So, FUDCon is over now and it’s time for everyone who attended to ratchet up the talk about what got done there. FUDCon is all about setting wheels in motion (and keeping them so) for the next development cycle, assessing where we can do better, and making sure people understand the new features and ideas taking shape for the future Fedora releases. To get the community interested and engaged, we need to talk about it publicly so that people who couldn’t get to FUDCon can still get involved. So take a few minutes and keep those blog entries rolling!
Overall FUDCon went very well, but there were some things that need improvement next time around. For instance, we didn’t have good vegetarian fare for the attendees. That won’t happen again, just need to keep it on the list for planning the next event.
I took too long on the closing comments, although there were a number of reasons for this — additional logistics to sort out, people to thank, and the request by BU folks to stretch it out a little to make sure the pub would be open by the time we got there. (Went overboard.) Anyway, point taken and I promise next time will be very different. I had a lot of people I wanted to single out for amazing work, and I’ll save it for a blog next time. ?
We need video coverage for these events, and Greg and I will see what we can do to set aside funds for people to do just that. This worked out great down in Raleigh in January, because we were local to the crew from Red Hat’s communications team that shoots all their excellent video promos. If we could fly one or two folks to FUDCon for the same purpose, it would better document a lot of what gets done, and also would allow us to show community members how easy it is to show up and get involved.
We still need to extend our technology further to enable more FUDCon attendance. If we can figure out how to use our new Fedora Talk system to stream audio for people not on the site, we’ll be able to move to a whole new level of collaboration at these events. I’m fairly certain that’s not a very distant goal; I look forward to seeing what people think we can do in that regard.
Hopefully none of these minor missteps were enough to turn anyone off FUDCon — it seems from some of the stories I’ve been reading thus far this morning, it was a very successful conference overall.
One of the things I’ve come to grips with lately in my new role in Fedora is that FUDCon for me is no longer about getting things done, as it used to be. Now it’s about making sure that others can get things done without barriers or obstacles. (Or long-winded speeches.) I’ll continue to strive for that, and if you have suggestions on what I can do to make FUDCons better in the future, I’m all ears.
I need to thank Jon Stanley here, who put me up for the week at his hotel room — I tried to repay him a bit by helping him with odds and ends in light of his broken wing. (Part of lowering barriers, right?) Jon, hope you feel better soon. I also want to thank the Boston University crew in print, including the Computer Science department for their cosponsorship and the Engineering and IT departments for their help as well. They took care of all the Saturday logistics so that we could worry about the ones at the Summit on Thursday and Friday.
My flight leaves later tonight, so to make things easy, after I check out I’ll probably just work down in the hotel lobby until it’s time to go. Then I plan to take the day off on Monday and get back online on Tuesday. See y’all then, and thanks for making this FUDCon a success!