Growing London meetups into a UK-wide SIG?

[jflory7 (Justin W. Wheeler (JWW))]

Continuing the discussion from 2nd Local London Meetup…

I am forking this into a discussion-focused thread so we can keep the other thread focused on logistics for a London meetup. I quoted several replies here to kick off the conversation.

@hankuoffroad

Ultimately, I’m looking for golden answers on how to retain contributors with you, passionate people, who showed an interest in this forum and took part in the first meetup.

I don’t know if there is truly a golden answer, but I think the important thing to sustain the effort of organizing meetups is to be consistent in showing up and having a space. Ben Cotton wrote about the flywheel theory of community engagement, and I think that could be valuable here too.

@hankuoffroad

In discourse, we can make preemptive questions for brainstorming in the meetings next time:

• What impact do we want in the Fedora community with the UK Meetup?
• What do you individually want to get out of this meetup?

These are great initial questions for an early-stage meetup group. It would be valuable to understand the motivations and interests of the people who show up. What inspired them to show up? What are their hopes and wishes for the meetup? All good things to know, because then you can lean into the things more that the group is interested in.

@hankuoffroad

Promotion shouldn’t be frowned upon. The FOSS meetup takes the form of an advocate group of some sort. Once the group is big enough, it will grow to ambassadors. We are part of it, aren’t we?

I agree that promoting things in Fedora and the open source community should be encouraged. Meetups are great because attendees make new connections, strengthen old ones, and exchange ideas and perspectives. Sometimes people will want to work on different things too. This is why an inventory of interests and wishes from who is attending so far will be helpful to inform future goals.

@py0xc3

But in any case, I think we should not merge a local London meetup and a potential UK SIG. So I suggest to open a new topic for that?

As I am reading through this thread, it appears to me that @py0xc3 introduced this new idea of a UK SIG. So, I kicked off this new topic, here we are! I think there is room for some kind of formal structure around UK contributors to exist.

@py0xc3

I do not know if geographic SIGs already exist, but they inevitably would overlap with functional SIGs, and overlaps inevitably lead to interaction and outreach.

Well… this is basically what Ambassadors was all about in its heyday! When people thought about Fedora in their local regions, Ambassadors was the answer. Unfortunately this has languished in the past couple of years. But just because it is not working well today does not mean that it could not be improved, fixed, and iterated on.

@py0xc3

However, I like the idea to also make a “small conference”-like event at some point, which might indeed be complemented by hybrid formats.

As a case point, this is exactly something a regional Ambassador group would help with. @smittix was telling me the other day about stories from the old days with the UK Ambassador group. In 2024, it might be interesting to explore what a local Fedora Release Party could look like. I also have budget available for these events.

@hankuoffroad

I must have caused a confusion due to Ambassador, which is a regional entity and has governance structure under Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee.

A minor correction, but the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAmSCo) was retired in 2018 and replaced by the Mindshare Committee.

@hankuoffroad

Maybe, we could wait to hear from long-term contributors about their wisdom and how other regions organize a local meetup and what models work best so far.

I don’t know if this helps much, I hope it helps to shape this conversation a little more? We can also share this topic around with other Fedora folks in the UK to see and weigh in if they have thoughts.

[smittix (James Smith)]

This is great Justin and it’s taken me a while to get to it so apologies. I think we’re getting some really good traction with the UK folks and the channel attracting a lot more. I know there are also a lot out there that do not know that the matrix channel exists. I think we should make some more effort to get people together virtually and then really work on the IRL stuff. London meets are great for those that can make it however I’m in the north and cannot always get to London unless working down there. It would be great to see what kind of spread we have in the UK and what interest people have in getting more involved in the project and in what capacity. It would be great to get a virtual meet scheduled too.