Day One Part VI - Flock To Fedora 2023

As I could not have a taste of all the enticing snacks arranged on the table, I decided to pack one of each that I could not try so that I could experience those cultures on my tastebuds later. This is where I came across folks like Nikita Tripathi, who had previously participated in the community as an Outreachy intern for the Fedora Design team, Anushka Jain, who had previously participated in the community as an Outreachy Intern for the Fedora Documentation team and Krista Burdine, who worked in the Rocky Linux community management at the time of writing this article. Like always, it had been fun to meet up with new people but the experience became better with the tasty snacks.

At around 0830 pm Ireland Standard Time, Aoife Moloney and Stefan Mattejiet gathered four groups of people from those who registered previously around and gave them their distinctive-sounding buzzers. Like always, we had the best activity for the day kept as the last to ensure that the first day of the event ended with a metaphorical blast - it was the time for the "Fedora Pub Quiz - Flock Edition"! The rules had a twist as the activity not only involved questions but also a bunch of jumping around that could not only be done by the participants but could also be delegated to audience members. David called it a day and I was left with Michal Konecny and his girlfriend, who were late to register for the event.

Thanks to the twist in the event, we were not limited to just cheering and heckling as a part of the audience as we could also participate in the activities delegated by the registered teams. The camaraderie that I experienced amidst all the competitiveness amongst the teams was absolutely engrossing - keeping in mind that these teams had a mixture of folks from a variety of communities and organizations, hailing from a diverse set of cultures from across the globe. One of the people who stood out the most to me during these games was Clement Verna, who worked as a manager for the Core OS team at the time of writing this article, and who was a livewire throughout the activities of the event.

Being the cheerful and helpful person that he is, he also has been someone who plugged my talk that I delivered earlier that day about "Fedora Websites and Apps Community Revamp Retrospective" on Twitter (or X). Michal and I soon found ourselves recommending each other for the delegation of fun activities to the audience and for those activities that we could complete successfully, there were others that we finished in one try. Even the questions in this activity had a twist involved as a bunch of those questions required knowledge about Ireland and its culture. We soon found the teams skirmishing for getting themselves an Irish person on their rosters who could help answer those questions.

In the end, while I could not recall which team emerged victorious from the total of four - it was evident that everyone participating in the event both within the teams as well as participants had loads of fun. Aoife and Stefan had also prepared a bunch of prizes to be distributed amongst the winners and even those from the audience who participated were invited to make a selection. Michal chose a pair of googly eyes for himself while I chose a small metallic bottle for storing liquor. As it was getting a bit late in the day at around 1000 pm Ireland Standard Time, we decided to get our dinner meals and drinks arranged in the same place and head back to our rooms to prepare for what the second day had to offer.