By Akashdeep Dhar in Fedora Mindshare —

Mindshare Election For FL44: Interview With Akashdeep Dhar

Fedora Project longtime member, Akashdeep Dhar, highlights his work in Mindshare, Council, Infrastructure, Mentoring and Outreach. He focuses on strengthening contributor recognition, expanding community presence, improving contributor retention and increasing committee visibility during this term.

Mindshare Election For FL44: Interview With Akashdeep Dhar
Photo by Red Dot / Unsplash

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Mindshare Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Akashdeep Dhar

What is your background in Fedora? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

Since the past year, I have been actively contributing to the event planning [1] [2] and proposal curation in the Mindshare Committee. Representing our vested interests in the Fedora Council, I have paved the way for improvements in the regional event support (i.e., event owners and regional inventory), digital ambassadorship (i.e., swagpack designs and social media) and recognition service (i.e., Community Metrics and Fedora Badges).

Besides championing our community presence in underrepresented regions (e.g., in DevConf.IN 2026 and FOSSAsia 2026 in APAC), I have continued staying at the forefront of the Fedora Forge community initiative, working as an infrastructure architect for Fedora Infrastructure applications, organizing Fedora Mentor Summit during Flock events and mentoring budding contributors formally/informally in the community.

Please elaborate on the personal "Why" which motivates you to be a candidate for Mindshare

Technology might be why I joined the Fedora Project, but I stayed because of the people who made me feel at home. Progressing in various aspects of our planned functions over the past years has taught me one crucial thing – contributors are actually retained when they feel noticed, supported and trusted with meaningful work. The Mindshare Committee is where that happens, and I want to keep building what we started.

Furthermore, as the committee’s representative to the Fedora Council, I have seen firsthand how decisions at the governance level shape the contributor experience on the grassroots level. The update during the Fedora Council Strategy Summit 2026 gave us an opportunity to serve event organizers, community ambassadors and voluntary contributors better, all while using these outcomes to enhance the community health.

How would you improve MIndshare Committee visibility and awareness in the Fedora community?

Simple. We need to show up where the community is. A community booth in one event, some interactive workshops in another – to begin with in regional event support to ultimately show people that we indeed care. While making sure that our infographic swagpacks are updated on a regular basis in digital ambassadorship, we actually ensure that we are providing people with reasons to come back to us when the time is right.

With the upcoming collectible rarity feature in Fedora Badges and tangible contributor recognition awards (both as a part of Fedora Mentor Summit event and separately), we nudge people to more opportune contribution avenues while avoiding burnouts in longtime contributors. This could further be extended to our Fedora Linux Release Parties too, as ultimately, most of our community members started off as its users.

What part of Fedora do you think needs the most attention from the Mindshare Committee during your term?

Contributor Recognition. With over half a decade of experience in this space, the “What now?” problem (after the first contribution) has only become worse with the advent of AI Assisted Contribution Activities. Newcomers struggle to realize the value proposition of the community connection that Fedora Project could provide, and hence, it has become the need of the hour to incentivize contributions using rewarding activities.

But apart from that, we also need to do better at further improving our local presence in underrepresented regions. In this past term, my pilot experiment on APAC events worked wonders, and it showed us all the community power we can tap into by just being there. With reusable swagpacks, localized printing, active conversations and documented accounts, this limited experiment can scale well across various parts of the globe.

This article was originally posted on Fedora Commblog on 29 May 2026.