Thoughts in response to FWD 2024 Community Blog interviews

Project Discussion
1

Fedora is known for being agile, innovative, and cutting edge. The FWD interviews I read are a great foundation, and with some adjustments they could better reflect that innovative spirit. We want these interviews to bring out the best in our contributors, and that requires flexibility. Good interviews are tailored, not templated.

The interview with Tosin Doreen is a great example of a missed opportunity; they mention a recent career change from chef to project manager, and I want to know more! Unfortunately, the rigid interview template doesn’t allow us to go down that avenue. How did Tosin go from professional chef to writing Fedora documentation? What is the intersection between the culinary arts and open source?

This would require additional time and preparation (which I would be willing to take on or lead); research the subject, formulate an initial list of questions, send those to the subject, revise in response to their feedback, build rapport, etc., but the result would be a richer and truer depiction of our contributors as whole human beings who happen to be Fedora contributors.

Contributor retention is a topic I’ve seen pop up in the forums a few times, and I think these kinds of human interest stories play a role in that. Many potential contributors spend months orbiting the project without finding their footing. I got lucky; within a week I’d found projects that fit my skills and interests. Not everyone does. Fifteen years ago, when I initially became interested in open source, I was a teenager with few skills, no self-awareness, and thought all open source contributors were hardcore hackers and package maintainers. It all seemed out of reach. Potential contributors like my younger self benefit from seeing that Fedora Project contributors aren’t just Fedora Project contributors; they want to see themselves, their interests, passions, and lives outside of open source, reflected in our current contributors. It helps new contributors feel like we aren’t all gurus on a high mountain. They feel less intimidated, more comfortable asking for help, and less dismissive of their own potential.

Tangential: Another thought I had, which may have already been done or may be out of scope, was to highlight user stories as well as contributor stories. How is Fedora actually being used to further DEI in the real world? The new whisper transcription feature in F44 could be something to highlight here.

I’m still going through past materials and expect my thinking to develop between now and FWD 2026; happy to discuss any of this further.

3 Likes
2

This is an interesting question to pose! We have some teenage contributors helping with the Fedora Design Team right now, and the experience of contributing as a teenager/younger person is something I’ve found myself thinking about a lot lately! It’s a real skill to ask for help and navigate a space. So I think seeing people as people, and not just an icon, has a lot of benefits!

3

My teenage self is my target audience!

Building on seeing contributors are people not icons has me now thinking about AV content. A lot of Fedora’s AV is very formal, and young or less experienced audiences might find that a little difficult to penetrate, so creating something with some pizzazz might be worth thinking about considering. I have no idea what gets attention anymore, though: is pewdiepie still cool?

4

What do we do about the rule that to obtain a Fedora Account one must be sixteen years old?

We have a couple of skilled sixteen year olds, and they have made it here themselves without any help. They are of the level and mindset where they can do that.

We treat them as people, but also as people with a certain set of pre-existing skills.