[00:00:00] Eric Hendricks: Fedora has a job whose entire purpose is the health of the community around the distribution. And this month, a new person has taken over this role. Today, we're going to talk about what the role does and what both the person leaving and the person arriving wants to see happen next. Hey there, and welcome to the Fedora Podcast. This is episode number 60. Cannot believe we've had 60 episodes of the Fedora Podcast. But I'm so glad you're joining us. I'm Eric, the IT guy Hendricks. I'm your host today. Noah is off dealing with a customer emergency, so he wasn't able to join us today. But I am joined by two people that I've known for darn near a decade. And they are amazing folks with a lot of love for Fedora and the open source community. So with that said, today we're going to talk about the Fedora Community Architect position. We're going to talk about what the position does, what we've been doing with that role, and what that role might look like moving forward. So without further ado, let me introduce the outgoing Fedora Community Architect first. Justin, welcome to the Fedora podcast, my friend.

[00:01:20] Justin Wheeler: Hey, thanks, Eric. It's nice to be back on. And big kudos on getting the podcast up to 60 episodes. That's a nice achievement for the podcast.

[00:01:29] Eric Hendricks: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun and the audience is growing like crazy too. I think we just passed 14,000 subscribers on YouTube. So I mean, that's for the Fedora Project channel in general, but the Fedora podcast is one of the more frequent contributors to the YouTube channel. So really excited to see the audience growing and that people really like to hear what's going on around the Fedora community. So I know you were on just recently, but for those that might have missed the Flock to Fedora episode a few episodes back, why don't you give us your introduction, who you are, what you do, what you do or what you did do for Fedora, and something you do for fun.

[00:02:06] Justin Wheeler: Yeah. So my name is Justin Wheeler. For a long time, I've been in the Fedora community. I began my time in Fedora when I was still actually just a little bit before I was a university student, beginning in 2015, 2014, 2015. And, you know, for a long time, I kind of got to get my first experience in open source and working in such a large decentralized community. That was kind of my start in my open source journey. And Fedora helped me learn all kinds of different things and helped me get to different places in my career. Fast forward a little bit, in 2022, I joined Red Hat as the Fedora Community Architect role, which is what we're here to talk about. And that was my first time working at Red Hat in this role. And I had a good work, a close relationship with the four people who had been in the role before me as well. So I had a deep context and understanding of the role and, you know, kind of what my own thoughts and vision for it would be when I came in. And so that's been part of my journey for the last few years and where I've spent my time while I've been at Red Hat. But recently in that Fedora Magazine article that we can put in the show notes or we announced the transition with Shaun, who you'll hear from in a moment. Who's stepping into the new role or stepping into the role and then my transition to a new role. So I'll be going into this new role that, you know, I've kind of helped coin as the AI alignment community architect, which fits into the community architect job role that many of us have in the open source and AI program office at Red Hat.

[00:03:40] Eric Hendricks: Well, that's awesome. And something you do for fun.

[00:03:44] Justin Wheeler: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's something that I love to do is rail travel. You know, there's lots of ways to travel and I do travel a lot, but I'm a really big sucker for long, like learning how to travel by rail and by train in different countries or public transit is just something that I really enjoy. It's something I enjoy learning and experiencing.

[00:04:05] Eric Hendricks: That's awesome. And if I'm not mistaken, that was different than the hobby used in the last episode. So kudos to you for switching it up intentionally or not.

[00:04:13] Justin Wheeler: Yeah, I couldn't even remember what I said before, but I'm glad it was different.

[00:04:17] Eric Hendricks: For sure. So we'll hear a little bit more from Justin here in just a moment. And as he pointed out, always check the show notes for these episodes. We always put links to the hosts, to our guests, but also to useful information, whether that's blog articles or documentation links or links to our Matrix channel. All sorts of ways to get further information around each topic. So make sure that you check the show notes. And while you're pulling those show notes up, please go ahead and hit that like button. It helps the algorithms of our AI overlords know that people are enjoying this content. Sorry, I speak for a living. But also make sure you hit that subscribe button. Let's keep growing the Fedora channel audience as well. Now, without further ado, let's talk to the incoming Fedora community architect, Mr. Shaun McCance. Shaun, welcome to the Fedora podcast, or welcome back to the Fedora podcast, I should say.

[00:05:10] Shaun McCance: It's great to be back. It's been so long, Eric.

[00:05:13] Eric Hendricks: I know, it's been like a whole episode. Yeah. Well, Shaun, I'm glad to have you back, but for those that might have missed our conversation about what is CentOS Linux, and sorry, what is the CentOS community, let me be accurate there, why don't you tell us who you are, what you do, what you do for Fedora, which is kind of an ironic question and then what's what's something you do for fun

[00:05:35] Shaun McCance: Yeah i feel like part of that is like what this episode is about right but well i'm i'm Shaun i am the i'm the incoming Fedora community architect i'm also the the CentOS community architect which we discussed in that in that previous episode the similar roles for for you know related projects but taking care of various things around the communities for these projects i've i've been i've been with red hat for 11, 12 years, I'm not sure, always in the open source program, I'm sorry, it's open source and AI program office now. It was the open source program office. It was actually open source and standards when I started, but I've been fortunate to have a role in this kind of community supporting organization within Red Hat for a very good chunk of my career. So this is a natural path for stuff I've been doing. And I guess we'll get into the specifics of it. And what I do for fun, last time, I talked about video games and Zelda specifically and I think you gave me a hard time about my hobby still involved being in front of a screen so I would say I'll yell a little

[00:06:45] Eric Hendricks: Bit just a little bit

[00:06:47] Shaun McCance: I'm going to give a different one then I love bluegrass and I have been attempting to be proficient on either the banjo or the mandolin if one of them manages the stick that would be just great but it's tricky

[00:07:01] Justin Wheeler: But I do Confirm. These are true facts.

[00:07:07] Eric Hendricks: Yeah, definitely go check out our previous episode that featured Shaun and a panel of CentOS community members as we talked about Fedora Linux versus CentOS Stream and how those different communities, which are largely one and the same as far as communities go, but very, very different projects with very, very different objectives. So go check out our previous episode if you want to learn more and hear Shaun talk about video games, which awesome enough there's there's as i recall a couple of zelda announcements since our last episode so is this a commercial

[00:07:38] Shaun McCance: We're running because i can you know i can give you the rundown of what happened

[00:07:43] Eric Hendricks: But we should see if nintendo will sponsor the podcast yeah that's right that's right Justin, I want to start with you. Tell me a little bit about the Fedora Community Architect. Tell me a little bit about what your responsibilities have been for folks that just may not really know what goes on day-to-day in an open-source community like Fedora.

[00:08:08] Justin Wheeler: Yeah, it's a great question. So I think to explain what the role does, it involves a little bit of the context of why this role exists and how it's changed. So this role started in February 2015 or so. This was something that one of the previous Fedora project leaders, Robyn Bergeron, largely advocated for when she was the Fedora project leader. And it was trying to create a, at that time, it was really just the Fedora project leader as the sole lead figure in the project. So creating this role, and actually then it was called the community outreach and impact lead, which was kind of a mouthful. But that was a way of trying to split out a certain kind of work that helps support and sustain the Fedora community and the way that we run the project and help sustain our infrastructure. So that role, we'll fast forward a little bit here into the present time where, the role is Fedora Community Architect. That role name changed in January, 2023. And that I think was a part of a reflection of the changing landscape of what this role has meant or what roles it's played in the project over time. And I'd say the largest functions, like when you're asked specifically, what is this role responsible for? I think the, and we'll make sure to put this in the show notes too, but there is a doc page in the Fedora Council docs for the community architect role. And the current version I think is actually the best, I mean, maybe I'm biased, but I think it's one of the best versions that helps explain what those key things are and where the community architect is most effective. So like one of those roles is there is a formal seat in Fedora Council and different parts of governance. So that's, you know, being a part of the Fedora Council, helping steward the Mindshare Committee, being involved as a representative in the Code of Conduct Committee. Those are all kinds of community governance and leadership participation that are part of the role. But there's also things around budget management. I'd say that's probably one of the largest things, if not Flock, which is the other big part. But being able to steward the budget and chair the Mindshare Committee and help guide the funding and support that we are able to provide in community channels like the Mindshare Committee for anyone that wants, or, some events are different sizes, have different requirements, but for known established. Fedora contributors who are ambassadors, they can request certain amounts of funding and support for an event. But we also have processes for people who are doing just small meetups and just want a little bit of support or a few little, like to get a shipment of stickers. If you write an event report, you know, that's one way that we can help direct some of that funding to people in the community who want to do things with Fedora in their local area. So part of that requires being able to run a budget and do some of that forecasting and planning and also being a liaison back to Red Hat, which is the primary, you know, the organization supporting and providing that budget to the Fedora project. So being able to do some of that negotiation, both with the Red Hat side and in the community side is kind of the, to me, is the fun part of that role and trying to be an advocate for the things that are important and valuable for the Fedora community. So the other second thing is Flock. I think that one is best covered in the previous episode, perhaps, but that is a major responsibility of the Fedora community architect. And there's lots of places that the Fedora community architect is involved with Flock. In the new charter, it also brings in some of Shaun's work as well from the CentOS ecosystem. While that wasn't part of Shaun's transition from his previous role and mine. This wasn't something I was focused on before, but I think it makes a lot of sense in the current role charter. And I think it's going to help to the benefit of bringing our communities closer together because we already share so much overlap in our contributor base in the two projects anyways. So there's been a lot of changes and evolution. And I can't say that from working with the four folks previous to me, everyone's always taken a different approach to it based on their own experience and perspective of working in the project. Not everyone's come with an engineering background. Not everyone has come with a designer background. And that's been a really unique part of that role. And I think there's lots of other things, like just because it's something that's not written in the charter doesn't mean that there's not, you know, room for the community architect to jump in on something or be involved in other parts of the project. But these are the core parts that I think that are ultimately part of the successful mandate of the role.

[00:12:53] Eric Hendricks: So to date, your different responsibilities definitely change quite a bit based on the season of the year that you're in. But what's kind of a day in the life, kind of a week in the life look like for you? What do you spend a lot of your time focused on?

[00:13:12] Justin Wheeler: Me first or Shaun?

[00:13:15] Eric Hendricks: Let's start with you.

[00:13:17] Justin Wheeler: All right. Well, I think a big part of what my week looks like probably depends on what part of the calendar year it's in. If it's in, like, for example, the first half of the year, that actually ends up being kind of a very full time of events and even flock planning. So in those times, you know, those are the things that are usually getting more priority and focus or things that I'm working on on a more routine basis. So like if we were to pick, you know, let's say a time in like May, the month before Flock, a large part of it would be, you know, working on some of the last bits of maybe, you know, imminent schedule changes, people who are canceling or changing their need to have changes to their slot that they're assigned or people who aren't able to travel anymore, dealing with, you know, last minute, like hotel block issues and talking to hotels and, or venue partners for events and being able to kind of negotiate running, like owning that event kind of work. So that getting ready for that, then there'll be things like running the Fedora Mindshare meeting or Mindshare committee meeting, which is the other kind of split of the Fedora governance model. One of the main responsibilities of the Mindshare committee is part of the supporting the community architect with that budget management work and providing community input on requests that come in from the community. So I think that's probably some of those, like just a snapshot of those things. And some of those things can end up being really quick and short. And sometimes, you know, trying to chase down the right person to get something fixed or addressed and following up to get documentation for something, you know, that can end up taking more time depending on how things go in a day. But the other part is just spending a lot of time in our community channels. The matrix channels, our Fedora discussion, our forums, where we have all different kinds of topics for Fedora users and Fedora contributors. On our Fedora Forge, which is our own self-hosted Forgejo instance, where we do all of our collaboration on our projects. And several other places, if I really wanted to think about it. But those are our key channels that we do a lot of our work in. So a lot of my day also, something will come up or I'll get a notification for a repository I'm following or there's been a new pull request on a project that I'm working on. I'll be able to check in on some of those things throughout the day as well.

[00:15:35] Eric Hendricks: Yeah. And for those that aren't familiar with a lot of Justin's work, I can personally attest to just how easy it is to get a hold of Justin. He is instrumental in us producing this podcast, bringing in topics and scheduling, volunteering, shall we say, guests to come on and talk about different things. As much as I try to keep my finger on the pulse of the Fedora project and bring topics that are timely and applicable, Justin always has had the ear of the community and really does a lot of hard work in just kind of helping the Fedora podcast keep a good pulse on what's going on and bring good information to all of you. So, you know, round of applause for you, Justin. I've really appreciated working with you. And I don't know about your replacement, but we'll deal with him in a second. So before I grill Shaun about his move over to this role, people would like to know, Justin, so what are you doing now? You've got a fancy new title. What's it look like?

[00:16:41] Justin Wheeler: So, you know, this is something that I actually have some, you know, I was hoping to have it ready before the podcast, but on my blog, I'll be sharing a little bit more about some of those things and kind of spelling out my roadmap and things that I'm starting to think about in the role. But part of the experience of changing this job title for me was I also got an opportunity to kind of write my own job description for this role. And it gave me a lot of opportunity to think about what I feel like are the most impactful things and areas that, especially around the rising AI use, not just in Fedora, but even in our wider spaces that we work within. And, you know, I think we need to have a better, you know, engaged contributor body on some of these issues. And so, you know, it gave me a chance to kind of think about what are those things and priorities. And so as I'm getting into this role, part of it is going to be setting out, you know, trying to figure out what a vision or a roadmap or, you know, charter for this might look like, because in truth, there's already a lot of people working around doing various things with or, directly working on AI things or doing hardware enablement for different packages or different driver sets. There's already people doing a lot of work. So being able to understand what is happening in the project and what are people doing already, I think that's going to be something to better understand how do we, as a community interface with this very new and controversial technology that we haven't, there's very strong opinions on both sides about using it. And I don't think that's something that we can take community consent as a guarantee. I think that's something that you have to earn through trust and building different pathways for doing different things that don't compromise each other. So I think there's going to have to be like a lot of figuring it out. But some of the things that I'm looking at in the short term, this one's gotten a lot of attention today is This Week in Fedora, which is this weekly report that another awesome Fedora contributor, Aurelien Bompard, he's developed this, you know, monthly or this tool that will pull from all these different public data sources available in the Fedora contributor space like. Mailing lists and Fedora discussion posts and Fedora meetings and a few other places. And for the most part, it's been like, you know, I think there's definitely, as always, there's not always 100% accuracy. But for a lot of people, it's been the best way to actually get exposure to some of these conversations that are happening and letting people drill down deeper and finding the information that they really want to follow. Because I've always said it for a long time, Fedora is a huge place and it's impossible for any one person to know where everything is. So all that to say this project has started a big conversation recently around. Adding bot that's ingesting chat room messages from a public, but not indexable, perhaps, like not going to show up in a search engine, matrix chat room. And it started a lot of discussion because for some people, they were excited and found that useful. And for other groups, they were caught off guard that they didn't get a chance to give consent for that, for using that, having their chat messages go to the bot. And even though Aurelien always reviews the report every week before it gets published. So he's always going through it. And as much as a human editor could make a mistake or miss something, he tries to catch some of the obvious things that are there. But there's a process also for raising feedback and making it clear where you can report errors. We actually talked about that a little bit earlier in a meeting today. And I think there's some ideas to make that a little bit more clear for people who are visiting the site. But all of this to say, this is one kind of, I'll give the most time to this one because it's kind of a short-term one and ties in. Actually, you might even be able to link to the Freckle recording from the meeting today. Once that gets published, it goes into a lot more detail about that as a discussion topic. We also have things like there's an agent skills library that the AI and ML SIG is working on, hoping to build some better contributor documentation and kind of engagement plan for that repo and that project, and also spending some time with the documentation with the AI and ML SIG in Fedora too, because there's a lot of different documentation out there in Fedora around AI. I want to try to make it easier for people to find the key and updated and correct information. There's more, but those are kind of the short-term things that I'm looking at in areas that, you know, kind of help put together a picture of what is Fedora doing around AI and what, are the things that we can and should do as a community and where are things that we need to be more careful and have more conversations.

[00:21:36] Eric Hendricks: That's awesome. And you've got years of Fedora Community Architect experience that you can now take with you to this new role and sort of try and help tame the Wild West, if you will, of open source AI. I cannot see a downside to this.

[00:21:53] Justin Wheeler: I mean, for me, I knew going into it, it was going to be not an easy thing because not everyone, the verdict's not in on AI and a lot of people have a lot of doubts and uncertainties about it. But, you know, in my experience in the community architect role and in my own personal life, there's been things that I found very useful from this technology. And I see the call to open to me. It's the exciting part of all of this is that, you know, I think we have to, you know, engage in this space so that we can drive for more open ecosystems and open stacks that actually allow us to have greater autonomy over the things that we choose to run and use. I don't think that's the state of the universe at all right now, and it probably won't be for a while. But I think that's the universe that we want to play towards and is kind of the interesting one about how do we figure that out as a community.

[00:22:45] Eric Hendricks: That's awesome. So I want to ask you one last question before I kind of switch gears and talk to Shaun a little bit. Shaun, thank you for kind of hanging with us as we kind of talk about Justin's journey here. But you kind of touched on this a little bit in the blog. But what are some things you want to leave for Shaun? What advice, what words of wisdom can you share with Shaun? Well, I mean, this has been a couple of months in the making. But, you know, just for our audio and video listeners, what are some things you want to leave for Shaun to pick up?

[00:23:18] Justin Wheeler: I mean, I think one of the most practical things about all of this is that like Shaun and I were already working together in the same team at Red Hat. And even though we are changing roles, we still work together and, you know, talk to each other pretty on a regular basis. So I'd say one part, you know, I'm not very far. And so we can work through anything else that comes up because we've had so much time to talk about it and really try to think about what is the best way to do this for the community. That was part of the process, not just me rewriting or writing a job description for my role, but also Shaun, getting to rethink what is this role going to look like and where are the areas that are going to make the most sense to be successful? Where can success happen with this role and in the community? So I think if there's any key advice, I think it's just... Keep working on your time zone math because that's the hardest part of time.

[00:24:11] Eric Hendricks: You're not wrong.

[00:24:12] Justin Wheeler: Yeah, never mind that some people don't even have time zone changes and some people do them at different times. Anyways, yeah, it's one of the fun parts. You never know. Stay flexible. You never know what time everyone is working on or what clock people are working on.

[00:24:26] Shaun McCance: That 30-minute time zone offset in India kind of breaks my brain,

[00:24:30] Eric Hendricks: Actually. That's no kidding. Awesome. Well, thank you, Justin. So Shaun, anybody that knows Shaun and I, or have seen the two of us interact in person, know that we rib each other often, but that usually is followed by about a 30 minute conversation about Marvel or comics or any number of things. So if you hear me giving Shaun a hard time, it's because he's a good buddy of mine and I would be doing him a disservice if I didn't give him a hard time for just anything really. But Shaun, tell me, people can go back and listen to the episode about CentOS. But I kind of want to focus in on what has kind of been your role as a CentOS community architect? What's kind of a day in the life? Kind of talk to us about this position from the CentOS perspective.

[00:25:19] Shaun McCance: Sure. I mean, I think it's similar to a lot of what Justin discussed. There are mirrors of some of the responsibilities and the organizational structures. So, you know, we have CentOS Connect as our main contributor event. It's our flock. I say our, like it's all ours at this point, but it's the CentOS contributor event, right? And so like putting that on, being an active part of the CentOS Promo SIG, which I guess is probably the closest analog of the Mindshare committee in Fedora, although the Mindshare is... I think it's higher in the organizational structure. Like it has an actual real defined leadership role. It actually gets a representative on council. So like within Fedora, Mindshare is a, I don't want to say a bigger deal, but it's organizationally higher on a hierarchy, I guess. But still, the Promo SIG within CentOS manages event presence and social media, all the various basically non-technical aspects of like, let's promote the project. So if we had a CentOS podcast, it would be under the Promo SIG. So, but we don't have Eric running that for us.

[00:26:36] Eric Hendricks: So funny. You mentioned that because you, I think you and I in 2021 were actually in talks about starting a CentOS. You know what?

[00:26:43] Shaun McCance: I actually, I actually did do like, I think one episode I called it connections and I interviewed Justin. On the floor at Red Hat Summit, maybe 2021.

[00:26:56] Eric Hendricks: That must have been when we talked about it because we talked about it, but you're like, yeah, I'm going to try it out and I'll definitely tap you for any advice and that kind of thing. It was like, okay, I'll just go and volunteer to help with the Fedora podcast. And long-time listeners know that I volunteered to help co-host or be a guest on the podcast every now and then. And within about three or four days, Matthew Miller had basically told me, hey, the podcast is yours. Do with it what you will. wait a minute here

[00:27:22] Shaun McCance: Yeah so i dipped my toes and uh it turns out it's a lot of like work to keep a podcast running so

[00:27:29] Eric Hendricks: Don't what don't i know it

[00:27:33] Shaun McCance: So anyway, so there's that. And then I don't know what there's, there's budget management is a lot of that. And there's, there's actually a lot of interfacing. There might be more of this in the CentOS project, I think interfacing with internally with, with engineering and the business units to, to make sure that the things that we're doing are, it's not that Red Hat calls all of the shots within CentOS, but they, you know, Red Hat has certain interests. CentOS Stream is, of course, completely Red Hat controlled, but the SIG content is not. So just making sure that everybody's happy. So I think some of these communications internally within Red Hat with engineering and business leaders are maybe something that in the Fedora side that the FPL might have some of those communications, but we don't have a – there's no CPL, right? So those are things that maybe fall on the CentOS Community Architect that are unique.

[00:28:31] Eric Hendricks: And if you're new to some of the acronyms, FPL is Fedora Project Lead, by the way. And then Shaun mentioned a CPL, which would be the CentOS Project Lead, which is interesting. It doesn't really exist.

[00:28:43] Shaun McCance: Yeah, like there's a CentOS Stream Team Lead that's an internal position at Red Hat, but it's not what the FPL is. So, yeah.

[00:28:53] Eric Hendricks: So what do you hope to, what experiences and processes do you hope to bring from your CCA, CentOS Community Architect position, to this one.

[00:29:07] Shaun McCance: Well, all of them. I mean, I think I'm an experienced, I know how to put events on. I'm good at budgets. I've been treasurer of, I've lost count, I think five or six organizations at this point. I was treasurer of the GNOME Foundation for many, many years, actually. So I've done a lot of that type of work and logistics and stuff. I think there's a lot of, Fedora is such a broad project. So I know how to handle the logistics of doing things, but I think there's almost a daunting amount of wrapping my head around the breadth of the project and what everybody's doing. And, you know, as you mentioned earlier, how how how how Justin like has his finger on the pulse of the project. So, you know, getting all of that, I think, is is a I don't want to say a challenge that it can't be done, but like it's it's it's certainly a something to rise to.

[00:30:07] Eric Hendricks: That's awesome. So one of the things that I've heard you both kind of mention is sort of the duplication of responsibilities. Since you're retaining your role as the CentOS Community Architect and kind of picking up the Fedora responsibilities, how is this going to help streamline the process for both communities? Sure.

[00:30:29] Shaun McCance: There's a lot of behind-the-scenes work that doesn't need to be done differently. Actually, over this year, already before this role transition, Justin and I were doing shared budget management. So we have project codes. So Fedora has a project code for internal bookkeeping stuff. We have one for CentOS. Fedora has two because it has an internal one and one that's external. And the Mindshare committee is supposed to vote on things like travel sponsorships, which they do. And so this year, actually, Justin and I did our kind of our internal budget management with a shared spreadsheet, you know, so like we, there's still an external process to these budgets, right? We're not merging them, but internally, it's like we can just kind of do one thing and not duplicate efforts. There's just a lot of some of our, like social media, you want there to be separate social media accounts. There should be Fedora social media accounts and CentOS social media accounts. But there are management platforms we can use where, you know, we can easily just post to whichever accounts we need to. And in particular, I think the event management aspect. So Flock, of course, we'll want to have Flock again next year. CentOS Connect, we will have next year. CentOS Connect will be january 28th and 29th let me make sure i said that correctly january and 28th and 29th of 2027 in brussels that is the two days before FOSDEM which is the 30th and the 31st so the the website will be updated as soon as the contract clears the procurement team which is just stuff we have to do you know but it's it's already it's in flight It will happen. But some of the stuff around like the putting on an event like this, you know, leaning on events team and some of the teams that we build up around doing program committee work. You know, if we can share more of that load, I think a lot of it gets easy, easier on the CentOS side. Like Amy Marrich has been super helpful in putting on CentOS Connect and on the Fedora side, like Aoife Moloney is freaking amazing. So like, I don't know, can I get both of them on both events? That would be really cool. I don't wanna volunteer them for anything, but. Certainly, sharing the workload on some of that stuff, I think, could help everything more smoothly.

[00:33:00] Eric Hendricks: First off, that was very, very clever how you snuck in the dates for CentOS Connect, which, I mean, here we are in September already. So I was like, man, that seems so far away. But no, it's not. So well done sneaking in the CentOS Connect dates. That was nice. We'll put a link to the Connect page in the show notes as well. That way, as soon as it's updated, you can check out all the details for that. But second of all, I've been to a number of events, open source and Linux related. And anytime I see Fedora, there's usually CentOS as well and vice versa. In fact, it was kind of funny at scale earlier in the year, you all just combine booths to make this one extra large booth on the end cap of an aisle. And so when you just look down the aisle, all you see is just Red Hat themed stuff. There is Fedora and CentOS. So I think that's a beautiful visual of what we're doing here. The projects are staying separate. There's no merger of projects. There's no changing of intended audience, technical or otherwise. Both projects are very, very specific roles to very, very specific parts of the industry. So none of that is changing. All that's changing is you're redoing the piping inside the walls. To the casual viewer, to the Fedora desktop user, to the CentOS stream server administrator. Nothing really is going to change, but what we're doing is just freeing up so much more time and energy in the back end. Planning an event is planning an event, whether it's in Brussels or the United States. Obviously, there's a little bit of difference, but it's still just event planning. Managing the platform underneath social media. There's so many open source projects that help you schedule and publish social media to multiple platforms. And you don't have to have different tools to accomplish the same job. So all you're doing is just cleaning up the piping. Instead of running parallel pipes, just run one. I think it'll really, really help make promotion and administration of both these projects a lot easier.

[00:34:59] Shaun McCance: I hope so.

[00:35:02] Eric Hendricks: Otherwise, it's a lot of work. So, Shaun, you've officially been in the role for about two months now. What are your current priorities?

[00:35:14] Shaun McCance: Flock, actually, is a big one, believe it or not. It feels like... So true. Yeah, for real. And we're like three months out from CentOS Connect and probably, you know, nine months out from Flock. And yet Flock is, I think, actually the bigger lift. There's just more moving parts with it. So getting a location, a venue, a date, nailed down very soon is a big priority. And then I think some of the stuff with Flock becomes, you know, not so urgent once you get that piece. So that's a big one. And then besides Flock, which I'm fairly comfortable with, like I've been involved with Flock organizing, so I'm not coming in completely cold on that. A lot of it is still just kind of figuring out the processes around different teams and making sure that I'm, you know, respecting all the right boundaries. And like I worked on a Fedora magazine article recently and like just knowing the Fedora magazine process for submission and so learning all those those learning the ropes basically of how things are done in different different aspects of the community.

[00:36:31] Eric Hendricks: Yeah, it's interesting when you talk about events the size of Flock or Scale or Connect, I would conservatively think that events take about 13 months to plan. By the time that you're ready to launch one event, you're already having to plan that same event for the very next year. From nailing down dates to venues to locations, it's so much work. I see Justin kind of nodding his head here.

[00:36:59] Shaun McCance: And one of the things that makes CentOS Connect easier is that we just always co-locate with FOSDEM. And so that takes that question off the table. We know we're the two days before FOSDEM. We've got a venue we like. So, yeah, it can definitely, putting on an event can take a longer time than people realize. And it's a team lift always.

[00:37:23] Justin Wheeler: Yeah. And the community feedback part is also, I think, one of the unique parts of all of it with Flock.

[00:37:31] Shaun McCance: Hey, you mentioned scale, Eric. We did last year, I don't know, did you come in on the Hatch event that we did?

[00:37:40] Eric Hendricks: No, I didn't actually know what was going on until I got there and had already made plans for how my trip was going to go. I was so upset that I missed it.

[00:37:50] Shaun McCance: We need to better publicize that. We would like to do something like that again.

[00:37:54] Eric Hendricks: Yeah, thanks. For our audio listeners, Justin just pointed at Shaun and like that's on you. And maybe a little bit on me, being one of the Fedora podcast hosts, maybe we should promote that kind of thing a little bit better.

[00:38:08] Shaun McCance: We did a half-day Fedora Hatch event, and it was kind of aimed at, to some extent, users, but largely at, is this a place where we could pick up new contributors? And here are some ways that you could contribute to the Fedora project. And so it was like, there was a packaging workshop, but there was also, Justin did a thing on the docs team and the docs initiative and get involved with that. So we would really like to do that again. I don't have that firmly in place, but Scale is a wonderful event. We always enjoy going and doing stuff.

[00:38:40] Eric Hendricks: Oh, gosh. This year was my first time at Scale, and it was fantastic.

[00:38:46] Shaun McCance: Good. Well, I hope you come back, and I hope we're able to pull something off again.

[00:38:51] Eric Hendricks: That is the plan. I'm hoping to continue to go to some of these events. Speaking of, Justin and Shaun, I will put this question out to both of you. Obviously, we have CentOS Connect coming just barely a quarter away. I cannot believe 2026 is already three-quarters the way done. But are there other events where Fedora and CentOS are going to be present?

[00:39:14] Shaun McCance: Yeah, I'll point out in just a couple of weeks here's DevConf US. That's in two weeks on September 24th and 25th. That's in Boston. But we will have a shared booth there. I think last time you asked me about upcoming events, I forgot to say Texas Linux Fest, and then Amy got mad at me. So she's a good friend. It's all in good. Texas Linux Fest is in November.

[00:39:48] Eric Hendricks: First weekend in November, if I remember correctly. In fact, I'm trying to work out logistics to go down there. I've got a talk that's been selected, and I know Fedora and CentOS will both be there.

[00:39:57] Shaun McCance: Yeah, we will, and I hope to see you there. So yeah, so DevConf and Texas Linux Fest, we will be at scale in some capacity or another. I don't have the logistics nailed down on a Hatch event yet, but at the very least, there will be a booth. Like, we're always there. Have I missed anything?

[00:40:20] Eric Hendricks: DevConf and Texas Linux Fest were the two that I was thinking of. What about, what is it, All Things Open?

[00:40:26] Shaun McCance: Oh, yeah, we do. I'm not personally attending. I like All Things Open, but I can't attend everything. Yes, I believe we intend to have a, the All Things Open booths for community projects, for the not paid company things, they're like cocktail tables in a community booth space. That means the table is smaller and there's less room for a lot of branding and we probably can't put up two banners and whatever so it'll probably just look like a fedora booth but we'll we'll throw a couple cent to us stickers on the table but we yeah we are approved for that so we will have a some presence there at ato that's a nice event for people in the raleigh area

[00:41:10] Eric Hendricks: Yeah and in red hat's backyard so that makes it makes it really easy for a bunch of folks to to attend And I don't think I'm going to be able to make that one this year. But definitely a good event. I've heard nothing but good things from across the industry for ATO.

[00:41:25] Shaun McCance: They make the best t-shirts of any event I've been to. That's true.

[00:41:31] Eric Hendricks: That's important.

[00:41:32] Shaun McCance: Yeah.

[00:41:33] Eric Hendricks: That's important. I've worked for companies that don't have a good swag game. So, you know, that's important. Coming away with all the right t-shirts. Actually, this Podman shirt came from an event. But yeah, that's important. So, as we kind of wrap up this episode, Justin, I wanted to open the floor back up to you. Thanks for sticking around as we kind of chatted with Shaun. But any closing thoughts, anything as we kind of close this chapter with Justin Wheeler being the Fedora Community Architect? Anything you want to impart to the audience?

[00:42:06] Justin Wheeler: I guess maybe the first thing is just be patient with me. But no, but, you know, I think in a lot of sense, I think Shaun is set up to be really awesome in this role. Like one of the things that maybe wasn't coming, if it wasn't clear, you know, he also has a really awesome background and experience with doing things like accounting and event organization and all the stuff that you really have to be on top of as the Fedora Community Architect. And I think the role and all of the things that he's responsible for are in great hands. And I think I'll hopefully try to be. I'm hoping as I get into figuring out what that vision and view of the future for AI is in Fedora, I'm really just excited to work with people to try to figure that out. And to, you know, also for me, you know, to work on active listening as a skill, and trying to figure out what are the ways that we, you know, not just use and, you know, interface with this technology, but also how do we influence it in the ways that align with our values and beliefs, you know, around our four foundations and Fedora or, you know, our commitments to free software and open source. So, you know, I think just, you know, there's gonna be a lot of exploration, But I'm hopeful that people will be willing to help be a part of figuring that out together. And that's what's going to help us get to something that we're all actually, you know, at least willing to be have some sense of achievement and influence in the space.

[00:43:37] Eric Hendricks: That's awesome. Shaun, how about you? Closing thoughts?

[00:43:40] Shaun McCance: I have to top that.

[00:43:42] Eric Hendricks: Good luck.

[00:43:46] Shaun McCance: Look, I look forward to the new challenges and the new opportunities in the role. You know, I think I bring some experience, but maybe I bring some entrenched thoughts that I might have to rethink on how certain things get done. And this is, as I said, like all of this is a team lift and we've we've been moving kind of internally into a model where it's it's it's not just a single person is responsible for everything. Like we have a team of people. And so while my name might be attached to, you know, a specific public facing role, it's like I still, you know, I can still ping Justin anytime I want. And I've got other people internally as well. So I look forward to, I don't know, all of the opportunities and to just continuing to work with the people that I have within Red Hat that are amazing. And also the entire really amazing Fedora community is full of just really, I think, wonderful people. And that's why we're all here.

[00:44:56] Eric Hendricks: I would agree with that. But you realize this change in role means you have to deal with me more often, right?

[00:45:04] Shaun McCance: Oh, I quit then. Bye.

[00:45:08] Eric Hendricks: Justin has dealt with so many requests for me and like, hey, can we do this? And what about this for the podcast? Have you thought about this? And so now that you've kind of settled in, those requests will start. So my apologies in advance. But sorry, not sorry.

[00:45:23] Shaun McCance: I think it's great. And I think the people have noticed how much the podcast has taken off and how much of an impact it's made.

[00:45:34] Eric Hendricks: Justin, you came off mute there. You wanted to chime in?

[00:45:39] Justin Wheeler: It's really a great way to showcase the different voices of the project. I was going to say, if you need me to give them some more suggestions to keep them off you, Shaun, just let me know. I'll keep them busy.

[00:45:49] Eric Hendricks: No joke. I applauded Justin earlier, but this story bears telling. I told him earlier in the summer that we were a little light on topics and I could use some inspiration. And so I'd even gone out to my not insignificant LinkedIn community or to my LinkedIn page and posted, hey, I'm hosting this Fedora project podcast thing. And if you're involved in the community, I would love to connect with you let's talk let's get an episode scheduled justin jumped in i think tagged somewhere close to 20 people with about 15 topics that are sitting in the backlog No joke like at least 20 people and 15 topics so that said by the way over the last few weeks a little bit of show show cleanup here a little little inside baseball so if if you're interested in the fedora podcast more than just listening, definitely kind of lean in close to your speaker right now. By the way, I have moved a lot of our episode guides, our episode topic backlog into Forgejo or Forgejo, however we're saying it. Go to forge.fedoraproject.org slash podcast. You can see who we've got tagged to be on an episode. I try and keep that as updated as possible. You can see backlogs of these episodes. I'm moving a lot of that into the podcast repository. That way we can track that information. I'd like to start putting in processes and that kind of thing into the wiki. But, you know, life has been kind of lifey lately. So I haven't had a lot of time to focus on that. But that is the goal and the plan. And the reason why I say that is one of the things that I want to do, and Justin called this out earlier, was This Week in Fedora is an amazing source for information on what's going on. In fact, it is something that this particular podcast host is using to help kind of tailor topics and ideas. So if someone out there... Is interested in helping out the Fedora podcast, I have a specific ask. If you want to help out the podcast, but you don't want to be on mic, you don't want to be on camera, that's not your thing, I totally get it. This was not always what I thought I was going to do with my career. But the Fedora podcast still needs you. Because what I could really use is someone to kind of come in and help me with the administrative side of the podcast. If someone could come in and engage with the people on our list, engage with Noah and myself and help schedule episodes, I would really, really appreciate the help. My schedule right now as a single father and as someone whose career is a little bit in flux, I would really appreciate the help for someone to come in and just kind of lend a hand. And Shaun, I just had a brilliant idea for something that you and I could tag team is as you hear of specific needs within the Fedora community, mention those to me and we'll do this kind of in our episode wrap up. I would love to mention, hey, this team, this SIG is specifically looking for someone to do this thing. So our not insignificant audience, it's so much easier for someone to jump in and help if there's a specific ask instead of, hey, open source needs you. Instead of having a specific ask for a specific project or a specific team, I think that's something that we could help the community out with from this particular podcast. So I just submitted the first one. I could really use a producer-type person. You wouldn't have to be on air. You'd be in the background. So if that sounds like you, definitely reach out to me on Matrix. Speaking of, you can join the Fedora Project podcast Matrix Room. There is a link in the show notes. And as well, check out a few episodes ago, Noah and I actually talked about how to get involved with Fedora in general. So we talked about Matrix. We talked about Forgejo. We talked about just some of the different communities within the Fedora community. Yeah. Definitely check that episode out as well. So I know this episode is coming out just a little bit late this week, but life has been hectic. So we do still have plans to talk to Scott McCarty and team about Project Hummingbird. I'm excited about that episode coming up here in a few weeks. Well, we should have Noah back in the next episode. And I know that we have like 15 topics or series of topics even in the backlog that I hope to get on the show real soon. So definitely you want to hit that subscribe button and tell a friend because the Fedora podcast is growing and we're trying to make it even better every single episode. So with that said, on behalf of my guest, Shaun McCance, the now Fedora and CentOS community architect, and Justin Wheeler, our outgoing Fedora community architect, now the AI alignment community architect, I've been your host, Eric, the IT guy Hendricks, and I really appreciate you all tuning in and we'll see you again in just a couple of weeks. Thanks, y'all.

[00:50:34] Justin Wheeler: Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Eric, for all your work.

[00:50:37] Eric Hendricks: Happy to do it.