Day One - Flock To Fedora 2025

05th June 2025 was the first day of the Flock To Fedora 2025 conference proceedings, and it began for me with waking up as early as 0430am Central European Summer Time. While I had the alarm set for a couple of hours later, I struggled with sleeping on the soft bed and instead decided to begin my daily schedule. I had planned with Michal Konecny to head over to the event venue together, but it would not be for another four hours, so I had plenty of time to have a chat with my family in India. I also connected with the likes of Ankur Sinha, who was arriving at the Vienna House Andel Prague early that day, as I was working with him for the Fedora Join SIG talk. At around 0630am Central European Summer Time, I headed downstairs to meet up with folks like Alexander Bokovoy, Frantisek Lachman, Lenka Segura, and Lukas Brabec in the breakfast area.

I decided to share some snacks that I brought from India with Tomas Hrcka before heading downstairs for the breakfast. I had ordered a cab for Yashwanth Rathakrishnan, and he had arrived at Ibis Praha Mala Strana by around 0800am Central European Summer Time. With a bunch of us finishing up our breakfasts, we decided to head off for the event venue. On reaching there, I realized that even though I had around four talks selected for the event, I had forgotten to register for it as an attendee! I assumed it would be a sane default for a speaker to be automatically registered as an attendee, but my assumption was clearly misplaced. I left the queue and spent some time registering for the event on the Eventbrite platform before rejoining to claim the amazing Flock To Fedora 2025 tee, event badge and Fedora Linux 42 "Don't Panic" towel from the event reception.

The reception desk was staffed by the likes of Greg Sutcliffe and Luis Bazan, who made themselves available for the first slot of the event, thus taking on the majority wave of the enthusiastic attendees. After catching up with those at the reception, I moved to the hallway track, where I met up with Michael Scherer and David Cantrell. I was super ecstatic to meet Ankur Sinha, with whom I was finally meeting in person after such a long time, as he had onboarded me to the beautiful Fedora Project community about six years ago. We headed into the plenary hall to attend the Opening Remarks and the Fedora Project Leader Exchange sessions after some time. Matthew Miller went into detail about how things had changed over the years with him at the helm of the Fedora Project community, before passing on the serving responsibilities to the newly recruited Jef Spaleta.

A magical experience like this is not something you get to see every day, as the talk was much more significant than just being a presentation. The responsibilities of the Fedora Project Leader were being passed on to another pair of hands, and we had interesting times ahead of us. Jef also shared his experiences with his previous employments that brought him here and what his vision looked like for the Fedora Project community. Following this session, we had an Ask Me Anything session with the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee. After the elected members introduced themselves to the attendees, I took the opportunity to ask a couple of questions to the FESCo ensemble: one about the role of artificial intelligence technologies in the future of the Fedora Project, and the other about the extent of FESCo's involvement in evaluating and supporting community initiatives.

The event was followed by a refreshment break, and the plenary hall was soon to be divided into three parts: Opal, Topaz, and Quartz, for three parallel tracks of sessions. I avoided the bakery items served there, as I had limited myself to only the greens for roughage and fluids for circulation. I headed back into the plenary hall for the next couple of talks related to the Forgejo Fedora initiative and Bazzite Fedora downstream, starting at 1130am Central European Summer Time. With some interesting findings from the planned features of Forgejo and the gaming impact made by Bazzite, it was soon time for the lunch break, where we assembled for the Mentor Mentee Lunch and Learn session. I helped Jona Azizaj assemble the participants for the event, heading off to join my assigned group titled "Fedora Infrastructure - Software Development" to share my lunch chat with.

Our group consisted of four people, with Aurelien Bompard acting as the group mentor, while Smera Goel, Jona, and I acted as group mentees for the interaction. While my meal mostly consisted of some bland celery salad, seasoned Tuna cuts, and boiled Chicken meat, the conversations we shared were absolutely flavorful. Once we were done with the meal, I caught up with Ankur again, who was occupied finishing off some of his work, and with Aurelien and Michael, who were discussing just how easy (read, difficult) it would be for members to be able to rename their Fedora Project Account System usernames. At around 0230pm Central European Summer Time, I also met with Luis and Alexandra Fedorova, whom I congratulated for being among the winners of the Fedora Mindshare and Fedora Council elections, respectively, in the Fedora Linux 42 electoral term.

I briefly returned to the dining area to share conversations with the likes of Julia Bley, Nikita Tripathi, and Sumantro Mukherjee before leaving to find Greg and obtain a custom 3D-printed Fedora Project logo keychain from him. I also went ahead and shared some snacks and spices that I was carrying in my backpack with him in the hallway track. It was soon 0345 pm Central European Summer Time, which meant it was the time for yet another round of refreshments to be served (and avoided, on my part). After a brief conversation with Ant Carrol and Ankur on onboarding, we headed into the Topaz hall to deliver the talk on the Fedora Join SIG at around 0400pm Central European Summer Time. While the talk was received well, I did realize that I had over-optimized for the time and ended up glossing over some details that could have been helpful in providing context.

Ankur had been a stellar orator, as usual, and he ended the second half of our presentation, consisting of the call to action for the community members, with pure elegance. As our talk ended, the Topaz hall was repurposed for yet another Ask Me Anything session by the Community Linux Engineering management. I wanted to stay back for the session, but I also wanted to attend Greg's talk on community building in the Quartz hall at the same time. I ended up choosing the latter and swiftly found myself a place to sit at around 0430pm Central European Summer Time. He remarked in a chat we shared after his talk that the version of this presentation he delivered at DevConf.CZ previously was better than this one - which made absolutely no sense to me, as he was absolutely phenomenal here as well - so much so that it made me want to be possibly as amazing a speaker as him.

I decided to head back to the hotel with Sumantro and wondered whether I would want to make it to the International Candy Swap event, which was going to take place in an arcade store with limited seating. That was, of course, going to happen after the planned Community Linux Engineering team dinner at 0600pm Central European Summer Time, lasting for a couple of hours. On our way out, I ran into Aoife Moloney, who checked with me about how my talk went - a gesture I really appreciated, as I was still feeling down with how my Fedora Join SIG talk could have been better. After the supportive conversation with her, I decided to use the learnings from that day to enhance the upcoming talks the next day. Sumantro briefly introduced me to Debarshi Ray, after which Fabian Arrotin, Yashwanth, Sumantro, and I were on our way back to the hotel to quickly get freshened up.

While I had booked a taxi using the Bolt service for Yashwanth's return, I had to cancel it as he was also invited to the Community Linux Engineering team dinner at the last moment. As I headed downstairs with Michal to the reception area, I was surprised by Ant in traditional Indian dress, i.e., Kurta, along with Samyak Jain, which was a good sight to see. We marched towards a nearby restaurant for some quick dinner bites at around 0615pm Central European Summer Time, and the food was swiftly served. Yashwanth, Matthew, and I had to wait for some time to get our hands on some bird meat while being seated near the likes of Tomas, Lukas, Kamil Paral, and Lukas Ruzicka. I sipped on some Red Bull that I had ordered as the beverage, as I was barely able to keep my eyes open after having barely five hours of sleep the previous night while waiting for food.

As Michal was about to leave for the International Candy Swap after getting some homemade bakery items from the hotel, I decided to depart as well since I was satisfied. I also decided not to attend the following event, as I had forgotten about it with all the things I was occupied with, and it would not have looked good if I were to turn up there without something to offer. Additionally, I was not quite sure if I would have found a place there, as the venue for the event had a maximum capacity of only fifty people, and I wanted to give this opportunity to someone else who was probably attending it for the first time. After waiting for Yashwanth and Sumantro for five minutes or so, Michal and I were started on our way back to the hotel, where we met up with Sherif Nagy. Sumantro and I briefly met at the hotel before heading over to TESCO to make some needed purchases.

We (coincidentally and hilariously) happened to run into Ant a couple of times while visiting the Nový Smíchov Shopping Centre, as we were waiting to hear back from Yashwanth on his safe departure from the dining place. At TESCO, I purchased a pair of boots for my brother, Soumadeep Dhar, who was getting married that year, and a clamcase carrier for the remaining luggage, as with all the goods I received from Tomas, the space would clearly not have been enough. On my return to the hotel reception, I requested for my room to be cleaned due to hygiene issues, but as cleaners were not available, I was moved from #225 to #517. After a quick inspection of the changed room, I moved my things over at around 0930pm Central European Summer Time. I got myself freshened up and decided to call it a day a bit early to catch up on some well-deserved respite.