Day Two - CentOS Connect 2025

I should not have stayed up late the previous night - This thought crossed my mind when I heard the alarm go off at around 0500am Central European Time on the second day of CentOS Connect 2025. On 31st January 2025, we had a bunch of talks planned since the morning and I did not want to miss out on a collection that I had planned on attending. I checked with Greg Sutcliffe who was in the dining area already so while I could have used some more rest, I decided to head down after getting freshened up. After going through my documentation to check the estimated action and projected estimate, I headed down for breakfast. I followed up with Amita Sharma's request to confirm some important details about the Fedora Project's presence during DevConf.IN 2025 while sticking to a light meal.

At around 0700am Central European Time, Sumantro Mukherjee arrived at the dining area right around the time Greg and I were about to leave and he decided to join us a bit later in the day. Heading down to track number #2 of the Port De Namur station, Greg purchased a collection of tickets for the train ride while I decided to rely on my credit card for the expenses. Funnily enough, we had the exit unblocked at the Rogier station - which was super helpful for a confused Greg who ended up keeping the ticket that we used back in the collection he had. On our way to the DoubleTree by Hilton Brussels City, Greg remarked how happy he was after joining the Red Hat Community Linux Engineering team in a technical role after his stint in the community management role in the Red Hat Ansible community.

While it was cloudy on that day - the two of us were glad that the rain had paused for a brief period of time in the morning. We made it to the CentOS Connect 2025 reception desk to find Amy Marrich and Dorka Volavkova in the empty venue. We were soon joined by Michel Lind there with whom I caught up with conversations while Greg was getting himself registered for the event. As he was attending the CHAOSScon EU 2025 event the day before, this was the first day of attendance for him here. I also met up with Fabian Arrotin with whom I shared some Indian snacks, namely Chakli, before wishing him luck for the first talk that he had on that day. At around 0900am Central European Time, I dropped off my bags in the cloakroom and left to attend the talk on CentOS Infra SIG Review And Updates.

I shared conversations with Neal Gompa, Mike McLean, and Sherif Nagy in the event corridor before finding a seating beside Michel in the Chestnut Hall. This talk was followed by the presentation on the CentOS Hyperscale SIG Update by Davide Cavalca and Neal at around 0945am Central European Time. I stayed back for the talk on CentOS Alternate Images SIG Update presentation by Troy Dawson at around 1015am Central European Time before heading out into the event corridor again. I met up with Sumantro who had arrived at the event venue by then and Julia Bley, who was giving a tour to her partner, Olaf Bley-Steglich, who was visiting a technical conference for the first time. His innocent inquisitiveness about how Red Hat does business around free and open source felt endearing to me.

At around 1130am Central European Time, I decided to bide my time into working on my planning around the Fedora Project presence at DevConf.IN 2025 while I was anxiously waiting for Justin W. Flory to arrive at the event. In the meanwhile, I also had conversations with Dorka who mentioned of her inability to help with the Fedora Project presence as she would be busy helping out with DevConf.IN 2025. Brian Profitt mentioned about his presence during DevConf.IN 2025 and volunteered to help with the transit of the booth resources that we would need in Pune - a welcome gesture that I was very appreciative of. In the cloakroom, Julia, Sumantro and I discussed around the feasibility of the Fedora Project presence during DevConf.IN 2025 and just how close we were cutting it to the actual event.

After a thorough discussion of the state of affairs, we kept ourselves open to the possibility of having to cancel the organization. Subjective to the budget that we might end up getting, I regarded that the event would be not worth organizing if we were not properly resourced for the same. While I provided Devang Parikh, Rajan Shah and Amita with a tentative nod, it was only after the discussion with Justin that I was able to move ahead. We kicked around for a while in the cloakroom with David Fan and Jess Chitas before heading over for lunch to the event corridor at around 0100pm Central European Time. While we were waiting for Justin's arrival, Sumantro and I shared our lunch consisting of a Greek Bowl with salmon salad while having conversations with Rich Bowen and Carl George.

I shared with Rich just how the Red Hat Community Platform Engineering team had changed since his departure from the team - covering stories from the renaming of the team and the merger of engineers with quality assurance. It was also interesting to know just how free and open source software communities were perceived and worked with from within the Amazon Web Services teams - where Rich was employed with then. At around 0130pm Central European Time, Justin had arrived at the event venue and we headed inside the cloakroom to have the discussion about the Fedora Project's presence during DevConf.IN 2025. The room seemed to be a lot more occupied than before but that did not stop me from swiftly getting him to speed about the situation and the requirements for the event.

Given the limited period of time that we had before the DevConf.IN 2025 event, my primary resource of swags would have to be the leftovers from the Fedora Project booth at FOSDEM 2025. I was seeking funding for the travel and stay for Samyak Jain and Sumantro among other expenses like dining - the total estimated projection of which came around to be around 2000 USD. As the timing would have had it, all that Justin could reliably provide us with from Fedora Mindshare was barely 150 USD which would very clearly not be enough. While I was advised to keep the plan open to a minimal execution, I decided to reach out to Rajan and Devang with a declination notice for the Fedora Project booth as I promised them by the end of business on that day so that they could proceed ahead without us.

After clearing the confusion around the ownership of the Fedora Project's presence during the event which was mistakenly considered to be Amita's instead of mine, we decided to start early from the next edition of DevConf.IN onwards. The only way with which we could avoid a disappointment like the one we just had would be to kick off the planning early during the next edition of DevConf.IN. With the notice being shared to the DevConf.IN 2025 organizer, Sumantro, Justin and I discussed about the plans around the Fedora Project presence around the Asia Pacific region. We also considered pivoting away from our existing presence to other events that we did not previously consider like COSCUP and representing the Fedora Project community there instead for wider outreach and ambassadorship.

I decided to reach out to the folks from COSCUP at their booth presence during FOSDEM 2025 and we departed for the Chestnut Hall to Mike's talk on Building RPMs in Konflux at around 0400pm Central European Time. On my way to the presentation, I got in touch with Julia and Dorka about the cancellation of the Fedora Project's presence during DevConf.IN 2025. After a quick group photo with all the attendees, speakers and organizers at the event corridor, we headed inside to attend some of the last talks. Before I departed from the event at around 0530pm Central European Time, the event guests from the Red Hat Community Linux Engineering team gathered around for a quick set of photographs - before Sumantro and I headed over to the cloakroom of the event to fetch our belongings.

While there was a waffle party planned by the CentOS Connect 2025 folks in Grand Place at 0830pm Central European Time, I thought of not attending that as I wanted to take care of the Fedora Project during the first day of FOSDEM 2025 early next morning. As we made it into the cloakroom, Sumantro and I were super pleasantly surprised to meet with Peter Boy with whom we were meeting after a long time. After clicking a couple of pictures with him and Justin with whom he was discussing details - the two of us decided to head back to the hotel. I decided not to attend the FLOSS Foundations dinner sponsored by Google as I did not have enough company from the Fedora Project and CentOS Project. Instead, I decided to rely on a takeaway for dinner like I did in the previous couple of days.

On our way back to the Moxy Brussels City Center hotel on train number #6, I decided to head out by myself to get my dinner as Sumantro was occupied with some work calls. Half of me wanted to wait for me but the other half of me was getting hungrier by the passing minute as I had relatively lighter breakfast and lunch as I was anxious about the planning around the Fedora Project presence. After getting a Chicken Wrap back with some addons as my order was delayed from Belchicken, I ran into Mike Nolan at the hotel lobby with whom I had the pleasure of meeting after a long time. Through some conversations with Luis Bazan and Justin, I put out a bid for assistance with setting up the Fedora Project booth at FOSDEM 2025 before getting some rest to prepare for the lively next day!