 Hey guys, this is my presentation. So who am I? I'm also from the Chicagoland area. I saw someone in the last session say that they're from Geneva, Illinois. I think I'm around 40 minutes away in Hinsdale, if that means anything to you guys. I'm also a recent high school graduate. Currently, I'm on a gap year, which is super exciting to internet Red Hat, but next year I'll be a freshman in college. I'm going to Caltech and hopefully studying computer science. And then besides coding and computer science, I kind of was just talking about this, but I enjoy embroidering things. I love playing Minecraft with friends. And unfortunately, I still use TikTok. I know that they definitely steal all my data, but I can't live without it. All right, so how I got involved with Fedora prior to joining Red Hat, I actually didn't have much formal experience with computer science. My school only really had two classes and I don't think anyone was very enthusiastic about them. I remember one of the classes that I took, they're actually thinking of canceling it because not enough people are interested in taking it. So I guess I kind of looked outside of school to sort of, I don't know, further to this interest in Compsi. So my first introduction to Linux was actually volunteering. There's this place in Chicago called Free Geek Chicago. And what we'd do is we would take apart keyboards, computers, random electronics, sort the parts, and then make sure that they weren't dumped somewhere where it could be hazardous. And what they would do is that all the beginner level volunteers like me would just take apart stuff. But some of the older volunteers, older members, they would actually put together laptops and boot Linux onto them. And so that experience, sort of watching them and seeing what they were doing. And I thought that was really cool. Otherwise, learn sort of how to make projects and stuff from YouTube going to hackathons. And I met my current manager at Red Hat at a hackathon which was super cool. She actually, unlike every other recruiter, she actually took a look at my resume and she liked me enough to give me an interview and give me a chance. So this summer, I was a Red Hat summer intern and I worked on a friendly Fedora project which I'll talk about a little more later. And now, I guess, my manager liked me enough to let me stay for a little bit so you guys can't get rid of me. I'm now helping on the infra and relinch team for Fedora and I'll be here, well, I'll be working at Red Hat until the end of April, but hopefully I'll stay contributing to Fedora for a while. So friendly Fedora was my summer project and it was actually a really perfect project for me because it was newcomers, just because I feel like for those without prior Linux experience can be a bit of a learning curve, trying to understand Fedora, how to install it, all the simple things like that. So part of my project was making these videos and I have, so yeah, that was part of the project and then this is kind of my first introduction into Fedora as well. And not only did I get to work on that cool project, but I got a little more involved in the community. I was able to attend Nest and on the right is the screenshot of the intern panel that maybe you see some familiar faces there too, was able to give a quick lightning talk, participate as an apprentice as well as, I just found that the community is so quick to reach out. After I gave my lightning talk, like I see that Justin is here, I think he reached out and he sent me an email saying something like, oh, if you ever need someone to shoot ideas off of or you need a friend in the community, like I'm here, I just thought that was so sweet that everyone was going above and beyond to kind of make new members feel welcome and just sort of build these relationships. And I thought that it's really interesting being a part of this community because a lot of us have things in common, a lot of things in common as well as a lot of things are different. Everyone is from, well, a lot of people are from different parts of the world and of some of the people that I meet are kind of like the first people I've ever met from that part of the world. The other day I was in a call and my mentor said something like, oh, I wanna have a meeting with someone else who's also on the relinch team and we can work on, they can give you some guidance for our project. And I was like, okay. And the person ended up being from the Czech Republic and I was like, you are the first person I've ever met from the Czech Republic. So that was really cool. In the future, I definitely wanna try to get more involved in writing blog posts. And yeah. The challenges I faced, I think that one of the things was just getting acclimated to all the new tech stuff, getting used to chatting with IRC, virgin control with Pazher. Additionally, this was sort of Red Hat's first class of virtual interns. So one thing that I missed was sort of this, the social interaction, the sort of face to face interactions that I could have had with all the other fellow interns. Thankfully Red Hat did a lot of things to make us feel welcomed. We did some trivia nights and things like that, which were fun. As well as this was sort of my first real internship. So I feel like in a classroom, when you're receiving a lesson, let's say afterwards all your friends ask questions, you kind of know, oh, maybe I should ask questions. Or if everyone is confused about one topic, you can get together and sort of discuss it. I just felt like since this is my first real internship, I had no idea really how to behave. I mean, obviously kind of professionally, but am I supposed to say good morning to everyone at G-Chat, am I supposed to speak up a lot in meetings or am I supposed to just sort of watch and participate that way? So a lot of the stuff was, I just sort of figured it out along the way. Thankfully my mentor is super great and I had a lot of questions that I asked him and he was able to answer them, which was great. Another challenge that I face is kind of, I feel like I'm a little bit of a perfectionist and so a lot of the times when I feel like, I can't get something done perfectly, it kind of cripples me in a way where, I won't even start, I won't even attempt it. So this summer it was actually great because I forced myself to be uncomfortable a lot, giving this presentation as little uncomfy for me as a total introvert, but speaking up in meetings, asking questions, I wrote Brave Not Perfect There. I have this book that I'm reading and the author of it was the founder of Girls Who Code and what she thinks, the point in her book is that a lot of the times, a lot of women feel like they have to be perfect or they'll take on extra roles just to get everything done perfectly instead of, or they'll stay doing things that they know they're good or that they can do perfectly instead of being more brave and maybe taking on a new role or a new task or a new project, even if they know that they don't know everything about it, they might mess up, fail a little. So this is a good book I recommend it, but that helped me with that challenge. So that was really short, but I heard on the other talks that Marie was making everyone recite, like, hello, my name is Gabby, sort of mantra, but I had to write it down in case I was gonna mess up. So I don't know if I should I recite this? So I wrote it in Spanish and Chinese, Mandarin. Hold on, looks like I'll be right with you. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, so yeah, actually the first part is in your native language or whatever language you prefer. I see you have two here, so that's really cool. And then the second part, it can be in English, but you could recite it in your language as well, however you wanna do it kind of whatever, hi Miko, whatever your heart is telling you to do, I'm just about to grab just the second part in English in case you wanna do that part. But I do have some questions and I did want to give anyone in the chat a chance to do the questions, but we'll do this part first since we're here. Let me just find that. Okay, and just to clarify, it's English than other language than English. So your language, so the hi, my name is all that. We'll be in your language. And then, hold on one sec, I'm like, I have too many tabs and too many things. Let's see, is it this one? It is, cool, okay. So the first part, like the hi, my name is and all that, that's in your native tongue. And then the second part, we are from different cultures, et cetera, et cetera, that part is in English, so I'm about to grab it. Just the English part. So I was nervous that, oh, go ahead. Oh, you go ahead. I was nervous that someone, you were not allowed to repeat languages or something, so I was scared that someone would have Spanish. So I also did it in Mandarin. I'm not fluent in either of them, but. English is also an option. If you speak English, if you feel most comfortable in English and you want to say in English, that's also an option. I want you to be more comfortable than anxious. Okay, sure. Okay. All right, so I'm just gonna mute myself so there's no overlapping sounds. Go ahead and do your. Sure. Okay, I'll just do the Spanish version just cause. Okay, definitely not fluent, but I'll try. Hola, mi nombre es Gabby, soy de Chicago. Soy una mujer y hablo español. We are from different countries. We speak different languages. We are, oh, sorry, sorry. I was trying to read it from my slides and then I realized that you pasted the exact thing and like, okay, okay, sorry guys. Hola, mi nombre es Gabby, soy de Chicago. Soy una mujer y hablo español. We are from different countries. We speak different languages. We are of different cultures, but Fedora unites us with open source. We are Fedora. Yay. That was great. That was really cute. And then we were like, oh no, it was cute. All right, so I had a couple of questions for you. You are just coming from high school and you're going into college. So I'm curious, if I miss this in your slides, forgive me, but I'm curious, how did you kind of learn about open source and was that in high school that you learned about those things or just I'm curious where you were exposed to it? So you said you saw somebody doing installation. That was what you said, right? Yeah, so at Free Geek Chicago, they would boot Linux Mint onto the laptops that they would build. And I never really participated in that part because you had to be a volunteer there for a couple months before you reached that point. But I watched everyone do it because we were all working at the same time. And it was really neat seeing everyone just sort of, even though I had no idea what was going on, it was kind of cool to watch everyone take these random parts that would have been thrown out somewhere and then build laptops and computers for those who need them in Chicago. But since then, I guess my first real introduction was after my manager assigned me to do stuff for Fedora. And so that's how I got introduced. Right, okay, there's a question in the chat. What were you most surprised to learn through your internship and working with the Fedora community? That's a good question. I think that at both Red Hat and within the Fedora community, I feel like everyone is very receptive and open to ideas. It's not like in a traditional, I feel like traditionally, the boss comes up with an idea and then everyone below them just sort of obeys, does exactly what they say, versus in Fedora, I feel like if I had an idea, I could talk to some people. And if it was a good idea, maybe they'd listen and then we can make this into a real thing. And it's not like you have to be a super senior member of the community in order to create any sort of impact. I think the thing that you're actually kind of referencing, the word is meritocracy. This idea that you can become with work and skill and effort, enthusiasm, whatever it might be. And then you can get credit for that. So in some ways that's meritocracy is like what makes Fedora as awesome as it is. But meritocracy also has its own problematic things. I lost your video. I don't know if anyone else lost that video. I get it. I don't know what happened. It might just be me. There's a chance that it's my connection but I'm not sure. Oh, no. Oh, okay. So apparently just, oh, some people can see you in some. Okay, so it's fine. I wanna see your lovely face, but that's all. Oh, some people can't see. Oh, no. It's a total mix. I think it's fine. What was I about to ask you though? Oh gosh, I got like halfway in the middle of the conversation of the question and then. I'm looking for the link to that. Oh, I can see you again. Oh, you're looking for the link to the video. Sweet. Meritocracy, so right. So I think you're kind of getting to this idea of meritocracy. So meritocracy is really cool and open source, but it also has its negative sides. Like sometimes meritocracy can mean that like jerky people get to be jerky just because they're talented. That can happen. And also like I think we have to think about meritocracy in the terms of people starting places. So even if people are here and they're enthusiastic and of course we want them, we welcome them. We have to realize that not everyone has these opportunities, right? We want you to somehow enable them even more. So meritocracy is one of the best things about Fedora, but also has its cons too. So anyway, just a couple of thoughts about meritocracy as a thing. I think about it a lot as a community manager. How do you measure merits? Yeah, that's a great question. It's really, what do you mean by jerky? I mean, someone who's not a nice person. So sometimes people if they have a lot of skills or experience with something can get away with being rude. Yep. So I think it's actually the word jerk. Like a rude person. And then like adding a Y is just like a English slang for like a descriptor. So anyway, rude sometimes if they think that they're hot, shiz, but how do you measure merit? I think it's different in any place, but I think that's one of the major issues with meritocracy. But I think like it's weaved into the culture of open source pretty strongly. So it's definitely an interesting topic to explore. Well, if there's no other questions in the chat, I guess we can close up for today. Thanks for coming and presenting and sharing your story with us. I'm excited to continue to have you in Fedora. And you know, if you ever need any support once again, I'm also here. Oh my gosh, wait, I wanted to ask, who was your friend? Mohan. Yeah, I knew that. I'm looking for him out. He's a really cool guy. Yep, Mohan is an awesome guy. Oh, I'll write the link. Okay, so I couldn't find the video from like a really quick search, but I have my final presentation and the video is embedded in it. So I feel like you can open it if you have a Red Hat email address, but I will... Is there somewhere where I could paste the link once I find the video? Sorry, I am... You can put it into the, just the event chat and it's gonna be open for a couple more hours. So whenever you find it, cool. Sure, yeah, sorry. No worries. And then for everybody else, I think we only have two more sessions left and that is my session at 2 p.m. And then we might just do closing remarks right then depending on how many people are around. I know it's Sunday and everyone wants a weekend, including me. So I will see you guys in a half an hour for my session. And yes, thanks again for telling your story, Gabby. We'll see you soon. Bye.