Thoughts on the future of FUDCon/DoCon

Robyn Bergeron rbergero at redhat.com
Fri Jul 27 19:31:00 UTC 2012


On 07/27/2012 11:19 AM, Eric "Sparks" Christensen wrote:
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> On 07/26/2012 12:43 PM, Jon Stanley wrote:
>> * I think that the openness of the current format is something that
>> we want to preserve. I don't want to turn it into a "invite-only"
>> event (ala UDS). If people want to show up, we should foster new
>> contributors at this event. But we should make it *extremely
>> clear* that is the purpose.
> Definitely agree here.  We should want people to come join us and work
> with us.  New faces are always great and at the same time we need the
> old faces as well to help mentor the new faces.
>
>> * There may be people that (for whatever reason) don't want to or
>> can't travel out-of-region. Just something to think about. Again,
>> reading the comments on the blog post got me thinking that
>> proximity to the majority of the people that are actually doing
>> things would be important - it's a quite different thing for me to
>> head up to, say Boston from NYC, than it is for me to go to London
>> for something.
> This is one of the big turn-offs to this idea, to me.  Travel isn't easy
> or fun (for some (most?) of us).  Sitting on an airplane for hours is
> not even in my top 1000 list of things to do.  I suspect that many
> people won't make the journey, if not because of comfort then because of
> time constraints, etc.  We'll end up with an event that is attended by
> mainly the locals and we would have not achieved the goal of a global
> event.
>
>> Lastly, I think that we do want to preserve events for users. I'm
>> not sure how to do this off the top of my head, though. Just
>> throwing an idea out on the table would be to have something sort
>> of like a FAD in conjunction with major OSS conferences (thinking
>> things like SCaLE and OLF in NA, LinuxTag in EMEA, etc) that
>> wouldn't need a ton of contributors present, so it'd be cheap to
>> do. I think that showing off what (and who!) Fedora is makes a lot
>> of sense.
So a few bits of historical stuff:
* FADs aren't user days. IMO: I think we could actually use a term to 
describe a user-focused-day event. FADs should be accomplishing a task 
that needs doing, or at least, that was the intended purpose for that 
type of event. (I repeat tihs a bit below again.)
* When we have had regular FADs, or even FUDCons, alongside those types 
of events ... it has the effect of people from the FAD or FUDCon wanting 
to do the other thing going on.  Which means people popping in and out, 
distractions, etc.  I think doing a user-focused thing at those events 
makes sense, even if it's a full-day, figure out how to get a 
sponsored-room type thing - people can dedicate specific time slot swhen 
they're not planning on doing other things, etc.
> So maybe we're just not defining things correctly.  IMO, the mission of
> the FUDCon is to not only bring contributors together but also users.
> And hopefully we'll turn users into contributors along the way.  We're
> not going to be able to truck users in from around the globe.  Clearly
> we need to keep a user event local to a region.
Yes, but at some point, people can either (a) focus on a session with 
users, or (b) be in sessions with their teammates / projects they 
participate in.

That's not to say that "comingling contributors and users is a bad idea" 
- I think quite the opposite, but I think that if people are using their 
time to show up at an event of any sort, that they should have the time 
to dedicate so that they can get the most value out of their time spent 
there.

I would almost take it a step further and say: Maybe we're just not 
thinking outside the box enough.  We don't need to be attached to any of 
these names - people have certain things they think about what a FUDCon 
should be, and then think we have to live up to that, no matter what.

I also tihnk that the word "users" is really perceived differently by a 
lot of people.  When I think of "Fedora Users and Developers" - I think 
of "people who are already using Fedora" as users who probably can fit 
into and understand a lot of what is going on at a 
barcamp-style-conference-focused-on-Fedora, whereas I think "prospective 
users and people new to linux altogether" probably show up and wonder 
what the heck is going on.  But FUDCons are executed diffferently in 
other areas of the world, also.

>
> And we already have DoCons now only we call them FADs.  Up until now,
> I believe the understanding of a FAD was that it is a small event; why
> should it be?  Why can't we set aside funds to bring teams/projects
> together to work once a year?  I think the effect would be the same as
> what's being proposed while at the same time we can attempt to have a
> greater user focus at the FUDCons as I'm assuming they were meant to be.
I don't know that that was the original purpose of a FUDCon.  From the 
comments/mails I received from the "wayyyy back in the day" crowd (:D) - 
there was a more significant focus on "here's what we are going to do 
for the next 6 months, and users are welcome to come, but we're here to 
get stuff done."

Yes, a FAD is a small event.  FADs were also meant to "get stuff done 
with my team, usually a specific task/accomplishment."  We now also see 
FADs everywhere which are more like local user events, which wasn't the 
intended purpose, as i understand things.

But I tihnk that what you're pointing out with FADs doesn't necessarily 
solve any of the other logistical problems pointed out; we have globally 
distributed teams, and people will have to travel. If you're involved 
with more than one team, that could potentially be more than one FAD; if 
we have FADs and FUDCons, people often have to choose between one and 
the other, because while we can sponsor people to some degree, we can't 
sponsor them with extra days off work, days out of school, etc.

In any case: I think there are a lot of good ideas and points here, and 
I'm sure more will come in :)

>
> Just a thought...
>
> - -Eric
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