Originally published at: Mindshare Interview: Akashdeep Dhar (t0xic0der) – Fedora Community Blog
This is a part of the Mindshare Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts today, Tuesday 20th May and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Monday, 2 June 2025.
Interview with Akashdeep Dhar
- FAS ID: t0xic0der, and I am known as
gridheadin most other platforms - Matrix Rooms:
- Fedora Forgejo Deployment
- CentOS Pagure -> GitLab Migration
- Fedora Join SIG
- Fedora Mentoring
- Fedora Apps
- Fedora Infrastructure Team
- Fedora Mindshare
- Fedora Council
Questions
What is your background in Fedora? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?
I started contributing to the Fedora Project about five years back, and then I slowly moved on to maintaining Fedora Websites and Apps, both as a volunteer engineer and an objective representative to the Fedora Council. I have dabbled with the mentorship endeavours of the Fedora Project community every now and then, taking on a bunch of mentees both during formalized mentoring programmes and structured infrastructure initiatives.
I have been organizing and participating in various events (virtual and in-person alike) where I represented the Fedora Project either with the presentations I deliver or with the conversations I have, e.g., Fedora Hatch, Fedora Mentor Summit, FOSDEM, CentOS Connect, DevConf.IN, etc. I author posts on Fedora Magazine, Fedora Community Blog, Fedora Discussions, and personal website every now and then on various topics.
I have also previously served in the Fedora Council as an elected representative and provided the research behind the Git Forge selection for the Fedora Project. Currently, I work on researching, developing, and maintaining applications and services for Fedora Infrastructure and CentOS Infrastructure, with a major focus on contributing in the open to ensure that other community members can participate meaningfully in the efforts.
Please elaborate on the personal “Why” which motivates you to be a candidate for Mindshare.
For several years now, my focus toward Fedora Project contributions has been around onboarding and retention of contributors by empowering them with access and support in subprojects and SIGs that they are interested in. As a software engineer by profession, I want to use my inclination to bridge the community outreach teams with engineering solutions like custom platforms, triaging workflows, dedicated tooling, etc.
I have witnessed the flame of multiple endeavours within the community dying out because of them not being able to enlist support from fellow members. The lack of awareness toward how members can contribute to the efforts hurts, as it ends up turning the venture very limited (both in scope as well as in impact), and the Mindshare Committee is the appropriate position to render correction to such situations with outreach.
Apart from that, I relate strongly with Mindshare Committee’s “boots on the ground” approach toward supporting various events, maintaining local communities, monitoring community health, and promoting strategic goals. That motivates me to give back to my Fedora Project friends by being instrumental in aligning our communication, getting onboarding right, ensuring sustainable relations, and enabling enthusiastic contributors.
How would you improve Mindshare Committee visibility and awareness in the Fedora community?
As a forward-thinking individual, I want to use my strengths in delegation toward conveying details about the endeavours within the Fedora Project community. The visibility toward the Mindshare Committee
would not only help fellow contributors to be in the know about what’s
on and about in the community but also for those endeavours to enlist deserving support for paving their way toward a successful fulfilment of objective.I plan to continue being a friendly face across various community channels for most (if not all) subprojects and SIGs that we have in the Fedora Project. Surveys and statistics are nice and all, but a lived-in experience with interacting regularly
with the teams is an incomparable approach toward understanding the
community health in the said subprojects and SIGs and parts that require
attention from the Mindshare Committee.Apart from the awareness within the community, I plan on keeping a
time schedule from my week to help handle the social media platforms to
cater toward the larger free and open source software populace. I want
to be able to play to my strengths of representing the Fedora Project in various events (virtual and in-person alike) to spread the word about the Fedora Project’s positive impact while onboarding folks at the same time.
What part of Fedora do you think needs the most attention from the Mindshare Committee during your term?
One of my major gripes about the Mindshare Committee was the fact that it was a reactive team and not a proactive one. Members of the committee were expected to express their thoughts on a certain initiative (not to be confused with a community initiative) taking place — and that, more or less, decided the extent of support that the Mindshare Committee could provide to contributing members of the said initiative.
Moving from a reflexive mindset to an assertive mindset in the Mindshare Committee interactions is a paradigm shift and would demand a greater deal of engagement from the elected members. Empowering Fedora Project friends around to collaborate responsibilities would not only help the situation by preventing potential burnouts but also help with the succession and continuance of leadership (remember, flywheel theory?).
With the revamp through from the previous year, I not only expect this change for the better — but rather I am willing to roll up my sleeves and establish an active participation of members in the initiative to actively report what support is needed, cater to those, and possibly bring those initiatives to the larger community. This aspect strengthens not only the folks involved but also other contributors on the fence.