Flock 2026 The Pursuit Of Happiness And Open Source: Why The Human Side Is The Heart Of Fedora

Okay, it's an absolute honor to be here back at Flock. Today, we are going to talk about code or infrastructure. We are going to step away from the terminal to talk about the human engine that keeps our ecosystem alive. Happiness, empathy, and community. Right? Let me start with a a little story. In my last Flock in 2023, an immigration officer looked at my passport and said, "You don't like like your photo. Can you see?" And he was right. I dropped a lot of pounds because I have a diabetes diagnosis. So, internally, my things are way worse. I am a current addict depression, but the loving, the fellowship, the warm of this community in Cork became a therapy. It gave me the strength to heal. As our slogan, friends, friends is not just a slogan. It literally saves lives. We obsess over the what, the code, and the how or infrastructure, but we rarely discuss the who and the why. Software runs silently on silicon and has no feelings. But, what prevents open source projects from burning out or fracturing isn't a faster compiler. It's the human empathy stretching out of hammock or to guide through someone else. So, in my 25 years in in system administration, I never considered myself as a technical genius. I often joke I wish I wish I wish I was the were as good as people think I am, but it's not. But I realized early that open source does not need upstream wizards. It desperately needs people passionate about sharing and building bridge. My role is simple, to be an open and accessible bridge to people. Leading the Fedora Mexico community it taught me that the community system stability requires requires active listening, not just git. When involved into an ecosystem for a lot of members, where our core team focuses entirely on protecting psychologically safety and work code conduct. The software is just our pretext. The human community is our true destination. We need to treat empathy as a core technical skill. When you review a pull request, remember this is a real human being with a real world struggles on the other side of the screen. Kindness belongs directly in work community histories. Shared amusement and patience are the shields that prevents contributor burnout. This approach direct is a direct reflection of the cultural experience inside Red Hat working on GLS. They trust me and my autonomy and back in my vision. When an an organization values people over technology internally, it empowers open source ecosystem externally. I don't know if you know it, but for we who work at Red Hat, we have an difficulty to be here because travel policies policies, right? But a special thanks to Justin. Thanks to him, many of us are here today. We must validate and celebrate all non-technical contributors, the people who coordinate venues, translate documentation, or guide a nervous newcomer. They are the invisible glue holding the Fedora project together. Let's widen our definition of contribution. Don't just commit lines of code. Commit your time, your patience, and your mentorship. Let me share with you a little story of success. A few weeks ago in the Red Hat office in Mexico, we have the visit from a a student from a university in a remote place in Mexico. And then I have a talk with the with the kids from the university. And then a few days later, I see on LinkedIn this this kid, Cesar, write an article for LinkedIn when she says, "I would love to be a content architect in Red Hat because the communication and and moderation skills needed to lead a Fedora community." That for me it's a achievement unlocked. Our true metrics are the seeds of inspiration we plant in the people who come after after us. And how will And how do we practice this next week? Well, first share space, not just knowledge. This I carry this formula every workshop. If we integrate code and community across the time, the result is infinite. Long after our coding kernels are replicated or our scripts are replaced, the human warmth we built with here remain. So, for the end, let's build a universe of inclusive communities because at the end of the day, only Fedora is eternal. Thank you very much. You have some questions, comments, doubts? Yep. >> Two pages before >> Yeah? Let me back. Yeah. >> Data shows that inclusive environments >> I hear you. Yep, it's working. >> Data shows that inclusive environments results in significant significantly higher retention and long-term project sustainability. Um this statement I fully agree, and my question is how What did you do to have an inclusive environment in your community and what are your advice is to uh to make sure to be an inclusive community. >> Yeah, well in our community we have uh I you see in the next uh talk but uh we don't organize events by ourselves. Uh we participate in events from universities and other communities or for example Amazon AWS or something like that. And we have a a lot of people who they say I want to be a a Fedora member but I don't know. I'm nervous. I I I cannot do that what you do here standing all the people on the world, you know. And my mission in especially is get the the confidence to this new member, you know. So no worries. I see as you see yourself I see myself a few years ago. So I want to see you in this side of the of the room someday. So I think I can or we can inspire some new guys kids in universities or I don't know. I I think this is the the most uh factor that improves this uh engine. Yep. >> Thank you. I mean, I I agree with almost everything that you've said. Um so for onboarding we do have a special interest group called the Fedora Join Special Interest Group and the only only duty of this group is to help newcomers to help make their journeys easier. Um until a few years ago, the way we as a community did onboarding was that we would ask people to find simple tasks. And you do the task and that's how you learn. >> Yep. >> But what we realized was that while doing these tasks, people did not make links with the people of the community. So, the joint special interest group, we've completely redone the process. We do not believe in sending people to tickets or easy fix or any of all of the infrastructure. What we want them to do is hang out in the channel and speak to people. And as they speak to people, they learn more about everything that goes on in Fedora. And as they build bonds with these people, they slowly learn how to go about and finally do tasks. Because really what keeps a lot of us around is that we now have so many friends around. You learn the skills as you go. The skills are not something that people can't learn, especially now with the age of AI. Everybody can learn the skills. It's the bonds with people and then helping each other out. Most of us take on work because somebody we know in the community is trying something and they're looking for other people to help. And so we dive in and say, "That looks cool. I can learn that and help you out." But we we've basically shifted to a people-focused onboarding process rather than a task-focused onboarding process. Um so, if you are looking and you have some of these um feelings about not being sure, please just come to the channel. There's a joint channel on Matrix. We have a ticket system where you can introduce yourself, tell us more about you, and then we can talk you through everything. There's no pressure of actually technically contributing from the start. >> Yep. >> Yeah, that that's the the principal question that I I want to to this uh, this topic because you know when we invite to the community, or young community in universities or something like that, uh, we receive some message on in our Telegram channel that they say I I signed up as a uh Fedora project member, but they asked me to to participate in the in in in present me or something like that, and I I'm sorry. That's kind of of of of things that we are concerned about that, because we don't know, maybe the this guy is nervous, or we don't know, but that we do is come on, just talking about you, I am this is my name, I'm a student, or I work on this office, or or I'm doing that, or I like this or that, and that's all. But yeah, I we don't know how many people don't do that step, and we lost maybe a a brilliant brilliant member of the project. So, >> Yeah, so, if you are a community member, please come and have or already a seasoned community member, please hang out in the channel, because the more people hang out there, the more teams and subjects around Fedora we can represent and pass that knowledge on to new people. And if you are new, please come and talk to us. We are very friendly, the channel is a protected space, there's no such thing as a wrong question, right? You can ask us about anything. People talk about all sorts of things in there. A lot of our conversations are not Fedora related at all. But the point is that by doing all of this, you are a community member, and you will stumble across something that you want to do, and then you'll get started that way, right? So, that is the whole point. >> Question for for the new community members who are maybe not confident to write to the broader channel. Like this is there some option for smaller setup maybe like having a buddy or someone just one person to talk with or how does this part work? >> Um so if you speak to Jonah, I don't know if he's in this room. Um there's been an an attempt to have a sort of a mentorship program in Fedora for a while. It did exist I think 10 years ago and then it died out as a lot of projects do. So there's some work there. But yeah, I mean even though we do default to open, we welcome people sending us a private message. Um we have a ticketing system where if you're not if you don't want to use a chat channel, you can open yourself a ticket and say hi, I'm new. And we have a template that asks people a few questions about what your interests are, what you want to do. And then you can yeah, you can interact with the community through the ticket if you'd rather prefer because it's asynchronous. Uh I mean however it is, the point is if there's a way that you don't think we've opened up for people to communicate with us, if you talk to us, we'll try and make that happen. Right? We just want to increase the catchment area as much as we can. That's the whole system. >> Another comment? Questions? It's a friendly talk, you know. >> I am curious like how hard is it to getting get something that you've done like with Mexico in other countries? Like do we have like some resources of uh people who we can ask and like get advice of like how to get started in uh a new country or some other events or like merchandise or anything that uh help us. >> Yeah. Well, you know, uh we in Latin America uh we have a lot of concerns about life. You know, we need to work to live and something like that and it's very hard to get the the new kids in the university because they left the university to work or something like that. Um for these kids that remains in in the schools and and want to participate, we animate to to join us and we do a lot of things uh to to get with with us. Yeah, I think what's the last year, uh 1 year ago, I some kids from the uh university uh national of Mexico, the most bigger in Latin America, they say uh "Could you give us a a talk about how we can start on open source?" And they don't know with that and I I don't care about this. My my my slide says "Just do it." And that's it. Why? Because in Latin America is it's very hard to get the people in in schools and everything and so we say you can do it. Yeah. And if you don't uh on if you don't do it yourself, come on with us and we help you. Uh in my first presentation in the schools and events and everything, they say "We don't want to you speak with us because you work in Red Hat. And maybe you want to sell us something. And I say, I'm really not. Even when I have uh maybe in Latin America there is a festival from uh installing open source the Flisol. Right? And I have maybe in this week like six or five events every day. So, I ask from vacations on Red Hat. And when when I present with the with the guys they say, "How many money Red Hat pays you for do that?" And I say, "Not really. They don't pay me anything." In fact, I am I am vacation. I'm just ask from my vacations to is stay here and give with this this talk. And I don't know. Maybe we need that kind of effort to get the the new members. But yeah, it's it's difficult. Yeah, in Latin America yeah, it's it's a plus. But yeah. >> Thank you. >> Okay, do we have uh >> I I would like to say something about uh going to podcast, going to YouTube because I found some videos in Brazilian Portuguese giving a lot of imprecise information about Fedora and they are is spreading thing things and talking about Fedora things they don't they don't know but and we are still um still trying to use Matrix, use email. >> Yep. >> I think you should I I think you should go and talk to people where they are. Not to not not to welcome them where we are because they it's it's more comfortable and everyone who is creating something new is is talking and and this format and not only in the formats we we used to use. >> Yeah, we have the the Telegram channel, we have a YouTube channel, we participate uh