 Today, I'm going to talk about the importance of collaborating with the local communities. My name is Fernando Fernandez-Mancera, I work at ReHAT, and first I'm going to talk a little bit about me. So I'm a senior software engineer at ReHAT, I work in Networking Services Team, and during my long journey, well, short journey in computer science, I have collaborated with a lot of different communities. My first step was with SUSE, it is a Linux user group, then I started collaborating with TorProject, NetFilter, now Network Manager, well, for the community, and then this is why I think that it's really important to have local communities and do work with them. So yeah, let's get on the topic. So first of all, what is a local community? Well, a community is a group of people that share some common interests or likes. This is the definition of a community, basically what makes local is that they live close to each other. It could be national or regional, both of them are considered local, because nowadays most of the communities are global communities. It is important that a community organises activity to address bonds and meet the objective of common interests, that's really important because people need to know each other, people need to know what others like and what others feel and then work together in a common topic. So here there are some levels of what I consider some examples of local communities, there is Sugu, from Seville, Exnet, from Spain, maybe Barcelona, then we have the computer class group from Germany and the Fesatos Direitos Digitis from Portugal and they are all really good examples of local communities. Okay, so the question here is why are they important and why we should focus on them more? The first of all is because the local activities actions are more effective if they are performed or they are done by local people and this is something quite common because if someone from Germany goes to a Spanish parliament member, probably they won't treat them equal as if it was a Spaniard reaching them out. Why? Because we vote in our local communities, in our local governments, we vote and we matter to them. So when you do activism, it's really important that you reach out to people that are going to consider your ideas or your opinion. So if you go and you are trying to do some activism, I first of all recommend you to try local activities because probably it's going to be more effective. So this is the first point of why local communities are really important. The second one is because people feel closer by doing activities face to face, it is true that nowadays with Google Shared, Google Meets, Zoom and other applications, we can all meet using webgames and we can know each other's faces but in the end, we like to do face to face activities. They can be activities related with the organization interest or they can be any other thing. But the point is that at the end of the day, you know more each other and you feel more close to the people that you are working with. That's an important step. And then the third one is that they extend the efforts of global communities. For example, here in Fedora, it's a global community that involves people from all over the world. And it is really good when you organize a local event related to Fedora because you know each other and you know that maybe your neighbor is using Fedora too and you didn't know. So that's a really, really good thing. So I think Fedora did a really good job with Fedora Hatch because they promoted local events and I noticed that they get really, really good attention. So well, maybe you are wondering how could you collaborate more with your local communities because probably you don't know that even there is a local community with some interest that you also have. For that, there are several goals that probably you can help with. So the first one is seeking financial support or kind of activity in the end need financial support. And this is really something really important because if you need to travel to another city or if you need to buy some food for the event or if you need to hire a bus to move to somewhere, you will need money. Then organizing activities for the community. It doesn't matter which community you focus on, but probably there is not enough people organizing activities. That is something quite common. Sometimes there is people participating in the activity but not enough people organizing them. Then spread the word. If you do something, you need to talk about it and that is a key point because if you don't tell about it, people will know that you are doing this and probably you are missing people and you are missing your target. Then you have to... I think this is not a need, but probably it's something that you should do and it's maintaining a relationship with other communities with similar interest. It is quite common, for example, that in the same city. I'm going to talk about free software because it's a topic that I work on, but there are multiple topics. It is very common that in the same city there are two or three organizations promoting free software or contributing to free software. That is common. Probably it will be better if you create only one and all the people is collaborating into the same organization, but that is not going to happen because it's a little bit chaotic how an organization is created. I think it's better to just maintain relationships between the communities. If you know, for example, you're working free software and you know another organization that is also working free software, probably you have common interest and you should work together to get them done. Let's focus a little bit more on each item. The first one, seeking financial support. Thank you, Mahi, for sharing this link. Yes, it is really needed and sometimes it's easy for a really big organization, but it's really hard for a local organization or a local community to get this financial support. I recommend you to check institutional or government grants from universities, for your zone hall, from, I don't know, your parliament. There are multiple options. Sometimes there are grants for local communities and you can take advantage of them. Then you have financial support from global organizations. This is a perfect example of what I told before about Fedora Hatch. If there is a global organization with more power, more money, you can ask for financial support if you share interest. Maybe they can help you. In this case, if you are working on Fedora or working on free software and you need some financial support to prepare meetings or to prepare anything, please use the link that Mahi shared. Then you can ask for a sponsorship from companies within an interest. For example, if you are organizing a free software event or a free software activity, you could ask for example Rehab or similar companies that promote free software. It is really hard and it requires some abilities to do this, but I think it's something really important to know and I think it's something very valuable because you can get a lot of... You can do much more if you have money on your side. Of course money is important, but more important is people. People are organizing things. It doesn't matter if you have 10 people, 20, 50 or 100 people trying to participate in your activities, but no one is organizing them. If you are able to do it, try to organize activities for the community. That means you can organize workshops, lightning talks, city tours, hiking, roundtables, debates, whatever thing that you think is good for the community. I must say that sometimes these activities, they do not need to be related or strictly related with the topic that you are working on because you can do a city tour or a hiking session and yes, there is a bond between the members of the community and that is also important because in the future when they need to work on something hard to achieve what the community is trying to achieve, that bonds are going to be really important to get what the community wants to get. If you are able to organize things, probably the community in which you are part of or the community you are part of is going to be really happy that you are trying to organize something. Then spread the word. If you are doing something, you need to tell them more about it because if not, no one will notice and probably you are achieving great things but if you don't say, hey, we did this, they won't notice. So social network activities, you are a friend here. You can do it by tweeting, posting, maybe creating a podcast, YouTube videos, whatever social network you do master done, whatever thing. Then you can create flyers with information about the community and distribute them in universities in places, basically in places where you think that your target of people is and try to reach them out. And of course posters and swag. Why posters and swag? Because swag is something really important when you are wearing a t-shirt, we are wearing a t-shirt with a logo or a slogan from a company or sorry, from a community or from an organization. It could be possible that someone say, hey, what is this about? And then you can tell them or maybe they say, oh, I saw this before and they ask you or something similar. Let's be honest, nowadays most of the clubs have logos of companies and things under the clothes. So why not to wear something that you are proud of to be working on? So there we have the last point, which is maintaining relationships with other communities. So basically the idea is to organize events together and share resources and opportunities. So if you hear about an opportunity, because let's say a global community is providing you or giving you permission about an event, you can reach out to this other community that has the same interest than yours and say, okay, let's work together on this. Let's do a talk together. Let's do a workshop or whatever other thing. Oh, let's say that you have resources and you have enough resources for you community and maybe another community, okay, invite them and you can provide them some financial support that probably they need. And then unifying efforts in activism is really, really important because, right, if you got a parliament member with three or four people saying, oh, we want to do this and we have a community of 30 people behind us. Okay, that's good. But if you go out and say, okay, we are a group of five communities and we have 150 people behind us. That really, really makes a difference and it's important to coordinate efforts and do not wait efforts doing the same work in a separate way. Yeah, basically this is all I just wanted to reach out and just wanted to spread more about your local communities. We can, if you don't think that there is some community near to you, feel free to reach me out and we can try to find some community that could share some interest with you or maybe it's time to create your own community and start the whole process by yourself. Well, thank you very much for all your attention. I know that it was a little bit fast, but I would like to hear some questions or comments. Thank you, Marie, for sharing all the links from Fedora. Fedora is doing an amazing support here supporting local communities. Yeah, I recommend you to engage with Fedora Mindshare Committee if you want to work more with your local communities and they are related to Fedora. So, any questions? Yes. Oh, why can't Fedora do to have the local community you're involved in? Thank you. So, let's say, I think Fedora already have a really good plan for local communities. For example, you're providing, you're offering swag, you're offering financial support for events related to Fedora. You're offering coordinated events like the Fedora Hatch or, for example, the Fedora List Parties, things like that. So, I think Fedora is doing quite great. If you can say something, probably, it would be nice if Fedora could provide more financial support to students. Let's say, for example, there is an event. So, if Fedora has enough budget, they could provide financial support to these students to go to the event, basically travel and auto or whatever place they're going to stay. Something like that, I think could be quite good. But, of course, budget is limited. And this is something that we all know. But if they have, you know, budget, of course, that is something possible. Oh, one more question. How will you start a local community if one doesn't exist already? Good question. This depends a little bit on your region or your country because there are different official processes for that. So, the first thing that you should do is look in the Internet. Look in the Internet and find out if there are already an existing one, if it doesn't. I recommend you to find out people that could be, that could have the same interests. For example, free software or digital rights or even, I don't know, sometimes there are local communities that work on making a better neighborhood. So, it's something that could also be a local community. So, the first thing is to try to find out people that share interests like in universities or the communities, maybe they are not strictly related with your interests, but they are related. Your group of friends, family, whether it's people in general, you can try to post something on the Internet saying, hey, I'm from here and you want to start a community or I have interests on this, anyone else? And that could work. Then, you need to write down what is the community trying to achieve, to prove something, to promote something or whatever. And then create the other organizations. So, there must be some responsibilities. People need to volunteer to cover them. Create social networks, infrastructure needed. Not sure if, depending on the community, you might need a physical space, but this is more specific to the organization. But basically create an official infrastructure and try to share responsibilities with different volunteers. And then start the work. Start doing what you think should be doing the work to achieve what the community tries to achieve. Yes, you need to delegate. That is really important. Maybe you want to do things, but you cannot do them all. So, you need people that could help you to do that. I do not think that someone needs to be the head of the organization. Maybe it can be more reasonable, but the idea is that you cannot do anything. You cannot do everything. So, you need to share the different responsibilities with other people. And you need to trust them. So, you need to trust them and say, okay, this is going to be done because this person is in charge and is working on it. And I trust this person. And it's a process that is not easy at all. And sometimes the creation of a community or an organization is quite quite chaotic. Sometimes there are group of friends sharing some interest and they decide to make it more efficient with an organization or a community. And sometimes it's people that they do not know each other. So, it's different. All right. So, that seems to be all. Thank you very much. And thank you for your attention.