it in.

Thank you 🔗

Above all, every year, I think back on the people who positively impacted my life and contributed to the “flavor” of my year. A close friend reminded me recently that we all stand on the shoulders of giants. And isn’t it true? We all have our great mentors, great friends, and unexpected sages that help us find our own footing on this great path of life. We become ourselves from the various pieces impacted on us by others.

I’m thankful for all of the people who have made my year into the experience it was. The list is too long to write and I fear I would leave someone out – even significant impacts were made by people who had a short-term role in this last year.

A long time ago, my open source experience was jump-started by someone who did something kind and exceptional for me. It was a continuing trend since that moment. My only aspiration is to pay forward the good will that so many have bestowed unto me.

Thanks for making it this far down, and I hope to see you in 2018. Or who knows – maybe it will just be me reading this far down for next year, when I go to write my next year in review. Hi future me!

Open source software has come a long way since the turn of the century. Each year, more and more people are embracing open source technology and development models. Not just people, though ­– corporations and governments are exploring open source solutions too. From the White House to the Italian army, open source is appearing more frequently in the public sector. But perhaps the newest addition to the list is the municipality of Tirana, Albania.

On June 11th, the local government in the municipality of Tirana migrated their private cloud to Nextcloud, an open source cloud and office productivity suite. The decision to move to an integrated cloud / office suite came after internal discussion about security and performance. Because Nextcloud is entirely open source, it stood out as a powerful option for the municipality to consider.

Why switch to Nextcloud? 🔗

The municipality was looking for ways to optimize on costs without sacrificing security. Many people deeply familiar with open source are already aware of the security benefits of using open source software. Instead of relying on a private firm to assure the code is secure, open source software benefits from letting anyone (or paying someone else) to audit the code, find flaws, and submit bugs or patches to get them fixed. This was something Ermir Puka and other members of the IT team in Tirana considered when choosing a cloud solution for the 600 employees of the municipality.

“The IT directory at the municipality of Tirana thought the movement to Nextcloud, which is an open source platform, gives us flexibility since we won’t be dependent from providers who offer proprietary solutions. We can also develop it ourself, according to our needs, if we have the staff with the necessary qualifications to do such a thing,” Puka said.

Nextcloud also stood out not only for its use as a file sharing tool, but also the other features that make it helpful as an office productivity suite. With Nextcloud, you can edit documents simultaneously with Collabora Online, share calendars with co-workers, use an intranet messaging system, and use it on your phone too. A large selection of open source apps are available to add to an Nextcloud installation.

According to European Commission Joinup, Tirana is one of the first municipalities in southeastern Europe implementing open source technology in the public sector. This continues the municipality’s growing interest in open source, following the recent announcement of their open data portal (see it at opendata.tirana.al) and decision to collaborate with the local open source community by contributing GIS data to OpenStreetMaps. “We also hope to give a good example in the region and maybe other municipalities can follow our example,” Puka added. This further shows the municipality’s dedication to saving money on software licenses, protecting user privacy, and innovating by using open source technology.

About Tirana 🔗

Tirana is located in Albania, in southeastern Europe, on the Mediterranean Sea just above Greece. The open source community in Tirana is growing each year. This is in part to the Open Labs Albania community in the city. Open Labs Albania is a not-for-profit hackerspace that promotes free and open source technologies, open data, open technological standards, and online privacy. You can read more about them in their manifesto.

This continues a trend of exciting news for open source in the region. Earlier this year, the first-ever overnight hackathon for the UN Sustainable Development Goals happened in March, with an emphasis on sustainable projects with open source licenses. They also host Linux Weekend, an annual mini-conference to help on-board students and interested technologists to Linux and open source. However, their most well-known event is Open Source Conference Albania (OSCAL), an annual conference gathering open source developers and community members from across the world. Together with the municipality, Open Labs has helped provide advice and support for some of the municipality’s research into using open source software.

Get in touch 🔗

If you’re interested in learning more or sharing your thoughts, you can view the public announcement on the European Commission website or visit the thread on the Open Labs forums.

The team consists of four people: Elio Qoshi, Redon Skikuli, Giannis Konstantinidis, and Anxhelo Lushka. Ura Design started from an idea. The team believed that many open source projects are full of capabilities and features, but their design can make it difficult for users to effectively use the software. This could be through user experience, branding, or accessibility. And the goal? To help bring these better design principles to open source projects at little to no cost. “In open source, there are amazing projects that are poorly communicated with the outside world. By communication, we mean visual communications, branding, even marketing. That is nonexistent for many reasons. There is a connection between communicating your project well and also getting contributors or users on board,” says Skikuli.

The Ura Design team helps open source projects improve their design so they can focus on great code.

How it works 🔗

Together, the four of them work with open source project owners to help them bring better design elements to their projects. The principles of ethical design are part of the goals and values of the project.

Some of their past projects include Mozilla, the Tor Project, Free Software Foundation Europe, Glucosio, and more. The team takes contract work with companies or communities with a budget, but for projects with less financial support, they’ll even do the work free. This is in part supported by their Patreon page, where anyone can subscribe or see updates from Ura Design.

Their Patreon page is part of the reason Ura Design is able to take on some projects at no cost. “Since there are working hours involved, we are asking for people to make small contributions to help us pay living costs, so we work for small projects who apply for free or minimal design support from us. This is our way of supporting some open source initiatives that we think are worth it,” says Skikuli. Right now, they have 22 backers to the project, which lets them cover most infrastructure costs. Some of the goals for the team now is to expand into photography to release work into the public domain.

Past projects 🔗

Ura Design has worked with many open source projects already. Some of their work covers projects at Mozilla, the Tor Project, Glucosio, GalliumOS, Open Labs Hackerspace, and more. You can see the full list of past works on their website.

Mozilla 🔗

For Mozilla, Qoshi had an existing relationship with Mozilla as a contributor. He was asked to help design and capture this connection inside of the localization community for Mozilla. The final design focused on two lions, one big and one small, looking at each other. “It was nice effort for contributors who have been mentoring others to get recognized for their contributions. Good design breaks off a conversation even for a project like this,” Qoshi said.

The Tor Project 🔗

Working with the Tor Project was a unique experience for Ura Design. The Tor Project was looking at rebranding the entire project. The end goal was to try to improve the accessibility of the project by incorporating good design elements.

Together with the Tor Project leadership, Ura Design helped lead the rebranding of the project. This included graphical assets, logos, and corporate identity. Today, you can see the new branding featured across Tor’s web presence online. There are still plans to continue to roll these changes out over the coming year.

Logobridge 🔗

The newest project from the team is Logobridge. From unused work or small samples, Ura Design releases several new logos into the public domain each month. People are encouraged to use them in their projects, for icons, for placeholders, or anything they want. There’s no restrictions on how the logos can be used. Anyone can download the source SVG files to use in vector imaging software, like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape.

Most of the logos designed through Logobridge are supported by monthly subscribers to Ura Design. It was from this that they decided to start Logobridge. You can see all of the logos they have on their website.

Got projects? 🔗

Ura Design is still relatively new, but they hope to continue impacting open source projects through their work. To learn more about Ura Design, you can visit their website or read their blog. Additionally, you can follow them on Facebook or Twitter for other news and updates from the team. If you want to support their work, you can visit their Patreon page. And if you’re an open source project? The Ura Design team encourages you to get in touch!

If you’re outside of the Mediterranean region, the Open Labs Hackerspace might be one of the hidden secrets of the region that you never knew existed. Free software and open principles build the community’s foundation. In their hackerspace, they support various open source projects with time, energy, and activism. Members work on various open source projects, ranging from Fedora, Mozilla, Nextcloud, Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, and more. But the open source way goes beyond the software. The hierarchy of this Albanian non-profit organization is flat and open too. The hackerspace places a strong emphasis on empowering others to have a voice and to take part in the governance. No question is ever dumb, and anyone who wants to learn is able to find someone who will help guide them in the right direction. The combined effect of open software and open culture has helped Open Labs grow over the past five years.

Why Open Labs? 🔗

There are many hackerspaces in the world, but why does Open Labs mean so much to me? They love free and open source software and believe in the open source way… sure. That’s definitely part of it. But beyond the mission, beyond the activities, Open Labs fosters an inclusive and empowering culture. This culture has the effective of motivating others to understand that their voice matters and that they can have an impact on something far bigger than themselves. The hackerspace helps give young people in Tirana a platform to stand up and share their ideas. But beyond that, it provides them with the resources and community to help turn the ideas into reality.

So, what is the secret? Simply… the people.

Everything that the community here does, they take their unique passion and energy into those tasks. They invest their own personal resources into building solutions to answer complicated problems, inside and outside of Albania. Some of their work is best demonstrated in events that happened earlier this year. In March, Open Labs helped coordinate the first-ever 48 hour hackathon for United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Later in March, they organized Linux Weekend, an introductory event to help introduce Linux to students. This was done by demonstrating what can be done with Linux and open source and then connecting students to professionals from Tirana and abroad. The organic energy that came from these events is almost immeasurable. Even an event report is hard to convey how inspiring that energy was.

This past weekend, from May 13-14, 2017, the community organized the fourth edition of the annual Open Source Conference Albania (OSCAL) in Tirana. This is the largest open source event in Albania and one of the most notable in southeast Europe. No event report for this yet, but you can expect one soon.

Why part of my heart is at Open Labs 🔗

Whenever I visit Albania and visit Open Labs, I learn something new. There’s many different types of things I learn. Sometimes it’s something about an open source project or community. Other times, I learn about events and opportunities happening in the local Tirana area for open source. And then other times, I gain unique insight towards some of the unique challenges and problems that citizens face here. Every time I visit, my perspective is always broadened in a way that I wouldn’t be able to normally find. It’s exhilarating.

I am privileged and honored to be an official member of this community. However, I am mostly an observer in my role. The passion and interest are at the heart of the hackerspace. The members from Tirana have invested so much of themselves into this community, its mission, and its values. From reading, visiting, and talking with the people involved with Open Labs, you see many of their hearts dedicated to what they’re doing. And when you see someone else who invests their heart into something, it’s challenging to not lend some of your own too.

And in today’s world, where the hearts of many people close with borders and the world shifts towards coldness, the warmth that radiates from Open Labs is refreshing, inspiring, and powerful.

Discover Open Labs 🔗

You can learn more about the Open Labs Hackerspace on their website. Additionally, you can also follow them along on Facebook and Twitter to see what they’re up to. You can also see their Discourse forums to say hello and take part in any discussion too.

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!

The local hackerspace in Tirana, Albania might be small, but they make up for size in spirit. During the weekend of 18-19 March 2017, the Open Labs Hackerspace organized the first-ever 48 hour “open source” hackathon focused on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The UN Sustainable Development Goals are seventeen objectives identified by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to build a better world, starting in our own communities. Some of the goals include quality education, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, clean energy, and more. During the course of the hackathon, participants selected a goal, broke into teams, and worked on projects to make real change in their own neighborhoods. In the spirit of open source, all projects are made available under free and open licenses.

Organizing the hackathon in Albania 🔗

The board members of Open Labs oversee most of its operations and help guide members in hosting events and keeping the hackerspace busy. The current board members are Redon Skikuli, Jona Azizaj, Elio Qoshi, Kristi Progri, and Anisa Kuci. However, they emphasize that it’s strongly a community-based organization. Board members invite others to take part in the organization’s governance.

Open Labs board members. Pictured left to right: Jona Azizaj, Anisa
Kuci, Kristi Progri, Redon Skikuli, Elio Qoshi. (Justin Wheeler, CC-BY-SA 4.0)

When the opportunity came to take part in this event, the board members felt it was a great opportunity to try something new. While hackathon events are popular and well-known in the United States and elsewhere, this was foreign territory for the community. “At first, we were nervous because this type of 48 hour event was new for Open Labs but also for Albania. But we wanted to use this as a chance to introduce the open source philosophy to new people and to show what we do and why,” said Azizaj. The organizers hoped to appeal to a wider audience than only active community members too.

The visiting representative from the United Nations meets participants
and helps work with them on brainstorming ideas. © Eduard Pagria, used with permission

Organizing the hackathon was a challenge since many of the core team members were traveling the week before the event. However, community members and UN representatives were more than willing to help with organizing the hackathon. This event also required a level of coordination that was uncommon for the normal type of event organized in Open Labs. “When planning, we were hoping to reach out to non-members of Open Labs too. This way, more people are exposed to open source and its culture. This lets people who want to make change, but don’t know how, to understand what is available to help them,” said Skikuli. When the Friday before the event arrived, the team was ready for a weekend of open source, civic hacking.

On Saturday morning, approximately 30 people were present for the event kick-off. Open Labs members and United Nations representatives introduced the hackathon and the themes for attendees to focus on during the weekend. Attendees were a diverse group of people as well: there was a balance between technical and non-technical people, and the gender ratio was almost evenly split between males and females.

Working on projects 🔗

One participant, Edlina, worked with Augest to develop an application
that creates a feedback loop with students and teachers to NGOs and
governments to understand problems in schools and find ways to work
together without duplicating work. © Eduard Pagria, used with permission

The Open Labs organizers placed emphasis in networking between participants at the beginning. The event started with introductions and each participant made a note of whether they were a technical or non-technical contributor. After this, they wrote their names on sticky notes along with their preferred goals to stick on the wall. Participants were paired up with someone with a different background but with a mutual interest in a specific goal. “We separated participants into two groups: technical and non-technical. Our idea was the two sides would complement each other to share experiences to build a strong team,” said Azizaj. After the teams were formed, they began brainstorming and working on their projects. Mentors were available to offer support to participants and to introduce them to open source tools to help them prototype their projects.

World of Sounds 🔗

Silva Arapi, one participant, worked with her team on their project
“World of Sounds”. (Justin Wheeler, CC-BY-SA 4.0)

One participant, Silva Arapi, worked with teammates Dritan Sakuta, Hulemita Leka, Kristi Leka, and Klajdi Qehaja to address reduced inequalities. Their team project is called “World of Sounds”.  The application is a resource for parents of children with hearing or speaking disabilities. “World of Sounds is a platform to understand early on to improve education of parents and accessibility for children. This is very helpful for rural parts [of Albania],” Arapi explained.

She has been involved with the Open Labs community for almost a year and a half. It was her first hackathon but she also hadn’t seen an event like this in Albania before. “It was a new experience and something different. We get something done in 48 hours to have a social impact – why not participate?” Arapi balances her time leading the NextCloud efforts in Tirana while working towards her master’s degree in Information Security. She hopes to take part in another event at Open Labs like this again in the future.

Tackling gender equality in Albania 🔗

Another Open Labs community member came with an idea and a friend to try thinking through a specific issue she had seen in her community. Nafie Shehu is an Information Communication Technology student and has been involved with Open Labs for the past seven months. With her, she brought her friend Afrim Kamberi to help, for his first visit to Open Labs and an open source event in Tirana.

Shehu’s selected goal was gender equality combined with an experience of one of her friends. In some rural areas and villages in Albania, women have a more difficult time maintaining their rights. They rarely have financial independence, and as a result, this sometimes leads them to live a life they might not want. Sometimes, women are obligated into a non-consensual marriage and aren’t in a place to defend what they want for themselves. Her friend was in this situation and divorced later, but she didn’t know where to go after and had little resources of her own. Nafie heard about this story and it deeply affected her. She hoped to brainstorm ideas on how to improve this problem.

After research and looking at other solutions, she discovered similar attempts had been started to solve this problems. However, for various reasons, they were ineffective and weren’t thorough solutions to the problems. While this changed her own project development, she finished the hackathon determined to find ways to improve on what was already there and continue this even after the weekend ended.

Closing the hackathon 🔗

Towards the end of Sunday, participants put the last touches onto their projects. The deliverable product was prepared and all participants organized a short presentation to demo their project. “In the end, you get a real product, not just talking. It’s a real product that has an impact,” Progri explained. All of the various teams pitched their projects to the Open Labs community and to representatives from the United Nations.

Anxhelo Lushka helps two participants after midnight to help work
through some problems in their project. (Justin Wheeler, CC-BY-SA 4.0)

In the project presentations, teams were given specific criteria to present in the project.

1. Summary or main idea of the project
2. Sustainability of the project for implementation beyond the weekend
3. Recommendations for funding the project / creating a budget to carry it out
4. Reasons why they would support this if it wasn’t their own project

After the presentations, teams were given the option to send their information and projects to the UNDP via Open Labs. The UNDP will select one project and team to bring to the United Nations office in New York City to propose their project and seek support to develop it further.

That’s a wrap! 🔗

After a closing ceremonies and words of encouragement from Skikuli, the hackathon came to an end. Both participants and organizers felt it ended on a high note. “I love coming to these events to learn new things, meet new people, and they’re cool!” Arapi said. Additionally, the organizers hoped that participants left with valuable knowledge and resources that would go beyond this weekend. “We hope people understand the role open source had in this event and understand why the philosophy is so important,” Qoshi explained. “Some people might think the projects are the main part, but networking with people from different backgrounds goes beyond the event. These connections support sustainability for people working together. We hope these projects continue beyond this event.”

The presence of open source software and its philosophy was present throughout the event. Stickers and swag from various open source projects was available for participants to take. This included stickers from Mozilla, Fedora, LibreOffice, NextCloud, and more. “We hope attendees enjoyed the experience and had fun meeting new people. Later on, when they leave Open Labs and work on their own projects, we hope they will remember open source tools to build their work and create FOSS solutions,” said Azizaj.

What’s next for Open Labs? 🔗

This was a milestone event for the Open Labs community, but they have more on the horizon after the weekend of this event. Organizers, volunteers, and members are putting together the first Linux Weekend in Tirana from 25-26 March. This is a traditional barcamp-like model with talks and workshops by several local and international speakers. However, there are a couple of goals ahead that the team hopes to begin working at.

One of them is a book in time for the hackerspace’s fifth anniversary. The book would be an “open source handbook” in the Albanian language. Not only would it have the history of Open Labs, but it would introduce various open source projects and connect readers to resources so they could have an impact on a project. Additionally, the team is looking at policy in their government as a next step. Qoshi had a great deal to say on this: “It feels like we’re reaching critical mass and gaining momentum to influence local policy in Albania. We want to push for open policies and government, especially with the coming elections in June. This is a great opportunity to let people know our stances on policies. Pushing FOSS only in our space can’t be an insider secret—we need conversations with people coming from different views if we want change.”

You can learn more about the hackerspace online at their website.

About Open Labs 🔗

Open Labs Albania is a non-profit organization and community based out of Tirana, Albania. Open Labs focuses on freedom, transparency, and decentralization to empower the community. They support and contribute to a variety of open source projects to tackle local problems. Sometimes, this even includes regional and international issues. Each year, the Open Labs team organizes their annual conference, OSCAL (Open Source Conference Albania). Hundreds of people from across Europe gather to “promote software freedom, open source software, free culture and open knowledge”. In 2016, over 50% of attendees and 70% of organizers were women, numbers unheard of anywhere else in the world.

The story of Open Labs in Albania is a growing but powerful story of people from a developing country working together to build real solutions to real problems. The story of their movement is motivating, insightful, and worth sharing.

About FOSS Wave 🔗

FOSS Wave is a group of open source developers and students dedicated to connecting other students into open source communities. They help develop students’ professional skills for the industry. The mentors have a “Boot Up” program where interested students reach out for a mentor. Mentors offer direct support to students on getting started. Program organizers also attend various universities to deliver workshops and talks about open source technology. Many mentors are female and speak about diversity in open source communities and give advice for women who want to get involved.

https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/foss-wave-women-in-technology-part-2/

https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/foss-wave-fedora-bangalore-india/

https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/foss-wave-bangalore-uvce/

Virtual meetup 🔗

Over the next month, we hope to combat time zones (six hours in Europe and nine and a half with India) to find mutual times that work well for both communities. These are two separate virtual meetup opportunities, one with WiC and Open Labs, and another with WiC and FOSS Wave. We are trying to collect responses from members of both communities of when they would be available to take part in the meetup.

Are you a member of WiC, Open Labs, or FOSS Wave? Please make sure you fill in your available times in either poll so we can select a date soon!

• WiC + Open Labs meetup time poll
• WiC + FOSS Wave meetup time poll

I’m looking forward to these awesome communities meeting, sharing experiences, and learning about what other groups of students, women, and other great role models in tech are working on across the world. Hope to see you there too!