Day Zero - Flock To Fedora 2025

The one thing that could help me recover from the arduous journey the day before was, of course, lots of sleep. But given the jetlag that I was affected by, I could not catch a blink of sleep after checking into the hotel at around 0400am Central European Summer Time on 04th June 2025. After struggling with a rather soft berth for a couple of hours, I decided to meet folks staying at the same hotel and get some warm breakfast while I was at it. Coincidentally, Sumantro Mukherjee had the same idea, and we ended up meeting downstairs at the breakfast area after getting freshened up. The two folks we ended up meeting first were Kevin Fenzi and Tim Flink, who were just finishing up with their meals and about to leave the Flock To Fedora 2025 event venue. I decided to get a tray with servings of Pesto Pasta and Scrambled Eggs before settling down at an adjacent table.

We were soon joined by Kevin and Tim, with whom we caught up with after meeting previously at FOSDEM 2025. I was in conversation with Yashwanth Rathakrishnan in the meantime, who wanted help with heading to Vienna House Andel Prague. He had just arrived at his accommodation, Hotel Stary Pivovar, and was having trouble paying for his ride as his payment card was not working. The four of us at the hotel decided to head back to our rooms to freshen up and return to the lobby sometime later to head to the event venue together. Sumantro and I paid a quick visit to a nearby mall, Nový Smíchov Shopping Centre, while we waited for communication from Yashwanth’s end. At around 0900am Central European Summer Time, we decided to give up on waiting and head to Vienna House Andel Prague to check on how the preparations for the events were going.

The group of Kevin, Sumantro, and I was accompanied by Hristo Marinov, who had just arrived at our hotel but could not check in. As he had already been to the venue before coming here, he led the way to the place, which was thankfully only a couple of blocks away from our hotel. The event venue and the accommodation spots were strategically chosen by the organizers to make it convenient for the attendees. As we headed into Vienna House, we met up with the likes of Neal Gompa, David Cantrell, and others who were just about finishing up with breakfast. I also met up with Dorota Volavkova in an adjacent meeting room, but as there was nothing planned for that day, Sumantro, Hristo, and I decided to leave while Kevin stayed back at the venue. We browsed the nearby shops while sharing conversations before heading back to the mall again for some selections.

We were going with the flow on that day. We decided to leave for the Charles Bridge at around 1100am Central European Summer Time purely for exploration. With a bunch of photographs taken at the place and history lessons shared by Sumantro, we were soon back from the relatively crowded spot. While the bridge had an interesting group of historically significant statues to admire, we were all about the river beneath us and the boats passing through. On our way back to the nearby tram station, we were taken aback by the sounding air siren, and given the recent skirmish between the Indian Armed Forces and Pakistani terrorists, Sumantro and I could not help but be concerned. Thankfully, it was not anything serious, and we were soon back at the Andel tram station, where we decided to grab some no-brainer KFC meals after placing our backpacks in our rooms.

We left Hristo at the reception at around 0100pm Central European Summer Time, where he was waiting for Timothee Ravier, with whom he was sharing a hotel room. While having food in my room, I decided to connect with Yashwanth again to see if he was responsive then. He was not feeling well, so I decided to book the cabs for his arrival at the event venue, as I had some medicines to share. I provided him a share of French Fries while he was recuperating in my room, before heading downstairs to meet with the likes of Tomas Hrcka and Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek in the reception area at around 0300pm Central European Summer Time. Zbigniew remarked that I looked fresh at that time, which was anything but true, and I mentioned that I had seen him at the Charles Bridge earlier that day but avoided contact as I was not 100% sure if it was indeed him.

Yashwanth and I headed back to my room, as Tomas had to immediately leave for the Fedora Project Leadership meeting in the early evening. I decided to spend some time preparing the speaker notes for the presentations that were scheduled on the first and second days of the Flock To Fedora 2025 conference. I ended up preparing only for the talk titled "From Indifference to Engagement" for the Fedora Mentor Summit 2025 proceedings and decided to wing the talks titled "I AM FEDORA - How to Onboard (and Retain) Friends with Fedora Join SIG" and "Introducing SyncStar - Create Bootable Media at Conference Kiosks" I received a call from Sumantro at around 0400pm Central European Summer Time, and we headed for Nový Smíchov Shopping Centre again—this time, to actually purchase something, as Yashwanth was not carrying his dental hygiene kit with him.

The three of us ran into Troy Dawson at TESCO, and it turned out that even he was looking for the same things as we were. With him joining our party, looking for the supplies we needed became a whole lot easier. Sumantro had to leave soon after, which led to yet another funny incident to brighten up the day. The three folks trained in the Software Engineering trade - i.e., Troy, Yashwanth, and I - could not figure out the automated checkout devices at the store, and we had to be assisted by the staff there. Trust me, it was not about the language barriers but rather about how there was minimal information available on how to utilize the services. We hilariously managed to trigger the alarm at the store just because we were not aware that the purchase invoice had to be rescanned to open the exit, and the defeated staff just asked us to leave without causing any more headaches for her.

After a quick trip to the Vienna House Andel Prague to look for Tomas, who had notified us of his availability, we decided to head back to our hotel, where we met up with Michal Konecny and Patrik Polakovic, who were checking in at that time. The five of us decided to head off for a walking tour in an adjacent biodiversity park, followed by dinner. There was another walking tour arranged for the Flock To Fedora 2025 attendees, but I decided I would be better off catching up with my friends from Fedora Infrastructure. The walk (read, trek) that Tomas took us on had crazy steep inclines, and it almost felt like it was a climbing place disguised as a biodiversity park. We took breaks in between to discuss various things, including topics like hardware enablement of RISC-V, hiring a scrum master, the state of community governance, and of course, bad dad jokes around software engineering.

Unfortunately, Patrik had to leave our exploration group soon after to head back to the hotel, but that did not stop the four of us from continuing to visit a bunch of high places there. After getting some beverages from a nearby store at the peak of the biodiversity park, Tomas left us to attend yet another meeting dinner. At around 0600pm Central European Summer Time, we started on our descent, briefly halting every now and then to take some pictures of the scenic beauty in the summer evening. I took charge of navigating the three of us back to our hotel, and after about a thirty-minute walk from the biodiversity park, we ran into Greg Sutcliffe, David Kirwan, Fabian Arrotin, and Kashyap Chamarty in the reception area. As they had already made dinner plans with the likes of Samyak Jain and others, we decided it was best to make our own plans for dinner at a nearby place.

Michal, David, Patrik, Yashwanth, and I decided to head over to an adjacent Vietnamese dining place near the Andel tram station for dinner. After walking for almost fifteen kilometers throughout the day and barely sleeping for a couple of hours, you can imagine that I had the appetite of a beast. The meals were served fairly quickly, and I decided to get myself some Fried Duck Meat for the main course and Orange Fanta for the beverage. We decided to pay for the dinner using our recently issued Red Hat Corporate Card, each of us paying for our own meals to ensure convenience while doing expenses. On our way back to the hotel, Yashwanth and I met up with Tomas briefly to retrieve the hardware I had ordered from Europe with his assistance. I decided to book Yashwanth a taxi using the much-recommended Bolt service and called it a day after getting freshened up.