TomAPC: Introduction

[Tom Collins]

Hey Folks,

I posted this on my Pagure ticket (
https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Welcome-to-Fedora/issue/56) but thought I'd
introduce myself here also as it may be a bigger audience!

First of all, I just want to say a MASSIVE thank you to the people over on
#fedora-join. I joined a few days back, just watching to get my bearings,
and when I plucked up the courage to message, I was met by "We would love
to counsel you the way forward." THIS made me feel at ease straight away,
and a great welcome to the Fedora family. Massive kudos to both alciregi
and shehroz on the IRC channel, you've made my entry to the FOSS world just
that bit easier!

Now on with the introduction - my name is Tom and I am a SysAdmin from
London, looking to cut my teeth in the FOSS world, both by expanding the
skills I currently have as well as learning a new thing or 2!

Having worked in big tech for the last 6 years in a variety of roles,
coming from IT Inventory through tech writing, program/project management
and then to full SysAdmin, I hope this gives me a breadth of knowledge and
experience I can hopefully bring to the Fedora family. The first part that
caught my eye looking through some documentation was the Fedora Infra team.
This of course will help build on my current SysAdmin skill set, which is
admittedly built on the bubble of in-house procedures and tools we have
(something I want to change!), as well as learning how the infrastructure
of a large FOSS organisation keeps millions of devices and users working!
Having been in the IRC channels for the last few days, it would be great to
help with the documentation side of things as well, as it's always a
challenge in all the teams I have worked in to keep it up to date and
relevant, and makes a great way to learn how an infrastructure works :)

The second area that caught my eye is CommOps - having been a program
manager for a while before moving back to individual contributor, I do miss
discussing in groups the future direction of a project! So maybe this may
be a good path to look into as well?

I'm sorry this has ended up being a bit of a ramble! I hope it starts to
make sense the more I get introduced to the project more and get my teeth
stuck in. Glad for any advice that you all have on potential directions,
and how to get started.

Thanks!

Tom (FAS, IRC & Telegram: TomAPC)

[Justin W. Flory (he/him)]

Hi Tom, welcome to the Fedora Community! Thanks for introducing yourself
on the mailing list. My reply is in-line below:


On 8/15/20 12:38 AM, Shehroz Kaleem wrote:
>   
>  15.08.2020, 05:01, "Tom Collins" <tcollins(a)teratux.com&gt;:
>      First of all, I just want to say a MASSIVE thank you to the people
>      over on
>      #fedora-join. I joined a few days back, just watching to get my
>      bearings,
>      and when I plucked up the courage to message, I was met by "We would
>      love
>      to counsel you the way forward." THIS made me feel at ease straight
>      away,
>      and a great welcome to the Fedora family. Massive kudos to both alciregi
>      and shehroz on the IRC channel, you've made my entry to the FOSS
>      world just
>      that bit easier!
>   

Thanks for sharing. Glad to hear you appreciated a warm welcome. :)


>      This of course will help build on my current SysAdmin skill set,
>      which is
>      admittedly built on the bubble of in-house procedures and tools we have
>      (something I want to change!), as well as learning how the
>      infrastructure
>      of a large FOSS organisation keeps millions of devices and users
>      working! 

One of the "bread and butter" tasks in Fedora is RPM packaging. RPM
packaging is useful to get a practical understanding of how a Linux
distribution comes together. It also gives some insight into challenges
faced by other people who use Fedora or a derivative distro.


>      Having been in the IRC channels for the last few days, it would
> be
>      great to
>      help with the documentation side of things as well, as it's always a
>      challenge in all the teams I have worked in to keep it up to date and
>      relevant, and makes a great way to learn how an infrastructure works :)
>   

If you have not already, I suggest joining the Fedora Docs team mailing
list and a chat room (Freenode IRC (#fedora-docs), Matrix, or Telegram):


https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/docs.lists.fedoraproject.org/

    https://telegram.me/fedora_docs


>      I'm sorry this has ended up being a bit of a ramble! I hope
> it starts to
>      make sense the more I get introduced to the project more and get my
>      teeth
>      stuck in. Glad for any advice that you all have on potential directions,
>      and how to get started.
>   

Looking forward to seeing you around. :-)


-- 
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory (he/him)
https://jwf.io
TZ=America/New_York