Hello Fedora friends! This is a summary of the fortnightly meeting of the Fedora Mindshare Committee, held on Thursday, December 11, 2025. The Fedora Mindshare Committee is the governance body that oversees the user outreach, marketing, and community operations side of the Fedora Project. We help connect different community teams and ensure we are working together effectively.
In this week’s meeting, we discussed the following topics:
Planning for a new contributor recognition “swag pack” initiative (Ticket #88).
Finalizing charter changes regarding Digital Ambassadorship (Ticket #89).
Note: AI (Google Gemini) was used to summarize the HTML log of the public meeting. I reviewed and corrected the AI-generated output before posting.
DevConf.in (Ticket #91): It was confirmed that @mattdm, @jnsamyak, and Shounak Dey will be attending DevConf India. Additionally, @t0xic0der will be running the Fedora booth and giving a talk.
Matrix Upgrade: The Fedora Matrix homeserver underwent a major upgrade this week. Users on mobile devices can now utilize the Element X client for improved performance.
Infrastructure: A data center migration is ongoing. While service impact should be limited, more details can be found in the Infrastructure planning ticket.
Upcoming Budgets: Budget proposals for FOSDEM 2026 from @ffmancera and @dmellado, and SCaLE 23x from @aacosta and @lajuggler are expected soon. The Committee aims to vote on these before the end of the year.
#88: Define the remit of Recognition Service in Mindshare
The committee discussed the future of tangible giveaways and recognition for community members.
@t0xic0der proposed a concept for a “swag pack” to be distributed once per release cycle to a group of 20-25 contributors.
There was discussion regarding the selection criteria. @gwmngilfen suggested using data-driven metrics to identify contributors who have increased their activity levels, while @jflory7 suggested also considering Fedora “event owners” who may not generate as much code/ticket data but put in significant work.
The group agreed to aim for a “Version 1” proposal that suggests criteria for a limited-edition swag campaign for the first half of 2026 (covering the F44 release cycle or Q1/Q2 events).
Action Items
@t0xic0der and @gwmngilfen to add a new comment to Ticket #88 before the end of 2025 with the “Version 1” proposal on possible recognition criteria.
#89: Define Digital Ambassadorship in Mindshare responsibilities
@ekidney presented updates to the Mindshare Committee charter regarding the Digital Ambassadorship role.
A Merge Request is open with the changes discussed in previous meetings. The committee reviewed the content and found it to be in good shape, with only minor AsciiDoc formatting fixes needed.
Future work for 2026 was identified, including consolidating Marketing and Mindshare documentation, defining a vetting process for regional social media accounts, and creating issue templates on Forgejo for these requests.
The goal is to merge the current charter changes in @ekidney’s Merge Request by Friday, December 12.
Next Steps
Merge the documentation updates by end of day Friday.
@ekidney to comment on Ticket #89 with the identified ideas for 2026 (doc consolidation, vetting processes) to ensure a clear plan of action returning in January.
Open Floor
This was the final Mindshare Committee meeting of 2025.
The team wished everyone a restful holiday season and a happy New Year, looking forward to continuing work in 2026.
In the summer, I participated in staffing a Fedora booth at FrosCon in Germany—admittedly for the first time systematically, so I had no previous experience. The first thing I noticed was that we had lots of stickers, but virtually nothing that could provide substantial information about Fedora. There were no brochures or leaflets, nor was there an ongoing online demo to demonstrate Fedora’s capabilities.
However, I had several interested parties who asked what was special about Fedora compared to other distributions and how Fedora works. I could only casually tell them something, but I couldn’t give anything away as a reminder.
Wouldn’t it make sense to improve this for the coming year?
Hey @ekidney and @joseph, check this feedback out! I think this is a great idea to fits into the Digital Ambassadorship part of the Mindshare Committee charter. While the context Peter mentions is not actually digital, it could be both digital and in-person. Having consistent brochures or graphics we could use to promote things like how Fedora works, what our community looks like, and how to get involved could be very useful.
I want your feedback as our owners of Digital Ambassadorship in Mindshare Committee about how we could do this better in 2026. It feels like something that lines up with our goals in this Mindshare Committee term.
Thank you for the feedback! It’s important we get feedback like this from people who run the booth so we can find ways to improve the overall experience.
I’m in the middle of prep for FOSDEM swag next year so this is top of mind. We are looking at having a swag survey to get some data on what swag people want to see, but I think having booth staff fill out that survey too would be valuable, and we can have those answers carry more weight bc they are actually interacting with potential users and contributors.
I do recall we used to hand out these flyers that explained how we are connected to CENTOS, EPEL and RHEL. Maybe that could be something we bring back? We are also creating some additional things, including a flyer on how to get involved (or rather, building on one we found existed :D).
For the Digital Ambassadorship side, we’d be looking at gathering resources people can use on their accounts. We could adapt the flyers mentioned above into social media graphics and copy. In 2026 we are going to focus on the digital ambassadorship role more and with that we can brainstorm with the community on what resources would be useful.
I can adjust and update it if needed, or send you an SVG file.
And it would be really cool to have it in a postcard format, with picture on side and some explainer on the other side. May be an actual real postcard too.
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Upd: There is no RHEL on this picture. It can be added, but it might be triggering for FOSDEM folks, so I think it is better without it.
That is a nice picture indeed. Although someone might complain that centOS stream actually include more changes that what is described there.. which is true for some packages but not for others.
Anyway, I like this. We should put it on a screen or something in the booth.
I guess, when we talk about swag, we talk about something physical. Or at least, I have no idea what could a digital swak be. Or at least I have no idea what and how I could distribute a digital swak on our table at the Fedora booth. But maybe I’m just not up to date.
The leaflets on the relationship between Fedora, Red Hat, and CentOS are informative. However, based on my limited experience, few people who visit a booth at a trade show or conference are interested in this. What is particularly interesting for us, however, are those who only know Fedora from hearsay and want to know what Fedora is all about, how it feels, what it looks like, and what you can do with it. We still have a small, outdated brochure called “A Beginner’s Guide” from 2018, which was created by the ambassadors at the time. We need something like this in the Swaks box. And we need an online version of it to download on our homepage. And we need a 24/27-inch monitor where a demo can run clearly visible, e.g., installation with our new web UI that shows how easy and straightforward it is. The laptop(s) that are in the box can then be used for detailed questions or discussions.
I don’t have much experience with Fedora booths, but I do have a lot of experience with our own software and science projects. And I think the goal and the means are not much different with Fedora.
Which brings me to the question of what our mission statement and action plan for these activities is. Where can I find that?
Following up on one of the assigned action items for myself, the outcome can be found in this new issue ticket[1]. I have left a followup comment[2] under the existing issue ticket, and it is now awaiting closure.
