This year marks the project’s 20 year anniversary, something that surprised me when I was doing some research about it, considering that it’s something I didn’t see being discussed at all. Maybe I missed something
So, as part of the Marketing team, I come here to ask: is there something we should (and can, considering how close to the date[1] it is) do to celebrate?
I originally planned on opening an issue about it for the Marketing Team to brainstorm something, but I do believe this is something the community at large could and should help to both brainstorm and follow through.
The ideas brainstormed so far are:
A special Social Hour/Release Party-style online event;
Some sort of social media campaign that spreads through all of our official channels;
A dedicated Magazine post about the history of the project, similar to the 15th anniversary one, but this time focused on the development of the project since the original launch (maybe?);
Some kind of swag distribution (if possible);
A special episode of the Fedora Podcast centered around the history of the project;
Make available, for the asking, or for a nominal fee, a customized, collectable install DVD or thumb drive. Something commemorative with custom graphics that Fedora fans would like to hang on the wall near their favorite workstation.
Maybe a bunch of swag? Stickers, coasters, pens, lanyards, hats, t-shirts. Again, available for the asking or for a nominal fee to fund the Fedora project.
+1 on the idea! I think what you listed works. Social media posts, a commemorative birthday social that we promote more than we normally do (maybe multiple on the day of to account for different time zones), a Magazine article, and a podcast episode about it would all be good to round out the celebrations. They might not all happen on the anniversary, but if they can at least start soon after the anniversary then I think we’re good.
However, we also have to determine which date we use. As you pointed out in the Marketing matrix, September 22, 2003 and November 6, 2003 seem to be the two contenders. Which do we go with?
Ooh, haven’t thought of that, great idea, we could do an episode on the history of the project with one of the old-timers
My personal pick is November 6, because it was the date we celebrated the 15 year anniversary and it gives us more time to plan something and possibly more time to prepare swag, if we manage to do something related to it.
I’d love to hear the opinion of the people that are responsible for the merch if it is viable, as I would absolutely love that, but I also believe the date is too close to arrange something.
We aren’t talking about it enough! This is likely on both me and @mattdm for not banging the drum enough, but this is definitely something the Marketing Team could help us do better.
I suggest 6 November as the first release of Fedora Core 1. This was the anniversary date we also used for the Fedora Appreciation Week event in 2018 too.
I will comment briefly on each of these ideas with my thoughts.
I think all of these things are great ideas, but they are great ideas that I would not personally be able to spend much time on. That said, I could support any of these things on the social media channels that I have access to (mostly Twitter and LinkedIn right now).
I suspect @mattdm might enjoy something like this.
Yes. I would love to do special swag for the 20th anniversary. Realistically, I think we have capacity and budget to come up with one, maybe two, unique items. I think it would be good to have one type of swag that is for everyone, and another type of swag that is focused more on our contributor community. The universal swag item could be sent far and wide, but the contributor swag might be something more significant, even if it were harder to ship[1].
Where I could use help on this one is the creative brainstorming on what we want to produce. There is a creative limitation that something that we could produce in bulk would be easier than an extremely custom item. There might be some room to try something very different, but the ideas around custom DVDs or USB keys that are pre-imaged with an older Fedora ISO would likely be too difficult to turnaround on the timeline we need.
I was just talking with @jonatoni about this today, and we were thinking to revive this again for the 20th anniversary year, since we did it for the 15th anniversary. This conversation will likely unfold in either commops-team or dei-team, but feedback and participation from Marketing Team members is surely appreciated.
You would not believe how hard it is to mail certain swag to certain countries. ↩︎
Colúr plushie or bust /s (but no really, I’d really love to have one)
A thing that I believe was tried before but didn’t work 100% well (and I’m still salty that I never got mine) is a Fedora pin. Maybe we could try a custom 20 year anniversary design that could be mass produced?
I’d love to see this discussion spreading further, maybe we have the time to do something with plenty of planning after all.
Hypothetically, this would be easy although I know that some countries have issues with enamel pins. But I think we could distribute them to most countries. What should the pin look like or have on it, other than the Fedora logo and maybe a “20” somewhere?
I was looking for a picture of the Open Source Initiative’s 20th anniversary sticker from 2018, but apparently there are no photographs of this sticker on the Internet. I have one at home that if I remember, I will share a photo. But it was nice because it incorporated the OSI logo in the “0” of the “20”. It was a clever design for a special anniversary run.
I think our resident expert on Fedora wallpapers is @madelinepeck. She could probably comment on the viability of a special wallpaper in F39 celebrating our 20th anniversary. She already made some cool social media headers to celebrate the anniversary.
I second the podcast episode. We actually have a regularly scheduled show on Nov 7th. I was thinking we use that episode to talk a bit about Fedora history.
This conversation will likely unfold in either 
/s (but no really, I’d really love to have one)