Flock 2025 "I AM FEDORA" Onboard (And Retain) Friends With Fedora Join SIG

Can I start? All right. Um, welcome back folks from the break. Uh, in this one we're going to talk about the Fedora Join SIG, specifically I am Fedora. This is a label that we have in the welcome to Fedora issue tracker that Fedora Join SIG makes use of when they are done onboarding someone to the Fedora project community. Um, moving on to the next slide. Uh, let's first introduce ourselves, of course. I am Akasti Dhar. I am a senior software engineer in the Fedora infrastructure Red Hat Community Linux engineering team, and I'm joined over here with Ankur Sinha. Go ahead. >> Hello. Um, I'm Ankur, as Akasti said. Um, I don't actually work in software development anymore. I'm an academic at University College London. But, funnily enough, my journey with Fedora started way before I became an academic, and I can't seem to let go. So, I'm still here, and I expect I'll still be here in the next decade doing this. Um, but yeah, I mean, this talk is all about onboarding newcomers, because we want to get new people. More importantly, we want to retain them. So, that's what we're going to talk about. >> Thank you, Ankur. Um, but speaking about onboarding and retaining, at these this is, of course, the most of the stuff that we'll be talking about. But apart from that, uh, what is the Fedora project community about? Uh, and how can people participate in the community? Sure. And most importantly, how people can participate in the Fedora Join SIG and help us with our efforts of onboarding and retaining people in the community. The next, where they can start contributing from. Fedora project is huge. There's a bunch of subprojects and SIGs, special interest groups, that people can participate in. So, it can become a bit trip bit of tricky affair to uh, decide where they want to start from. So, it's important to know that as well. And then finally, taking the contributions to the next level and just going on to the next thing. Maybe you started from coding, but you want to start try your hand in designing things. Well, Fedora project gives you the opportunity to do just that. Well, we are Fedora. We are people from all over the world that come together to create software, artwork, documentation, events, and everything else in between to promote free and open source software. And these are the four foundations of Fedora project that I'm sure most of you are already aware of. Uh Uh the first foundation states that we are committed to innovation. We always make sure that we are kind of at the leading curve of what's out there in the software and the technology. Then features, we we really care about making sure that we put some excellent stuff out there with all the software offerings that we provide people with. Freedom. We make sure that we stick to, as far as we can, free and open source software. And then finally, we are a tight-knit group who care about people and the friends that we have around us. In Fedora join seg, whenever we are onboarding people, we look for potential and not polish. We don't care if someone is good at coding. We see if they're motivated to stick around and if they're willing to learn because motivation is something that's hard to build. Skills, they can come with time. But yeah, you you onboard every single one of them. Of course, you don't leave out the ones with polish, no way, dear. But here's why we stick to onboarding people with potential and not just those with polish because we think that those skills can come with time. It's just a matter of time before someone gets good at something that they do as soon as they find the interest of doing it. Then reflecting on the fact that it's curiosity and it's where they come from that defines how good they are at doing something. Then the newcomers, they can provide us with perspectives. To me a certain documentation might make sense, but a newcomer might be like, "What is it? Where's the starting point? What does the Fedora messaging terminology mean?" So, it might not look that obvious to us, but they can provide us with the perspectives to understand that there's indeed something that needs fixing or improving. And then finally, we value the community aspect more than just instant growth and development because we care more about the people and that is why that's how we do all in the Fedora Join SIG. Right, so here's a quick run through of how the onboarding thing works. Um Of course, me and Ankur, we had this discussion beforehand. How would people know that they need to open a FAS account first? Sure, the documentation would do a good job at it, but I think Fedora Join SIG is filled with a bunch of friendly faces who are willing to answer all and any questions that people might have. The moment they come up with any questions or Fedora project account, we provide them with a welcome ticket. What's a welcome ticket? Well, it provides people with the context about what Fedora project is with some introductory links of what free and open source software is because for someone who's just getting started with free and open source software, it can be very tricky to understand how a single project can have loads of documentations, designs, events, and everything else in between, and we can still keep together and keep releasing a new release every 6 months. What are the goals of Fedora Join SIG? Of course, the first one is to encourage people to join. We would onboard them. And to make sure that we have this contact with the existing contributors who have been around for a while with the potential new contributors, give them some point of contact so that they know whom to ask questions from. And then counsel them, help understand what is it that they're looking for. Some people might come in for maybe participating in a mentored project in a formalized mentorship program. Some of them might be around because they could not make their favorite game run in Fedora Workstation, while the others might be looking for a place where they can try their designing hands-on. So, it's quite important to understand what is it that they want to do inside of community. Then establishing processes, relations, and occasions where they can take their contributions up by a notch. If it is let's just say a new team that they want to contribute to, feel free. There's a bunch of places to be a part of. And then finally, establishing channels of communication with the folks. As we are very people-driven community, it might be that a person who onboards someone might be adjusted by someone else. But that's totally fine. Um speaking about participation, let me show you this rather complicated-looking graph of how Fedora projects, subprojects, and subteams are associated and arranged. And um well, I say it's complicated. Trust me, it's not. All the new All that the newcomers need to do is find a place to jump in, right? Depending on what is it that their interests lie in and what it is that they want to do inside Fedora project, they need to find a place. And if it doesn't work, well, they can always try again in some other place until something clicks. And when it does, they can take their contributions further. But how does a newcomer join the community? How does it look like from their perspective? I have spoken it at length from the perspective of someone like me who is willing to onboard and retain members, but how does it look like from their perspective? Uh we of course start with the introduction. We would know would like to know what who they are and where they're coming from because they are not someone who write code, they're a human being to us first. Then um we let them explore, we let them loose. Fedora project is huge and we would not want to curb their creativity by telling them that oh, you did Python before? Might as well onboard you in Fedora infrastructure. Nope. Who knows? They might want to do some containers or something like that, you know? So, we let them loose, let them find something that they want to work on. Of course, we won't limit ourselves if they want to have something to work on, we'll definitely provide them with, but only if they ask for it. Then finally, interacting, letting us know if they found something and ask keeping checking with them every single time, every after equal periods of time to understand how much of a progress they made. It's very possible when you are joining a community as large as Fedora project that you might not find something to work on immediately. There will be some time you'd be left by yourselves and you'd be wondering just what exactly it is that you're doing. But that is fine. You can hang around with the friendly faces that there are and then soon enough there would be someone who would be willing to share the information. There's loads of documentation that you can learn from. And then finally you find a sense of belonging in the community and that is when you are like, "Hey, I don't I I could definitely use the help of mentors, don't get me wrong, but now I can find my way through the community and maybe I started writing documentation, sure, but now I can take it on, maybe do some coding, do some infrastructure, probably try my hands in a design team, stuff like that." All right, so now I'm going to pass it over to Ankur who's going to talk a bit about the progress that the Join SIG has made from the previous Flock to this one. Over to you. >> Thank you. Right. Let's get to some graphs and plots. So, um what you see now is uh information since the last conference. Um and what you see on the left we have certain states for each ticket and this is meant to be a set of milestones for a newcomer, right? So, when they get in, they get a tag that says, "Looking into Fedora Hello World." And then the way we do it is we usually have three progress checks for them. Now, these progress checks are not meant to be three strikes. Okay, that's not the idea. And we don't do them every 2 weeks or every 4 weeks. We don't want We don't want newcomers to feel like they have to actively get started and do something constructive to be part of the community. Right? All we want them to do is hang out in the channels and get to know the people. Because it's it's good to become a part of the community when you have a task, but it's better if you make bonds with the people. That's what keeps you around, okay? Tasks come and go, people stick around, okay? So, what we want to really do is we want these people to form strong bonds with other people and form friendships in the community and there's always more than enough work to be done, right? There's never a shortage of work in Fedora. So, we do three three progress checks. Um if somebody doesn't respond by the third progress check, which usually takes about a year and a half, then we'll probably go around and say, "Okay, this person for whatever reason, again, you can start the process. It doesn't mean you have to finish it. It doesn't even mean you have to finish it quickly. You can pause because something came up. Life comes up and you can come back to it and reopen your ticket. But the idea is that you take your own time exploring Fedora, getting to know the people, getting to know what's out there. And when you're comfortable, you can go ahead and start contributing, right? We don't want to rush people. We don't want them to make We don't want to make them feel like there's a gatekeeping process going on over there. None of that. So, the first check is where most people are at. Uh maybe a few months from there we'll do a second check. The check goes something like this, "Hey, you know, how are you doing? We've seen you in some channels. We haven't seen you in others. Uh we haven't seen you at all. Is there something we can help you with? Um do you have some feedback on how we can improve the process? Um have you spoken to people? What is your experience? Did you try and join a team? Did you have any difficulties?" The idea is that this ticket gives them a single point of contact with with this join sec, all right? Um and eventually as they go through the GAS, uh a lot of a lot of our people will end up at I'm Fedora, which means they've actually joined a team and made a contribution. Okay? Again, it doesn't mean they have to become team lead. Whenever they think they've joined a team and they're being part of it, even by just hanging out in the channels, they are part of the community. Okay? There's no threshold. They don't have to have opened a pull request. They don't have to have fixed a bug. They don't have to have addressed a ticket. Okay? When somebody feels that they're integrated enough and they want to hang around, they are part of Fedora. Okay? The whole point is for them to be part of the people of Fedora, right? And then work will come. Um so, we've not done badly. Um a couple of abandoned ones, a couple of unresponsive ones. Uh the the successful numbers keep going up, albeit rather slowly. But, that's the goal. The more people we can put in that bracket, the more successful we are. Um the other thing we do is we try and tag these tickets to try and link them to different parts of Fedora. So, when people introduce themselves, they will say, "Oh, you know, I've got some Python experience. This is what I would like to do." And we put these tags. Now, the idea behind these tags is that we can then go into these teams and tell them, "We've got four newcomers who would like to do infrastructure. Can somebody please sort of get in touch with them?" Right? Um not not surprisingly, a lot of people are techies, so software development and infrastructure is large. But, we've got loads of people coming into marketing. Uh we've got loads of people coming into design. Um and if Fedora does it, we have a tag for it, right? That's the way we go. This is not We don't have a system where it says, "Oh, only these teams can have these tags." Right? So, the idea is just to give some visibility to what areas of interest these newcomers these newcomers are distributed into. Um this is just total numbers. It's not the strongest, but the numbers do tend to go up around releases, so May, October. Um and that's primarily because around releases we make a lot more noise about Fedora, right? We make more blog posts, we talk more actively about what's going on. Changes are discussed. Um we have uh release parties. Quite a few people come into those. Um but on average, we do tend to get a couple of people uh maybe once every 2 weeks. And this number seems to be going up now as we have more and more. So, it's we're reaching a core threshold after which this becomes a self-sustaining project, right? And that is where we want to be. Um So, this is This is slightly misleading. I do not do 46% of the work. That's not how this works. I have merely opened 46% of the tickets because I hang around in the channel quite a bit. But the idea is somebody comes in and says, "Hello. I would like to be part of Fedora. What do I do?" Anybody in the channel can open a ticket for them and help them on board, right? So, while I was doing it before, a lot of people have now joined. And people no longer wait for me to open the ticket. Cuz what would happen was a lot of these people hang about and they ping me and say, "Uncle, can you please open a ticket?" And slowly by repeatedly saying to them, "No, you can open the ticket." You'll see that the work is now being distributed. If you're in Fedora and you know how the process works, which is literally open a ticket. There's a template. You don't even have to write anything. You open the ticket, put their name in, that's it. Right? You should be in our channel and you should be on this plot. Okay? This is not something that only six people can do. This is anybody should be doing this. In fact, everybody should be doing this. You have a question? >> Do you have people opening their own tickets? >> Yes. We do have people opening their own tickets, which also works, but then I monitor to make sure that because they need to be added to the the Pagure group so they can edit metadata and all that sort of thing. So, when I get a notification or somebody else gets a notification, we go and update the ticket to make sure they're in the group and all that. But we have had multiple people open their own tickets and say, "Hello. Uh I wasn't sure what to do, so I've opened this ticket. Can you please help?" And then we'll follow it up in a comment and say, "Yes, that's amazing. Can you please introduce yourself? ABCD." Right? So, again, um the only requirement, of Of is this is on Pagure, so you have to have a Fedora account. But if somebody has already opened a Fedora account, they can do this. Um Now, this is just reminding us that um the code of conduct applies in all our communication channels, right? Uh we want to encourage everybody to join us. We have the ground rules are the same, right? So, we consider it be respectful. The only addition here is that we are dealing with newcomers. Um and if you remember your history of when you started, or if you're a newcomer, uh newcomers tend to be they get scared easily. Let's just put it that way, right? They are worried about asking stupid questions, even though there are none. But they always worry, "Oh, if I ask this question, somebody might think I don't know anything." So, when you're in these channels, we try to do our best and not use things like demotivating language. So, for example, if somebody comes in, we we try not to say, "Oh, that's easy." No, it's not. It may be easy for you, because you've been around for a while. It's not easy for them. Right? So, things like, "Oh, you just do this. This is easy." This is language we try to avoid, okay? Um and this is the kind of thing that at the moment is not documented, but we probably should, because everybody in that channel needs to know a little bit about how to speak to novices, right? So, if you teach uh let's say programming 101, and you've been trained, you would be told, "This is how you approach it. Don't For example, don't touch their keyboards. Ask them to do things themselves. Don't say something is easy, because it's not easy for them. So, these are things that we want to keep in mind. So, follow the code of conduct, but be slightly more mindful about your communication." All right? Um and then the ticket is all about trying to make them successful contributors, right? Um this is known to a lot of us subconsciously. We may not have thought about it, but commitments uh if you can do something regularly, you're more likely to keep doing it regularly. Um what we do say to them is you don't have to commit 40 hours a week. You don't have to commit 6 hours a week. Could be 10 minutes a week. Just start with that. Start small and build. Uh observation for a lot of newcomers because they don't know how things work we ask them to first just go and join any community channels, right? So, if you're interested in QA, just go and hang out in the channel. See how things work. Attend a meeting. You don't have to say anything. But being around people will help you realize how things work, right? And slowly as you realize how things work, you'll be able to jump in and contribute. But we don't want them to go up to somebody and say, "Give me an issue to work on." We want them to hang around, observe how things are done, and learn that way. Um alternatives and momentum. So, don't get stuck on one thing. Try different things. Fedora is huge. It's complex. There's so much to do. Um if you want to do something that doesn't exist in Fedora, just start, right? There's enough space in the community. There's enough infrastructure. There are enough people to help you out. But don't get stuck on any one thing, right? Try different things. See what you like. There's something for everybody. Uh and finally as I said before if you link in the people, you will maintain momentum, right? It becomes really hard to not keep going back to the chat channel and talking to your friends, right? Because we do become friends. Um finally, and this is the primary purpose of this talk. So, there are 10, 15 people who are active now. We need more. We need all of you. Right? We need people from infrastructure, from QA, from marketing, from design, from mind share um from the social team. We need everybody to be in there because we don't know what somebody new to Fedora wants to do. Right? So, So, we know enough to direct them to you. But if you are there directly, that just takes that one step away, right? Then you can speak to them and say, "Oh, hello. You interested in marketing? This is what we're doing. We have a meeting. Why don't you come along?" Whereas if somebody comes to me, I say, "Oh, yes. I know what the marketing team does. I think they're going to have a meeting. Why don't you go and check it out, right?" So, if we have representatives from all parts of Fedora, it just takes a couple of steps away. And that may not feel like a lot to us, but to newcomer, two fewer steps makes a massive difference. >> [clears throat] >> So, what we need is we need all of you to be in there. We need you to just hang out in the channels. Again, there's no paperwork, there's no form filling, there's no code writing. All you have to do is hang out in the channels and see what's going on. If you are part of a team, please try and make sure your onboarding documents are simple. Please try and make sure they're simple for a newcomer, not simple for you. They're two completely different things, right? We do have release parties, they have virtual events. So, they're okay there, but if you do have the time, organize a few more. The more of these events we have, the more likely it is that more and more people will come and join us. And finally, mentorship. So, this has been tried in Fedora multiple times in my time here. It has always crashed and burned, primarily because people don't want to commit to being a mentor, but we are looking at ways. We just had a discussion outside and we are looking at ways of setting up a buddy program if not a mentorship program. And the idea is that you'll have a common pool of people anyway, but you will have a couple of people who are your buddies. When you have trouble, you can contact them directly. So, this is something we're going to be working on. Um we would really like all of you to participate. If you have suggestions, we want you to participate in suggestions. Um this is meant to be an evolving process, right? It's not meant to be set in stone. So, it will keep evolving. Um and that is it. So, again, I reiterate on the last bit. We would love for all of you to please hang out in the channel because we really need your help with newcomers, right? 10 of us can't look at all of Fedora. We can't see everything that's going on and we can't give people up-to-date information. But, if we have 50 people, we are pretty confident that there's somebody from every part of Fedora there to help out a newcomer. Right? Is it time for questions? Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> For folks who are newcomers coming into the community, is there something that we're telling folks that is kind of like the the what you get back out of contributing? Is there something that we have that we're we're telling folks or pointing people to cuz I guess that that would just be interesting to know. So. >> Yeah, I'll take it. Uh a bunch of times what happens is people want to contribute to a community because they want to, you know? It it's like a hammer, you know, they buy a new hammer and everything starts looking like a nail, right? So, they learned a new skill and they want to probably put it into a use in a project that has a bunch of users. And they want to make sure that their work is being seen by a lot of people. And Fedora Project is, you know, it provides them a platform to do just that. But, uh if they're looking for something that's tangible, we do provide them with, uh like I said before, a bunch of mentored programs they could definitely participate in Google Summer of Code or Outreachy. Of course, these things have limited places, but uh they can, you know, stay committed, keep contributing, and find their way where they can contribute over there. >> Just a quick one. You said join the channel. Can you tell me what channel and where? >> That's a good one. I think it's Is it in the next page? Let's find that out. Oh, it's not in the next page. Amazing. Yeah, do you There's a discussion thread over there, I think. Well, that can be a good starting point, but it's on Matrix. People have been avoiding Matrix since the past few weeks for obvious reasons. But, whenever things go back to normal, I think that is where a bunch of newcomers end up joining, asking what it is that they want to do, who they are. They introduce themselves, and where they can start from. So, just hanging around over there, being a friendly face, and saying, "Oh, wow, you mentioned you do Python. Can you can definitely start with Fedora Infra." Stuff like that. It can help them, you know, find a starting point, because that is where it counts. A bunch of times, these newcomers, they come in, they introduce themselves, but they don't find anyone to talk with. And then they drop off. Can't blame them. Can't blame ourselves. But, we definitely could do better at onboarding. >> Um if you're on the Fedora Home Server If you're on the Fedora Home Server, search for join, and there's only the one channel that goes join, and that's where we are. >> I was actually going to cover on the same thing. There's also an introductions channel, which is Yeah, uh may- maybe a problem. Um we should probably sort out that there are two channels like that. Um at the same time, there's one set of documentation, that is the join documentation, and it is oriented both for people in the join SIG, helpers, and for people looking to join. This isn't a question. This is just me saying things things I noticed. It might be nice to split that into docs for newcomers, and docs for on for people who want to help with onboarding, the welcome team, or something like that. >> Definitely. >> I know it's easier to say things like that than to do them. I'm from from >> Oh, for sure. And that is why we could use all the help we can get. >> We can we can do that over Flock. We can we can split the documentation today >> Right. Do we have any more questions? >> Um if you do end up with questions later, just turn up in the channel. You don't have to think about them now. The the whole point is that the channel we want you to turn up. Just turn up. That's all we ask you and everything else will happen. >> A that and B uh me and Ankur would be we'd be around the event throughout Flock, well. So, feel free to reach out to us at any point in time you have questions. And uh I want to give a quick shout-out to Matt Edge who could not join due to unavoidable circumstances. Um he was a part of this talk um and we would love to have him over here. Um but as it happens, well, it is what it is. All right, if you don't have any more questions, thank you very much for your time.