 First of all, I'm Rain Leander. I am with Equinix Metal, yes, and I'm a developer advocate over there. I came from Red Hat. I used to have Fedora on my laptop, and I don't anymore. I even filled out Marie's poll. It said, what operating system are you using or something like that? And basically it's become macOS across the board, and I'm kind of sad. A friend of mine, Miss, reached out and he said, you know, there's this Fedora women's day, but also non-binary people are encouraged to apply as well. And would you apply? And I said, yes, I would love to. I miss Fedora. I really do. I still contribute. I'm still available. I still come in, but not as much as I would like to. And that was also one of the polls, is that it said, how much are you contributing or would you like to contribute more? And other, because I would like to contribute more, but also I have a lot going on. So I love you all, yes, love back. So my Fedora story is that I had a baby. I know, it doesn't make sense. Let me explain. I was with Red Hat. I live in the Netherlands. I've lived here for almost 10 years. And when I first got here, I was a technical account manager with Red Hat. And that means that from nine to five, you offer a specific phone number for specific accounts to call you directly for any of their support means. And that meant that when I had a child, which in the Netherlands means that you can go part-time if you choose, that I no longer could do that job of nine to five. And so because you also can't be fired, and also I don't think Red Hat, it's not the kind of company that would just fire you for this. But basically my job became to find a new job. And one of the things I did was I explored the things I've enjoyed in the past. So coding, speaking in public. I used to perform as a dancer, which is one of the reasons why I actually stand when I speak and dance sometimes. And I kind of just started exploring these avenues. And one of the things I did, which I highly recommend is if you are interested in getting started with technology or open source, you just wanna explore. And especially these days is that conferences tend to put their talks online. And so I knew that there was this conference called DevConf Check Republic. And I went and checked it out because it was my job to find a new job. So I was just exploring all these options. And one of the things is I started watching the different talks on DevConf. This was, I wanna say it was like 2016, 2015. Oh, it was a while ago. Yeah, exactly. DevConf.info slash CZ. And Matt had like the Matthew. I don't know Matthew's last name, Matthew Miller. Thank you. Matthew Miller was looking for a diversity advisory council to find Fedora's diversity advisor. I remember his talk, there was one point he was giving the talk and he was basically like, he goes, Fedora mostly looks like me. And that's not good. And I went, ooh, I don't look like you. And that was my, literally my first, not my first introduction to Fedora because after all I worked for Red Hat but there's kind of a long gap between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. And I had been in the rel world for a long, long time. So I was just starting to come and explore Fedora and the open source world because if you are over in support, if you're over in the enterprise product, you don't necessarily have that much time to actually explore open source things, which is sad, but it's starting to change over the past few years. This is a while ago. So I reach out to Matthew Miller. I'm like, hey, how can I help with that diversity advisor council? And he's like, great. And he sends me this article which I posted on my blog yesterday because it was like the first interaction I had with Fedora. It was this beautiful article that basically put Matthew Miller's reasons for wanting to start this. And I went, that's, yes. So I signed up for the council and there were a few of us. I will admit that I don't remember everyone who was on that council but I remember Tyler Golden was on there and just by joining this council and the process of us actually looking for someone and we found someone and they became the diversity advisor and wow, over the past six years, the language and the empathy around Fedora's community has just evolved in, like evolved beautifully just by miss reaching out and saying, hey, Fedora Women's Day, it's actually Fedora Women's and Non-Binary Day. And I went, so cool. There's been a lot more expansion in the past five years and that's beautiful. It's necessary. I still, whenever someone asks me for an example of an open source community who treats, let me say this differently, people will come to me and they'll ask me, I don't tech or I don't code. I'm not an engineer. Is there something I can do? And often I'm like, yes, of course. Obviously I'm like, yes, of course. You can be a community manager or developer advocate, but also you can write. You can be a lawyer and you can market. You can advocate. You can help people get started. You can give feedback on the docs, all kinds of stuff. And one of the projects that I always bring up, I'm like, check out Fedora Project because there's a website that was specifically set up. I don't even know if it's still there. I probably should have checked this first. But it basically says, it's basically a random website, or a random generator that says, hey, would you like to do this for Fedora? And you can go, not my thing? Or yes, definitely. And then it takes you to, yes, what can I do for Fedora? Yes. God, I love that. It's just brilliant because people who are intimidated by open source, especially by not being technical enough or thinking you're not technical enough because that's not the case, can go to whatcanidueforfedora.org and you can just look through all the different things that you can do for Fedora. Now, that said, have I helped Fedora since? Yes, but in very subtle and different alternative ways. I have earned my F cake badge, my cake badge twice. I wanna say Marie, you and I have got to get together for cake maybe virtually soon. So I can earn it three times. I advocate on behalf of Fedora quite often. And yes, that's awesome. There's a cake with the F cake, that's so cool. I'm a huge fan of icing. By the way, I did not answer the cake poll because I can't just choose one. And also like, if you just had yes as the answer, then yeah, then that would have been my favorite cake. But I'm still, Fedora still has my heart, even though it's no longer my operating system, literally on my laptop, which is kind of sad. There's actually a little bit of a push within Acronyx Metal because we've hired enough Linux people who are using Sentos or Fedora on their systems or Debian or Ubuntu. And they're saying, no, we don't wanna use Mac or Windows, we wanna use our Linux. And so there's a little bit of a rebellious group that you might know some people involved in that. But yeah, that's my Fedora story. Let me know if I can help you in any way because while I am technical, I do have engineering experience. I just finished a hackathon today, three hours ago where I built a website over a 48-hour period. It's fine. It's fine. Wow, that's impressive. Even if you are not technical, there's always spaces. There's always places to learn. So I have something for you. This is my own personal personal cake. I have, I don't, oh my gosh, I wish I could, you know what I've been imagining? Like being able to send flavors or smells to people because of COVID, like one of the things I like to do is like cook for people. So it's like, I can't do that. And part of that is the smells and the sensations. Anyway, I just got off track. What was I gonna say? T, you said you have something for me. I do have something for you. Let me think on that like one second because I totally got off track by thinking of, well, I guess I have a different question. I'll probably think of the other one before. I have other questions I thought of while you were talking. So I came up with this series with the help of the DNI team, the Women and Non-Binary Folks in Fedora. And previously to this year, it has been Fedora Women's Day. And there was not an inclusion, specific inclusion of non-binary folks. So this year we decided to go for that. And I'm excited about it. The DNI team was excited about it. And I see you here excited about it. But just to be frank, we only had one submission and that was your submission. So part of me says, okay, one in 14 is maybe not that, one in 13, whatever it might be is not horrible, but it's not good. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess what I wanna ask is like, how can Fedora be more welcoming to non-binary people or I have a feeling that they exist in our community but aren't necessarily willing to speak up? So how can we either make our community more welcoming to non-binary people or if they're ready here, how can we help them to raise their voices? So something that I qualify, qualify, qualify, I can't speak for it on behalf of an entire group of people but I will save my experience. And I have noticed that there are a huge percentage of non-binary people in the community management world, especially around tech, which I think is incredible. But I have noticed that within tech, that people who are non-binary tend to be quiet in the sense that it's hard, especially in tech, to have a target on your back for any reason, to be born with a uterus and then to say you're non-binary is very difficult in tech. Or to be born with a penis and to feel non-binary, it's probably also really challenging. Probably, but I'm not gonna assume. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I think there's some amount of, okay, well, that's a whole different topic. Go ahead. Yeah, and it's, I think also though, like non-binary and trans people are just, we're just starting to have safe spaces at all. And it's so new for all of us that like, I knew, I knew that I was non-binary when I was like, how long ago was this? This was in my early 20s, late teens. And it was because I was in a LARP, which is live action role play, if you don't know what a LARP is. It's where you actually, it's where you actually do the game. And I had been in the LARP for a while and one of, I was on plot and one of my other plot people, they came up to me and they go, hey, I'm writing a plot line about this character that is so ancient and so powerful and so old that they have evolved past gender. And so I need someone who's a little bit genderless to play someone for whom woman and man means nothing to them. And I was like, yeah, no problem, that sounds cool. Like that was my external. And on the inside, I was like, oh my God. And I had to say, am I an ancient one? No, I'm non-binary. Like it wasn't until a couple of years ago when people started saying, oh, this is called non-binary. And I was like, oh yes, now I have a word. I've got a word, this is my word. And I didn't start early coming out of the closet until a couple of years, until the word came about. So I think part of it is just figuring out that we're non-binary at all. And also there's a certain, there are a lot of women who don't wanna be women in tech. They just wanna be engineers. And I get that. And I feel like it's often the same for non-binary in tech or trans, you just wanna be your person. And I get it. I get it. The reason why I am screaming that I'm non-binary and that I'm screaming about mental illness and I'm screaming about in a polite, playful, warm way is because I know that there are people who aren't talking about these things, who think it's a problem and it's not. And I want to inspire everyone to be playfully involved to their comfort level. And that's why I, as soon as Misk reached out, I was like, oh yeah, yeah, let's do it. And then I admit, I completely forgot because stuff, and you can go read my blog if you haven't stuff. So I guess I'm kind of, what I'm taking from your response is that from here, since y'all are just kind of figuring things out, just inclusion. Inclusion, inclusion is exciting. But like, for example, if you hadn't been able to present here today and we were, it was something that we wanted to do but we weren't able to do. Sometimes you just like, you want diversity to be there but you don't know how to necessarily build it. And the point that you make though about people not being quite ready makes a lot of sense to me actually. And I thank you for your courage and your screams. I think it's important and that's one of the reasons why I'm here too. My work in Fedora and becoming like a louder voice and a louder voice and the year before I got this job it was our contributor conference and I got on the stage and I basically gave everyone a talking to. I was like, we need to be this and we need to do that and I came off the stage and someone was like, I knew when you gave that talk that you would be working for Fedora one day. And because I feel really passionately about it but beyond that, it's about slowly building the confidence to say those things out loud. And it's not something that I feel the need to do but I'm bisexual and I am a woman. I'm not, I identify as a woman but I'm bisexual and we don't have an LGBT group in Fedora. And I'm wondering if there's a community of people here who would want to kind of connect on that level. Yeah, so. There is. Yeah, exactly. There is. But it takes someone like us who's motivated and has the confidence to take that first step and say, hey, we're gonna do this thing because I think it's good. And it is good. And here we go. So, very cool. It is. I'm also, I'm also, yeah, like I'm a lot more underrepresented groups but I'm passing in so many ways that I definitely am sometimes like, am I ready to fight that hill? Yeah, fuck it. You know what I'm saying? Depends on the day. Because, for example, yeah, exactly. How am I feeling? I'm also bisexual but I'm married to a man and so it seems like I'm a, you know, straight. Nope, nope. I gotta watch what I say with everybody. And I'm also a quarter Japanese. And so people will make Asian jokes, racist Asian jokes with me thinking that I'm one of them and I'm always like, no, not okay. Stop it. And it's those hills that you're not ready to die on per se, but they're there. And if someone stomps on your hill, then you'll kick back. But yeah, it's like the movie, if you build it, they will come. It's not always true. But in this case, it is one of those things that if you provide the community, if you are vocal about your acceptance and your inclusion, it will happen. This is the first year that you've rebranded, right? And Miss came out and came out full rebrand. We were like, let's make a series. Let's make a series and see if we can get, you know, some interest and I think that we do, you coming here shows that we do and continuing on and rebranding. We're actually thinking about rebranding into Fedora a week of diversity. So it would still be FWD and said it would be a week and it could involve a lot more different groups of people. So that is not approved. That is not approved by any means. We knew it, I approve. You're welcome. Definitely has to go through the DNI team and we got to work on rebuilding it in a way where everyone's gonna be real excited about it. But yeah, they've been wanting to break out of just this specific one, but this was a really good place for us to start. Because women make up 50% of the population and we have 10% women or something. I think it's 15% now, maybe? We're like... And you're not, this isn't the group that's done this where they went from a women's focus group within like OpenStack did the same thing where they went from being a women's group within OpenStack to being a diversity group within OpenStack. And I think it's beautiful. You can still empower women and all the rest of us UGS, you know? Right, yeah. So I have a question, kind of personal question. You said you moved to the Netherlands 10 years ago. Where were you before that? Everywhere in the States. So I've lived in 13 states in the US and because my mom and her father were both military and so my mom grew up moving around all over the world. And then, so when she started, when she became an adult, she just started moving very easily to different places for job opportunities and whatnot and eventually went back to the Air Force. So I usually say it's military even though the first 13 years was just because she felt like it. But yeah, I've lived in 13 states in the US. That's impressive. Which was your favorite? It's a tie, don't judge me. It's a tie between Oregon and Texas. And here's, and there, if you know, if you're from the US, you're kind of like war. But if you're not from the US, it's because of Oregon and Texas. I was at those two states in very beautiful points in my life and built exceptional memories. I was never old enough to vote or anything else around being an adult in those two places. But yeah, incredible memories. It's one of the reasons why when, because rain isn't actually my birth name. It's a name that I got when I started dancing and I kept it and I used it for 20 years. And then when I got married, I legally changed my name. So now it is my legal name. But one of the reasons I love rain so much is because of Oregon. And the Netherlands rains way, way more than that. And I almost stopped. That first winter was kind of sketch. I was like, we're gonna, this is not working out. But yeah. I'm in Rochester, New York, right on the Lake Ontario. And we get lake effect. And it's like gray all the time, raining all the time. It's kind of like Seattle weather a little bit. But like colder and our winters are intense. Lots of snow and ice. So, good times. Yeah. Yay. So to answer the question that you had before the talk, which was how his COVID changed. I think it's not fair for me because I was with Red Hat until May, the end of May. And then June, I started with this new company and Aquinix Metal, they were doing a rebrand. They had just been acquired. They didn't have a developer relations group, employee until March of this year. And then from March to August, we hired 26 people, 24 people, right? I've never seen anything like it in my life. Like if I had a million dollars and could build, like if I had my own company and could like build and was like, I've decided we're going to do developer relations. The department that Aquinix Metal has is what I would do. And so it blows my mind that someone went, oh, that's a good idea. Let's do it. Cool. Cool. Cool. So you're transitioning into a new job so you don't feel like you can judge that well. No, like the COVID difference has been with the community has been, it's difficult to say because it's only been COVID with the community. And the community is so young and chaotic and like there's thousands of people, but it hasn't had a program of outreach. That's right. That's a program of at all. And so that's something that's we're implementing all these programs and it's all just building up. Best of luck. And I'm glad that you haven't, I'm glad that you haven't been feeling that in your job at least and you might be feeling it other places but not necessarily there. Okay. So one of the things that we're doing at Fedora Women's Day this year is we're making some content to chop up later and make some trailers and stuff like that. And we wrote the script. So the first part is you'll say the whole thing except for the example part, that's me. And then so how we're actually doing it is having people speak the first part in their native language. And then the second part in English but I found out today you're a native English speaker. So go ahead and speak. I cannot, I can say all of that in Dutch though. Do you want to say it in Dutch? We would love that. Sure. Okay. So go ahead and go ahead. Okay. Hello, my name is Reyn, Reichen in Ingolst, Toch. I am from Chronigin, Bajna. I am a native English speaker. I am, oh, what am I? I am non-binary because it's very new in the Netherlands. My pronouns are de, dem. And I speak Dutch and English and a bit of Japanese from my mother. I also understand Dutch and Spanish and yeah, a lot of others in the Netherlands in Ingolst is my erstal. And then the rest in Ingolst, in Ingolst. So now I'm in Dutch mode. We are from different countries. We speak different languages. We are of different cultures but Fedora unites us with open source. Oh, so true. You so much. I honestly haven't heard that much Dutch spoken in real life. So that was actually very interesting for me. I was like, it was almost like kind of like had some mashup of English words in there. How are you were throwing in English words? So is that part of Dutch language? Yeah, exactly. First of all, there's a language right next to Dutch called Friesen. And Friesen is the closest to English in the world. And so English, Friesen, Dutch, it's very close. And then also Dutch kind of steals from French and German and English as well. And so you'll hear, it's like your ear is drunk. Like if you could just squint slightly, you would understand it, but you're not quite. I honestly was not sure. Like if you were like transitioning back to English and I was like, okay, no, no, no, we're still in Dutch. Yeah. But that was really cool. I just wanna say thanks again for being here. I don't see any other questions in the chat, but I am so excited. Although this is that I should be dancing instead of. Yeah, the chat won't be on YouTube. So I think we should say reigns native languages dance. So the logical conclusion is to dance the text rather than speak it. It's just. Yeah, I just wanted to say thanks for taking time on your Saturday after half past and all that. And I'm really glad that like you and I could connect again in a while. And I hope to see you in real life one day and hopefully get a hug. Yes, at DevConf in a year, I'm sure. Yes, yeah. So keep on being that strong, awesome, loud, screaming non-binary person that you are. And. Thank you. I will see you soon. And everyone else on another session in 10 minutes. Bye guys. Bye.