 Thank you so much Justine and Yona. With that I would like to invite Because the next one is I'll keep the slide on the agenda one. I would like to start with the panel discussion and I would like to invite here very experienced Some of the mentors and mentees from Fedora on stage, please. I would like to invite Adam Williamson Kevin frenzy modafi Jess and Sumantra So there are two ways to do it. Either I introduce all of them or they can introduce themselves So I will give this that opportunity which reminds me I did not introduce myself and that is what happened after game night and The goof up with the slides. So I am Amita Sharma and I'm from Pune, India It has been 12 years in red hat and for my day job. I am a manager Who manages a very diverse team? at red hat for roads project, which is data science QE and Out of my interest I contribute to Fedora DEI team and also for the mentorship summit now With that I would like to pass it on to Adam. Hi. I'm Adam Williamson I am the Fedora QA team lead at red hat. I've been a red hat for 14 years been involved in the Open-source community for over 20. I guess So yeah, I work on for door QA most of the time And I don't have as much mentoring experience as some of the other people on this panel But I will try and ask useful questions. So yeah Hi, I'm Kevin Finzi I do Fedora infrastructure and release engineering and I've been involved in open source for a really really long time. I'm really old, but you know, don't hold it against me And I will echo the sentiments there. I think there's a lot of experience on this panel, which hopefully we can learn some things from but the open source community is just always and Fedora specifically has always been very open and Mentor driven and learning driven and open and I hope we can learn a lot So Hi, I'm Mo. I'm a UX designer at Red Hat. I first started using Fedora with FC three Started at Red Hat in May 2004 as an intern. I drove and I said, hey, I'll work for free for the summer So just so you see my level of sanity I have mentored many people over the course of my tenure in the Fedora community and One of them is sitting right next to me. So I'm gonna hand it over to her Jess So hi, I'm Jess and I was interning at Red Hat for a year and a half as a Fedora Designer and I'm now back volunteering on the Fedora design team. But yeah, my mentor was was Mo and still is a great mentor and Yes, so I I suppose them I can say my piece about how the Her the mentorship went and stuff. So yeah, I'll hand it over to Samantha. Hi, I'm Schmantro I work for the Fedora QA team Adam is my mentor. He's he started mentoring me for QA for a long time I joined Red Hat in 2016 before that I used to work for rather volunteer for Mozilla and Wikipedia So I have my open source days goes back pre Firefox OS days and then once I joined Fedora I was like completely working for the QA team and made my way into Council and mind share and worked with community thereafter. So that's that's mostly about me So I would just like to say that we have very brilliant and experienced Fedora contributors here our goal here is that everybody can be mentor and You see that some of them are mentors here the experienced mentee here We will be with them for next one hour and I don't want it to be just us on stage talking It should be an interactive session so if anybody would like to contribute as well you can raise your hand and talk and ask questions and contribute, okay, so The first topic which we I would like to it's very obvious and Maybe sound cliche though, but what is why do you think the mentorship is? Important in any of the open-source community not just Fedora. I can take it This is just one specific example and maybe not the most important or the only but I recently had a conversation with somebody who I really look up to Dan Walsh if anybody knows him and He's actually getting close to retirement So for him The mentorship that he gives to the people at Red Hat and in the community is Important because he would like to stop So I think the sort of if you think of session is not just you know, we're not all close to retirement, but Being able to go on vacation being able to Step away when you need to I think it's important But you can't do that if you don't lift others up around you so that they have an opportunity to step in I Would also like to know Mendy's point of view one of the mentees if you would like to contribute to that Why do you think it is important? well, I suppose when I started off in Red Hat last year like contributing to Fedora It was my first time knowing anything about open source So I feel like having a mentor is very important to kind of find your footing on like, you know What is this about like and? Yeah, I suppose just stem Yeah, I said my piece So do you think that This is the relative Continuous question to that discussion. Do you think without a official mentor? It would be easier for you to onboard because in open source communities We are a helpful we all are there but help Helping somebody accountable for the full-time mentorship who will has that made any difference any sort of difference? So so I can kind of address this in the infrastructure project. We kind of And I think a lot of open source projects. We kind of treat mentoring or Basically as like the group is mentoring every person is coming in so that they know it's safe to ask questions and so forth But that said having a specific person that you can ask questions of and know That that person will answer you or that person has a little set aside time for you is actually really important So I think both sides of it are important. You have to have the community You know if you ask a question, you know, it's safe to ask a question You know that somebody whoever is available will answer you that's great And it's also important to have somebody you can like talk to privately and say I don't know what's going on here Can you help me out? Sure Anybody from the audience would like to contribute to this. Do you think mentorship is important? dedicated mentor in the community when you join that community So I have run mentoring programs in OpenStack and other communities and One of the reasons why it's important to have known mentors Even then if they're not totally active But at least a list is when someone comes and they have a specific question and helps those who are running the programs Know who to put them in touch with because one of the worst things is is I contacted so-and-so and I never heard back Yeah, and you lose them because you lost that connection though. So that's a really important part of having known mentors We have over the years tried one-on-one mentoring Kind of switched to the Kubernetes model of the cohorts Because that's easier on the mentors we found out we couldn't get the mentees to even introduce themselves So finding out what works best as methodology for your community is also important And that also helps you know how many mentors you need to have where you need to have them One of the reasons why I think that mentorship is important Well, I have had this personal experience where I used to have this perspective from Well from a very experienced point and then I stopped thinking from the perspective of someone who is really new to a certain Technological stack and I'm like hmm. How would I explain it to them in a way? It's really accessible and Mentoring someone allowed me to do just that it also got me down to the basics so that I'm not able to Well work on the things that I work on but probably go back to the basics and explore more things because well It's both rewarding to the mentees that you're mentoring as well as to yourself because you're also learning something new with that It's somebody newer to the community. I've been appreciative of somebody who I would consider my mentor Is Justin back there as I have come in very unsure how to do things or how open source works I've spent most my career in corporate and coming into open source. It's a different ethos, right? and you look into kind of the the Everything of fedora and it's it's intimidating and you don't know who to ask and you don't know like how these processes and you know There's information overload and how do you do something, right? And so I've been appreciative of having you know Somebody who's been able to open a door to then help me talk to others and be able to communicate And I feel like I've been successful because of having a relationship to be able to talk to somebody, right? Somebody I can communicate with so as somebody who is a mentee maybe not officially but more in that sense I've been appreciative of that kind of ethos that exists here for it Well, those were all great inputs. I would just add one thing in there As you said, it doesn't have to be formal always because sometimes Okay, the newcomer comes in they need a Allocated full-time mentor, but sometimes we also because of the personal life and everything we need a week take a break from the community and Even few days of a break you come back Everything which used to be in the community from IRC to pegyard to what not all of that has been changed And you are overwhelmed with those changes and then you need somebody To bring you back and on board to all of these new things So with that we will move on to the second Topic which is effective mentorship strategies We know that we provide some tools here that okay, you need to have goals You need to have a time frame. You need to have an agenda where? After six months or three months time where the mentee look or stand After having this mentorship and all of that What else as organizers or as mentors? We can do more in our community to make this process more smoother and strategic and fruitful What are your thoughts? I can start with that. So one of those things is we as mentors need to realize that Every mentee among us actually has a different learning curve and it goes With the saying that if we try to fit everybody on the same model that might not work for all the mentees Might work for it has actually worked pretty well for about 75% of my mentees but the rest 25% are still those people I would want to have extra attention in order to retain them mostly because Onboarding a mentee is one of the accountability that we have as mentors But we also have to ensure they kind of keep still They keep being motivated the entire time while they are in the journey So it should not feel to them as if like the mentor is forcing them to do things They should feel motivated and that's one of the reasons why mentorship strategy is very important It becomes very handy. So that's that's something that I keep in mind I want to always have a perspective where I ask my mentees. What do you feel what you're doing is right? Do you feel this is you do you feel comfortable with things? Do you want to change the way we do things? So that's that constant feedback loop helps me understand their perspectives and how they are coming from So I'd like to add when I when I look at mentorships I basically see them falling into two buckets, which I think we've already kind of brought up There's the kind of formalized kind I view outreach he is one of those and I have the privilege of working at Red Hat So also Red Hat's formal intern program is a way and for me as a mentor The formal programs are helpful in that they have a very defined time scope They have typically not always typically a pretty well-defined Project sometimes that gets thrown to the wind and then you have to come up with something and that's fine, too and the outreach he program has so many amazing Regular weekly learnings that apply to all interns just about basic career and Stuff like the things you can do And because it's managed not I don't have to do that It's managed for the group of interns and they can ask questions as a group together and they're all having that same experience I think that makes it a better experience for them than me trying to do that one-on-one and the other thing about that outreach he in particular is there is a paycheck because The other type of mentorships that I want to mention is just those informal out of band Sometimes didn't quite plan it, but it worked really well and people gel together and those are pretty magical But they also don't have those limits And on both sides like if if the mentee is not getting paid then they're Depending on their life circumstances and whatnot They might not be coming in as regularly spending as many hours. So those internships tend to be more of like a slow burn Whereas the more formalized ones are very intense for a shorter period of time And I think that I have two things and I'll shut up The first thing is I think I wonder if there is a middle ground That we could look at some sort of not quite so intense and Maybe not quite so Slow and drawn out Something in the middle. Maybe that could be a good, but I don't I've never seen that so maybe it wouldn't work The other thing that I think that we could do is think about With the less formal ones, is there just some little bit of structure like I don't like signing up for things Because I'm usually too busy to do a good job at it but if there was some sort of Just a little bit more structure like maybe a little bit of self-service type things and then on the mentor side I Don't know. I don't know where I was going with that but anyway some thoughts I see I really like that idea because I was going to say something along those same lines All of the mentoring I've been involved with has been very much of the informal type I would say is that fair to say some intro because I'm honored that you consider me your mentor But we never sat down and set up a program and I can say Kevin has definitely mentored me in a lot of things but again, we never and As most said part of the reason for that is it's on me because whenever these things come up I feel kind of intimidated by the Structure and the scale and okay if I sign up for this is it gonna eat my life for six months aspect of it But at the same time doing the unstructured thing it feels a little like you're feeling your way through a fog at times So I think that's a really good idea and I don't have any better ideas for how it could work But I like the way you're thinking to that. Do you think there can be Some structure in place to balance that out Where some of them can be best practices and some of them are the important ones to be followed To strike their balance Yeah, possibly it I like the idea of this is this as well, but I Think one other dimension to this is that there's also there's technical mentorships and more of a like social career Mentorship and those are very different buckets that I've had I've had mentees that you know They're just wanting to learn how to do things and Function in the community and and get things done and and so forth. They're contributing But also people who are like on a more personal level, you know, how do I advance my career? Or how you know, I'm having trouble with this manager or your things like that and so It's there's so much of this that's tailored to the particular relationship between the mentor and mentee But I agree that it would be nice for for the open-source community have a little bit more formality around it and maybe that's something like the join-sig could be involved in like You know, the join-sig could check in with somebody a certain amount of time after They're doing some kind of informal mentorship, but you know, that's making it more formal. So I don't know I don't know what the answer is Those were really Great input anybody from the audience I mean just No, I was just gonna say that I suppose going through my experience going through like a formal and Organization like I know myself a mow when I like during the summer we created like a 12-week plan and It was like formal, but like a relaxed formal. So like So like say for example if I was just wasn't feeling something I put it like to the next week and But I suppose like we had that structure, but also I Come to know about something like hey, I don't know how to do this with this thing I have on on this week. Can you help me and she'd give me resources like and but Yeah, like I really like the structure because I suppose myself. I'm not a very organized person So it was nice to have someone give me like Like be organized So I suppose that's yeah Thank you. All right, just based on what the comments were Previous to this And this is my first flock But it almost sounds like We could take a half an hour an hour and do speed mentoring Which is basically we set up a couple technical tables career tables community tables and Generally if you have enough numbers of both Then like after like five ten minutes think of it as speed dating the mentor moves to the next table of mentees But if you have more mentors than you know You have multiple mentors at the table and no one changes But it's a great way of getting some really quick mentoring from a lot of people Generally, it's done at like Kubecon open-infra summit, you know the bigger conferences But even so you're bringing people from all over the world here who have different experiences and it could be easily done Thank you so much. Those were really really helpful thoughts. I think So one of the things that I do as well as one of our teammates Aurelian does is he holds a stream every Friday on Twitch Hacking away with some stuff in Fedora infrastructure It's really one-sided in nature, but people can tune right in you know get to know what he's doing and he explains things in very lucid manner and Yeah, people get to enjoy it I've started doing doing that as well because hacking away on stuff by yourself is boring and For Fedora badges I have started getting James and a bunch of other folks on call And that's where I get to get opinions on it, right? And that way it's not just me mentoring people, but I get to know about them So it's kind of cross mentoring if you will Thank you So I have one question when you say something slightly more formal slightly more structured than this side and less than that side Are you thinking specific to Fedora or more generally? Because it feels to me that the thing you've sparked in my head I may be talking nonsense here because it's literally just fired off in my brain in the last two minutes There's a lot of people go out and learn programming on the internet and just go and look at YouTube things and so on So that's one thing and then there's a lot of transferrable stuff within open source about how you contribute to a Community how you navigate things how you get things done and it feels like there ought to be something We can build around a set of reusable content that is itself open that we can use as a structure for something in that middle ground I would agree. Yeah, I think generally Some of especially the stuff that is not like like Kevin was saying there's very much a technical component and the more social career Component and I think in open source generally a lot of the social career component stuff is not specific to the project It might be in that it could be, you know, oh this specific person the community is a person to talk to like the referral of specifics But other than that is general content. So And the thing is here at flock with the Ansible folks and the Fedora folks like I went to Don's talk and he had that He showed the meetup kicks toolkit. I was like, oh my gosh, I could use this for so many communities I'm a part of and it's this kind of sharing. It's just happenstance like oh I happened to go to Don's talk and saw this otherwise I might not have known so I think that that is a brilliant idea Maybe different communities sharing their social career resources Outreachy itself. I want to mention does have those sorts of resources too that they send out to mentees and they send out They do regular calls where all the mentees can come in and ask questions and they have a speaker and stuff like that So but we could do more. I think that was a good idea Thank you so much. Oh, that's a lot to consume. I think on this Just just real quick. Just wanted to mention To take into account how somebody might arrive here so Jess Moe myself and probably many others arrived via more of an educational route and got a formal internship with Red Hat But a lot of people arrive like on our Thursday IRC Meetings we do a first thing of if there's anybody new here introduce yourself and welcome it and they might arrive By becoming interested in open source or their first Linux distribution or something like that So that's maybe something else to take into account of you arrive this way. I have a background in that I might be able to assist you or Maybe not. I don't know. I have a question for the panel So Obviously the Fedora project is project that's been alarmed for a long time and mentorship as we can see has been a part of that Project for pretty much the entirety of its history in one way or another now I Feel like we could probably all agree that you know open source and people's involvement in it is always a changing landscape and so I'm curious of your thoughts of how the needs for mentorship might have changed over let's say the last five to ten years and Should we you know thinking about the changing way in landscape economically or you know, I work in a university I can tell you Students now face very different situations and they did you know ten years ago when I was An undergraduate myself So Yeah, well what's changed how do you think that's impacted the needs for mentorship I can start off with that so One thing that I see and this is from a very Indian perspective because I come from India So essentially in Indian perspective if I go back five years or even seven years What has actually happened is there used to be a set of people who to contribute to project in the free time as you call it Now these guys who are like contributing from the university standpoint They're more mostly looking out for a job So they want to be more oriented to a job level skill set So if they want to contribute, let's say I'm coming from a very technical perspective So someone wants to contribute to Colonel They would probably start looking at Colonel newbies program first and then if they are comfortable a little bit for Shell they probably would test Fedora kernels and go on that route, right? So it has slightly become oriented towards how this can Be career helpful. This is not now any more a hobbyist Kind of thing at least in India. It might be different across But that is one of those things that I have seen second. I have seen the approachability for mentees has actually Drastically increased with the awareness in open source. It's it's directly proportional Previously there was not much people who were aware about contents inside open source and what people would be able to do with open source, but as Linux became more mainstream and kept being pushed Kubernetes was like swept across the entire landscape for the last good five years People started realizing the potential in open source as a result. They wanted to be contributors And the the joint seg the the channels that we used to have for people to come in and Check in with us about new ways to get in That actually changed. So the generation wise it started off with IRC and today I actually have a telegram chat or a telegram group where a lot of people join in to just get updates So what usually has happened is the format of communication has actually drastically changed and that is also because IRC probably I cannot stay logged in forever just to see whoever has messaged and whatnot and but in telegram That's actually a sink and that's easy to do and it's on everybody's phone. So that's better way to communicate right now so the the communication channels changed and Definitely the job orientation made it easier and easier for people to actually own the skill sets Bring it make make it their own and make it bigger. Yeah I just want to kind of add on to what Sumatra said because I noticed that it was really interesting because what happened on our team is I started out on the Fedora QA team as the QA community person And my job became more technical over time and Sumatra essentially came in to sort of replace me as the community person and it was so interesting that What I remember from my time as a community person was like IRC and mailing lists and so on and then Sumatra came in and he had this whole new generation attitude and he was Reaching out to the kids on all these fancy new communication methods that I was not on and You know the classic quote the medium is the message and that changes How things work because the styles of communication are completely different on those platforms So I think that's a really interesting change that's happened It shows how important it is to pass the torch I Think the big change and I it might be a little outside the five to ten year scope But I think the big change is video chat and the accessibility To video chat made a huge difference because you could connect with people on a more human level This conference is the first time I've met Jess and 3d Honestly very natural meeting her and I think I've had situations where I had a remote intern But it was IRC mailing lists instead of meet them in person was like well I don't know you look like that so like we didn't even couldn't find each other for like a couple days of a conference but I Think that that is a big thing and the fact that I can just it over time too. It's become very free I think COVID really opened that up because a lot of companies were like oh the socks for everybody We'll make the account free or whatever, but the fact you can share screen It's actually easier to show somebody how to do something over screen share Then if they're literally over your shoulder Because they can look at it closer, whereas to heads bonking in front of a laptop is not great So I think video chat has also changed how I approach mentorship. I'm a very shy person So for me to initiate a video call is also it's something that I've had to learn like yes, it's okay. It's not weird But I was one of those people who grew up afraid of the telephone to I Have a not sure if it's a question or a comment or whatever, but I I'm confused now When you talk about mentorship some in some some comments say mentorship like in Fedora infrastructure and then they jump into Fedora newcomers and I I Now I'm confused because it's very different to Mentor someone that is already a Fedora user and wants to contribute to the project then to mentor a new guy That's it's fierce Linux experience. So I'm not sure if you're referring to both or just to onboarding and helping onboarding in to contribute to the project our aim here is as We have mentioned in the goal that everybody in Fedora is a mentor So whether it is in the infract team in joint seg or wherever they stand in some or other way They are mentoring other people somewhere it are more organized more formal and Somewhere it is not and that's why we are organizing this so that we can take away all the inputs from different pockets of Fedora and We can make and we can work on it and we can make a more formalized and organized and a balanced mentorship experience for people I Think the difference are calling out is the difference between mentoring somebody to become a user and mentoring somebody to be a contributor In my assumption I could be wrong. So please correct me. No, this is about contributor mentorship That is all. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not confused Okay, with that I would like to shift the topic here to a very important subject We all know how important it is to have the contributors in any open source coming community and Having mentors on boarding programs internship. It is the first Step how the person will be welcomed in any of these open source community This is their very first experiences and that is how they feel that this community is so What do you think how we can strategize our diversity and inclusion policies Within the mentorship so that everybody feel welcomed. I always lean on the outreach program for that So whatever their guidelines are they usually make a ton of sense and I just copy them shamelessly That's also by the way when Jess mentioned the 12-week program that that was totally ripped from outreach So I can add something for me I have a slightly technique I mean slightly different definition to diversity and inclusion at least from a mentoring standpoint So QM and mentees They go above and beyond to do certain level of testing right for us There are there's one thing that I always keep in mind as a as a mentor is if they're coming from academic background and as in their students and they probably are somebody who is Coming from a prop a society where there is not much of internet access Like they probably have one GB of data limit on their cellular networks If I make them download a 2.9 gig image every now and then that's not gonna be sustainable So I so when when I say policy when you talked about diversity policies I think one of those things we we should try to do is Maybe use minimal amount of resources That a person has to prerequisite before they start contribution. So that way, you know, we don't force people to have like You know download GB's of data or have a machine which is let's say I seven plus something right in that way We kind of lower down the way test days are very good in doing that because test days are testing very very specific features and they kind of help out when you basically give it to a Contributor it's a bite bite sized task hardly takes two hours to do it and that way they contribute But they don't have to expend a lot of resources On there and to start doing it. So I so that's that's one key differential change in my definition of Diversity in terms of technical contributions. Yeah, that's a very nice practical Input in that regard. I would say Yes, please go ahead. I would say it's probably collaborative with the DEI teams and I think the DEI team should be more vocal in some cases to Supporting mentors right and making sure that they understood, you know, that is fedora as a community They know the different DEI programs that exist within fedora. There's multiple teams. There's the overarching DEI group There is all the initiatives that we're doing, but I think it's it's kind of a collaboration that needs to occur, right? I think mentors who are you know taking on mentees, right should be aware and Reaching out to DEI right and joining kind of the DEI programs at least just kind of as a casual, you know Kind of casual observer almost right but also, you know as DEI we need to do a better job of Publicizing and saying hey these programs exist. They're there to support Contributors they're there to make people feel safe, right? And I think that's a big thing that we need to maybe improve upon a little bit is making that a little bit more vocal So yeah, I think to add on to that It's really important for mentors to know When they can't answer something or can't deal with something and talk to their mentors, you know It isn't just you and the mentee or the mentee and the mentor It's you know, the community is around you too So if somebody asks you a hard question or you don't know how to handle it or something like that do reach out to your mentor or DEI or you know the appropriate place and I Hope that most mentors know that they should do that I also think and I'd actually be really curious sorry to call you out Amy But I'd be really curious on what you know about like the open second Kubernetes communities because I recently submitted to a Cube con side conference this week They're due I think on Sunday And what I was actually really impressed by just submitting to the conference the amount of references to the community's DEI policies how they collected information about the the speakers Self-provided background information and how they take those policies seriously and considering talks Yeah, and I'm gonna call Justin out on this a lot of that is because the apply for the chaos badging program Kubernetes is very good. I mean historically they have been Gold gold gold gold gold gold any time we had an issue from the chaos badging program and said hey We can't find this we can't find that they were the most awesome on getting it fixed They also have the most funding One of the reasons why I open in for the first year got silver is Because of liability and other things we don't provide Childcare we can't But yet the second time this past year when we applied we got gold because we explained certain things and we're better about Having things on the website So the easiest way to get a gold badging program is to have everything out. They're easy to find and that's why you had that experience the conferences themselves are run really well on their Code of conducts. They're very good about having diversity tickets diversity travel They've got funding behind them Especially Linux Foundation. I Guess when meet has done a pretty good job of putting together a diverse panel here So if obviously only people feel comfortable sharing do any of us have like experiences from a diversity perspective with Mentoring or being a mentee like positive or negative like how was it? I mean personally I'm Somewhere on the 2SL GBTQ. I I'm forgetting all the letters spectrum But for me, it's never been a huge issue So I don't really have a great perspective on it, but I'm curious if it has been in The experiences of everyone else on the panel, I mean, I've been on both sides of that and I think I Think one of the challenges is that if you're not from the same identity Markers, I don't know. What's the right word to say? I'm so I apologize. I was saying something terrible But if you don't have the same identities as the person you are mentoring or if as a mentee You don't have the same identities as the person who is your mentor. There's definitely Like a bit of a trust that has to be established and depending on the the timeline of the mentorship and How how you've built that how where you are in your journey to building that trust? It can be difficult when situations arise to be able to handle them correctly or perfectly and I feel like Perfection is not human so don't strive for perfection But well, maybe you should strive for it, but just don't beat yourself up if you don't meet it Yeah, but I one of the things so so when you were saying how the it would be interesting for the DEI Communities say within fedora to be a support to mentors I think that's actually a brilliant idea because for me again, like I had an issue vaguely recently with a mentee not just Where that they were a member of community I was not a member of and I absolutely support that community But I'm not a member so I can't make calls about what is okay And what's not okay and stuff like that and if I had like the DEI group Affiliated with that identity that I could go to and just have an open honest conversation where it's like there's no Wrong or bad question to ask like for the next half hour. What stays in this meeting stays in this meeting Can I just ask you these questions so I can understand? Where the issue is So then I can kind of and maybe even sit with me as a member of that community and Help me work out a strategy for how we can get past this road bump. I think that would have been helpful I ended up just going out my management chain and asking for helping guidance and it got through it I wish I had been resolved better. This is the recent thing. I was thinking through The issues that I had were related to being female And they happened a long time ago and it was a very different community Just generally I I would not recommend what happened to me So I am not going to say anything about that. That's that's exactly I wanted to say that But this is a challenge that if the person is not from maybe same gender same time zone It is difficult to convey that I remember that one of the feedback I got from One of the person from us that when I visited us They said that you are completely different person and very energetic I thought you always Was very lazy to take meetings. I Said because it is totally opposite time zone I'm finishing my day and you are all excited and Starting your day with a cup of coffee and I even remember that when I when Adam was there in QE and I Was just joining Fedora a few years back a lot of years back Then it was very hard to connect with him being in Canada and only one famous community Guy in QE and really very hard to you know connect with him So I think it is very very important from the diversity perspective not just gender-wise or you know teams wise or It's Time-zone wise to have people all across the globe and all different kind of people. So it is very important Yes Yeah, so this is something that well I also experienced that the difference of cultures So what you want is Conway or what you want to say might not be what would be perceived. Let's just say so Two things always help, you know first having empathy in a putting yourself in somebody else's shoe and understand Hmm, would they really understand it how I want them to understand or we take it the other way around because well Cultures differ. So what do you want to say might not get there? You know, it's all UDP. You know what I'm saying The other thing is also being open to making mistakes because well we're human beings and like Kevin said You know that you know if you're a mentor you're mentoring someone else and there are situations that you know That you might not be correct or you don't really know how to address that So well you reach back to your mentors and ask them. Maybe they have an idea about how you can address that situation and Well, I can say it for a fact that it did help me Progressing through my mentorship challenges, you know yeah, I Think like so I do quite a bit of mentoring outside of Red Hat I'm on the website where you can just volunteer your time as a mentor or mentee and I Think I learned the most By mentoring people that were not from my culture, right? And it's always like I think we forgot like the For me a mentorship relationship is really like a bi-direction or like every time a mentee ask me like Oh, but why do you give your time for this? When we have a conversation I'm going to learn as much as you because you're going to bring like challenging problems You're going to bring different point of view different perspective. I think that's where the diversity aspect is very Very important and very powerful like so that's where you have an impact on both people's life If I mentor someone that is exactly like me, we're going to think the same way We're not going to have like this creativity or difference of background culture and an opinion so I think it's yeah, it's very Important to have like that diversity in the mentors mentee and time zones religion sex by like yeah all the That's what that's how you learn and you go I think that's like the goal of the mentorship It's to to grow and to develop yourself and learn from others Yeah, so With this We can maintain the continuity and a similar thought is that we can we have one more question, please? Yes, please go ahead Thanks, and I'll try to make this as succinct as possible and so the on the idea of Trying to make people more welcome in the community, which I think is the general section that we're talking about here and My understanding of the structured programs like outreach II G suck things like that. They're great They'll bring people in that may not have come into the community by themselves. Then there's As you talked about the informal mentorships that happen and and those would be people finding their way and Finding mentorships finding mentors within the community and I come from a slightly different background I'm not currently very active at all in in fedora, but I Mentor a few people, but I work in an office. So it's really easy for me to See where mentees are struggling because I see them every day So my question is sort of around. Do you think there are any gaps between? The structured programs and this is sort of going to where Moe was saying like some sort of a middle ground between the structured programs and then the the informal Mentoring relationships that happen do you think there could be any gaps and Sort of an idea around and maybe this happens already I'm not sure because I know at some of you up up there are very high-profile people in the fedora community and And I wonder if newer people Might find it difficult to approach you because you're seen as so busy and doing so much stuff and involved in so many conversations so coming from the office background where I can just just walk up the corridor and Interrupt people and see how they're doing and stuff and Is there any concept of like Office hours where there's like I don't know ask You can book 15 minutes 30 minutes with Kevin or with Adam or with Moe and in your calendar where you've blocked off time to To for for people to approach you rather than Hoping that they will I think to summarize this side I think it's more of a question of approach ability if we we have people not within the same premises I can take that So redhead long runs this awesome program called redhead link up Essentially they send the pair you up with some somebody Mostly from other part of the world and you get to have a one-hour conversation with them about anything General life and stuff every time so I'm a part of link ups since last one year I met like brilliant people like I met Simzax If you have worked in Kiwi, you know who that is essentially Every time I met people I kind of they were interested in Contributing to test days open source something I would basically be like yeah You know we can set up a cadence of calls where you can probably ask me questions And if if I cannot solve it I would forward them to Adam or somebody who can answer it on the behalf And it has it actually gives us that exact point. You told me that it sets up that bridge between me and somebody That I don't know I would probably never know To still approach me and then keep a cadence call if if they want to maintain it that way So it has it has all that that kind of program has always helped me do that But that's that's one program So I am part of that program since last one year and I keep doing it every twice every week This year at this time. No because of conferences But yeah, and usually twice a week I meet people and I help them out Wherever they are usually people have problems with oh my Fedora Wi-Fi is not working or something is not working So it's fun to debug those as well, right? But then you get some experience and they get some learning. Yeah, I Think I don't have an answer to it, but I think it's a fantastic question, and I think yes, there may well be gaps because you do see a lot of people show up to a community and not necessarily continue and That may well be the case that they needed a mentor, but they didn't get one So I think it's absolutely a great question and the answer may well be that we could do a lot more there and I like the office hours idea. So I may actually do that. So thank you for that. I suppose as well like when I was Starting off like my internship and right out like contributing to Fedora I was still in college. So like I'd be working six to ten my time But for Mo it was one to five. So it was working hours for Mo. So I felt like, you know, I wasn't impeding unlike you're like You know your off off hours time and but I suppose now and are like before Especially in the summer I'd be going into the office working nine to five hours time. So I'd be texting Mo at like 12 o'clock when it's like Seven o'clock her time hoping not to wake her up And But I feel like you're quite available when it comes to Like asking people. So I feel comfortable Messaging Mo at any time. So but I think you need to you need to limit your time. You need to take a break so One I've had that same issue and I work with teams in other regions and the thing that I keep telling myself is People can structure their notifications how they need so I'm not going to worry about waking someone up If they want don't want to be woken up they can turn off their thing but the the thing that I wanted to say is I think office hours are brilliant and For me and Jas one of our weekly syncoms is basically the Fedora design team meeting We also have weekly CDT, which is computer community design team. So that's because We started out as the Fedora design team, but then we were working with other communities that we're not necessarily Fedora Like Podman would be a main one. Although. Yes, they're very much integrated in Fedora, but you know So it's like well, it's the Fedora design team people don't know they can approach us So we'll come up with a more neutral name so that other communities are affiliated with know they can approach us But yeah, I think having a regular meeting cadence is really good And then people if somebody says oh, I have a friend who would love to work on design stuff How can they meet up? I'll just say I'll come to the regular Fedora design team meetings Now they're at a specific time if you can't make that time What we do is we do a live stream and then the recording is auto uploaded So people could at least watch the recording and get a feel for is this the group for me or not? And then if they want I we always offer you could always book a meeting with us You know a one-on-one in a time that works for you. So but I your point is very good And I think for me I I tend to like the structured programs because they force me to check in Because I'm not like a super social person. So I don't always think like I'm used to people like pinging me And I'm not normally the person to arrange the parties or you call someone I'm usually the person answering the phone or going to the party. So I'm having something like outreach He has the structured weekly check-ins and Those just having the fact that the structure exists and I have to do it Makes me do it. So that's why I think some some kind of structure like that Some sort of thing where even if it's an informal mentorship But you know the timelines I think of an informal mentorship are longer. So maybe not a weekly check-in Maybe a monthly roundup. Yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah, so Totally totally agree, but one thing I want to point out is like an infrastructure Monday through Thursday, we do a stand-up twice a day every day And we just go over stuff and that we have like a period where we say anybody have any questions, you know, ask Whatever you want, that's fine. But how many people know about that? We're very bad about, you know directing the people who might need those resources to that kind of stuff and Every once in a while, I keep thinking that that maybe we need a fedora directory Assistance or something, you know somebody to yeah, exactly. Where do I go for this? Oh, you go talk to that team over there? And yeah, but definitely we could do more in that in that gap to answer your question I just want to cross the streams and say in discourse if anybody was in that Maybe because I don't know the discourse experts have told me there's events integration So I'm just wondering if we could have these Open calls where people can ask questions listed as events in discourse and we can make that the central hub No, I think you had something to say Do you have something regarding this topic or do you want to ask another question? So the only thing I wanted to add was that I love office hours as well And we try and do some of them and so all AWX is doing office hours But I do feel that it still puts the onus on the person coming right? So Mo made the point that you're not the one who's going to start the call right But does that mean if you were a mentee in another community, would you? Feel comfortable jumping into an office hours any more than you would say asking for help on get hub or wherever It's still the same problem. How do we get people to come? Isn't solved by office hours. It's another medium. It's good. We should do it Yes, but we still have to figure out how to get people if as Adam said people drift away because they didn't get the help They need would they have had the initiative to come to the open office hours as well? I don't know that it solves that problem I don't have a good answer to that right getting people to come to things is always the problem So one of the things that I've done personally when I've been reaching out to Kevin who looks the world apart from me Time zones can be a pain say We use as synchronous mediums of communication, right? So a bunch of times you can't make it to office hours because well time zones You can drop a ping instead and you can trust them that they have the notifications off because guess what? The time that you might be pinging them is probably just asleep at that time, right? But you can pretty sure that they're not nice enough that they're going to respond you back when they'll be awake and that's that's a good start I guess I have the problem there you're talking about. I was just trying to help a friend that I work with to package to just to put a patch in a package and He's an old guy. Well, we're in our 40s. So we're old guys in computer years And and he was overwhelmed by all the he called it. I'm not I'm not it's not my I'm quoting all the bureaucracy Around being a packageer and I was trying to mentor him and and given some guidance Pasting stuff, but I didn't do the office hours thing So I'm gonna do that when I go back to Mexico. I'm just gonna let's sit and well, it's remote Let's make a call and let's go through the process and this was very good advice. Thanks And I would like to add to that to set the expectations right in advance before jumping directly to the To that video call or office are maybe To kick off with you can start with informal one But going forward when you are devoting your time the other person is devoting their time set the expectations and Agenda in advance so that you are prepared and the other guy is also Well prepared with that I would like to take the next question will come to you as well Because I have some set of questions, which I really would like to be in within the time So we have seen and this is the question came in Yesterday as well on one of the social media channel that some of the fedora groups are doing really well in mentorship and Some of them are not yet there. So how do you think the learnings and Motivation the force the support how we can give that to those Groups which are not there yet. I know that design team team. All of you are doing fantastic to Support our new contributors and bringing them in the community How we can You know build that culture across other fedora sex and teams and groups I think each team needs a flywheel It's sort of quote Ben cotton And I think where I see teams within fedora struggle is they don't have like an identified flywheel So it could be either there really is nobody with the time or motivation to do it or it could be Nobody feels they have permission That's one of the things that I think is the early mentee Thing that you have to get over. It's like you don't have to ask permission You know we've been saying at red hat. It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission And some people are afraid like should I do this thing? Yes, if you want to do it, please do it But I think that is the one thing that like it's not going to happen I can give people all the advice in the world But if they don't feel empowered to actually do it or if there isn't anybody who has the time or commitment to be able to Be that teams flywheel It's just not going to happen like you need the people But if you do have the people I think again when I said this before Looking at how outreach he does it is a really good way like everything that they do is just such top-notch From just the inclusive language that they use in all their documentation to how they have it laid out all of the Things that they recommend so I think for any team within fedora any team within any open source project Definitely looked at them and from some of the stuff Amy's saying I think I want to look at the Kubernetes community to and kind of steal from them What's a flywheel I Think you could do it better, but that was something that Ben cotton our former program manager sadly laid off Which we're all still salty about it used to say he You need a person on a team who will be there who can be relied upon to be there and make things happen And you don't want people to sort of fall into a gap where they they want to help out And no one is there to help them and that person generally needs to be paid by somebody so it's their Responsibility to do this thing so I mean for our team so Andrew is the flywheel You can rely on him to be there if community stuff is happening He is going to be there organizing it and people can reach out to him So that's the idea of the flywheel And that's why I like to say that outreach is a program is really good because they pay the interns because you can't expect Somebody to work that intensively and not have a paycheck. I See that you keep mentioning this. I really want to know that what is the best way because It takes a different kind of effort and determination to go and read each and every outreach a mentorship page But how best we can get that lesson learned and bring it to our community and implement it maybe the mentors of it Maybe no, but no like I would envision maybe a training like it could be a talk here And it could be it doesn't have to be very long of like a half-hour thing If these are best practices learned from outreach II okay, and I could go through and say you know the 12-week plan I think is a great one Because 12 is a wonderful number you can do you can do three weeks for four Projects like three weeks each or you could do three projects four weeks each or you could do six and two either way It's just a nice number and depending on how complex the technical project is you're looking at or just you know What what skill set the intern would like to learn like if they just won't want to learn one thing Maybe you do six by two if they want to learn four different things You do a four by three breakdown of the schedule and the fact that you're doing these weekly schedule these weekly check-ins And you're going through the schedule and making sure like updating it to match the work that was actually completed because you know The thing the thing about our routine to when I've done many outreach the internship Mentorships, it's it's intimidating to you have to come up with the schedule as part of the application process But then it never works out the way you planned it and there's no shame in that it's good If you did it exactly the way that you put it out when you sent in your application You're doing something wrong because you learn in week one. Oh, I can't do that thing in week four So that continual checking in on the plan and honestly, I think that's something for her could you generally is we have this strategy Let's check in and see how we're doing and a regular cadence. So I mean that's that's one specific thing Is that 12-week plan thing? I think it's brilliant. Um, there's other things too like they have topics every week that they talk about Like when I remember I attended with an intern was the the resume building one and how to talk to recruiters That kind of stuff it's jobs focused But having like a list of these general topics that maybe you know if we have a community within fedora Like it could be the join-sig. I don't know some community that would maybe have these sort of trainings too And I think the other thing is that we do talk about this stuff a lot and it's everything is video chat recorded since COVID We have this rich library material on our YouTube channel and like I remember specific talks I saw that I found informative but Like just might not know that that talk that Marie gave about you know making badges exists But I do so could we have some sort of library and again I will Cross the streams and say maybe discourse could have a video library thing to point to the videos so we could build a training Center that kind of goes through these general topics So then people have something to reference, but you always want to keep the material fresh So and I don't know the cadence of fedora mentor summit, but it could be something that we're Revaluating every summit and then we're posting those fresh videos and making sure they're listed. I really like these ideas and it's like Logistic and providing the right material maintaining the repository and all of that with a real challenge, which I also Observe and then seen across the board is that the same faces the same teams Coming and stepping in into the mentorship and being the mentor The main thing is here. How like we talked about how important it is to have that diverse pool of people mentoring each other How can we motivate and encourage more people to be mentored? So one of those things we used to do back in the day is called triple T train the trainer essentially a series of a two-day program for a trainer would basically take up multiple other trainers and be like Here's how I mentored my people and I found these few things that did not work for me Do you have a suggestion of how I can cure it? And that has been actually a very nice way of correcting flaws in the mentorship program So you don't have to entirely change your strategy towards mentorship You just have to fix the small problems and they can come from experience of other mentors Right. So that's one thing that we have actually Nailed down as a part of The mentorship summit we tried to ensure that there are more mentors and they kind of give feedback to other mentors saying Hey, we have been trying to do this. This is failing We don't think this is working at 100% can we have some suggestions around certain topics? Yeah, I Just want to call back on this to maybe some earlier points Like Moe's idea of some kind of middle ground and I'm sorry. I don't know your name But your idea of contributors who are getting lost. Sorry Darren Jared sorry. Yep, Jared. I'm your idea about contributors getting lost because I think if we had some kind of very light Fedora how to be a mentor Program that would really help with this a lot because you know as a QA team We don't have our own mentorship program exactly if we had something project-wide where people coming in We could say oh, we've got new people coming in. Does anyone want to be a mentor? It's not this intensive Six-month program. It's just go and read these three docs pages about this is how you do our very in Middle-ground form of mentoring. It's not scary Now you can go and help out the new people I feel like that might really help with you know a few of the different things here I mean, I think your point too about oh, well, there's only certain teams and they keep showing up And the other teams don't show up I think the thing to keep in mind is we are very upstream focused and I think for example like And I don't mean to call teams out But you might not necessarily see like the Fedora kernel team in these programs But that's because this program's like so mantra mentioned the kernel newbies program So in some cases I think teams rely on their upstream and I think where you see like for our design team showing up a lot It's because we're our own upstream like nobody's really upstream of us So obviously we need to do the mentorship and I think it's okay like I think it's okay But I think what we do need to do is identify Where if you want to get involved in a specific Fedora team, but the mentorship program is upstream We need to say hey, you're interested in working on the Fedora kernel Look at the kernel newbies program or if you're interested in working on the desktop and Fedora workstation Look at GNOME's mentorship programs. So it's one of those things where maybe we need to have the references upstream that we don't have That's a really good point. Please go ahead Sorry All right, so it's it's a bit of meandering question, but I think I'm can condense it but I want to Say a couple things first All right. First thing is research has shown that labor unrelated to the actual production of software is Pretty much universally devalued in open source regardless of people's intentions People feel bad about doing this sort of work. So this is one thing that we know for sure, right? The the second thing is that you know Generally with mentorship in open source because everything's on a goodwill basis The the people within the community the mentors have more power than the mentees, right? They have existing responsibilities. So naturally without any other sort of interventions Mentees regardless of the goodwill or the intentions of the mentors are expected to engage with on the terms of the mentor right and I think a good example of this is Thinking about like time zones, right and why it was always having to engage with mentors in the community That are based in America like on their time zones, right? And then the third thing I wanted to not to like I don't want to stir the pot or cause drama But I went to Justin's talk yesterday about how to spend fedora's money And it was all about events, right which I thought was interesting because I'm like, oh, yeah We all of us here there are part of this community. Yeah, we like going to events and seeing each other and I enjoy being here, too But everything else is okay. Not everything else. We're talking about five flywheels and there are like red hat paid-staff positions that you know, haven't been laid off yet, but And I don't want to stir that pot either, but I think it's you know We're talking about Ben Cotton and many other people that you know Who's whose layoff was arbitrary at best and discriminatory at worst and so I want to my question is about Devotion of resources that this community has access to and not just like the people in this room but also like you know that the budget that we have and Historically a lot of this budget has been around like you know Celebrations and flock and events and stuff like that. Do we feel like that needs to change and to grow this community? We need to devote monetary resources to you know, as you said flywheels or you know devoted Staff positions around mentorship and these sort of roles and if so, what do you envision those things to be? before We start I just want to pitch in there that DEI team in Fedora has been contributing the budget for the mentorship as well, so so I Matthew Miller started this conference Keynote with one point which was state of Fedora and one of those point was if in anyone in this room Who has a budget for diversity advisor role can actually come and help Fedora to get somebody full-time there? That was one of the points which was made by the project leader That can give us the last point that you asked for mostly the the budget part the second stuff Which is actually there right now. I was While we were doing this diversity weeks Fedora diversity weeks a week of diversity if WDF TW something Essentially you could actually reimburse the certification that you were doing on diversity And that was a good way to actually help and get more community members or other more flywheels to understand What diversity inclusion means right that I have Not a great idea on specifics of from where do you get these courses and whatnot? But I know there's a budget allocated which you can use up and Justin may have exact informations on the amounts at this point We also sponsor In the past we sponsored the outreach intern as well with the Fedora DEI budget I know because I was there so Justin has the exact numbers Well, I don't want to step in if anyone else does want to comment on how resources are allocated in Fedora for these kind of things, but I do want to just acknowledge the point to that in Fedora since at least since I've been involved in 2015 We've always had a diversity Allocation in the public Fedora budget for things like we were doing with sponsoring outreachy interns in the Fedora community But also things that we've done across the year like the appreciation weeks the Formerly Fedora Women's Day now Fedora week of diversity where we were doing before COVID in person events And we had them in five different continents of people organizing these communities spaces in their local communities But I think the challenge that we have now is especially as we're coming out of COVID you know, there are resources that we have in the community and Those are things that I think a lot of people may not realize are available or Are are not exposed very well So, you know on one hand, you know, it is a team like this is also how the DEI team has been able to do some of our very specific focus projects, but at the same time I think wider input on how to best prioritize and Make sure that we're creating opportunities for people to share how we can more equitably use our resources for mentoring for Supporting greater diversity in the community, you know I think that's probably the the challenge is we do need to have a larger conversation about that and finding the right balance of Getting wider feedback and input and making sure that we're not trying to do too many things at one time We think that's also been the challenge is we've had resources and then it's a smaller group of people who know It's not just that part, but it's just it's harder to To scale so I think there's there's multiple pieces there, but I just wanted to comment that about The budget piece and you know, there are resources, but probably the conversation is how can we be more? open about and transparent about those resources and use them in a more well continue to use them in a equitable way and making sure that we're still Improving proving that in the community Thank you. Justin for you. I think when we look at the allocation of resources There's like two dimensions to think about and that's is it a one-shot deal from the funding perspective? Or is it an ongoing thing from the funding perspective and then on the other side think about the outcomes is the outcome a one-shot deal? Or is the outcome ongoing? I think events tend to be a one-shot deal in one sense at the individual level Oh, I got to go to flock this year. I won't necessarily come next year, but I don't say that because I wouldn't want to go I'm just saying because the funding But because I went I was able to make the social connections and build the intimacy with others that when I go back to my remote Contribution, it will be superpowered at least for a while So you have sort of an ongoing Outcome and it was sort of a one-shot deal from a funding perspective for me as an individual I think as a community an event like flock. We don't have to do flock every year We do we have not always done flock We used to do fudcons. It was multiple smaller events But that ends up at a high level budget level not at the individual level an ongoing Cost and I think sometimes when we have these conversations we think of the individual I had a one-shot deal and not the fact that this is an ongoing regular cost But then also I think for flywheels at the individual level it has to be ongoing Otherwise, it's not sustainable you and I think it's easy to fund programs like Outreachy because they have that 12 13 week I think it's 13 weeks now But they have that Specific timeline and it's a one-shot and you fund it and you know what your budget looks like and you can do that And it is for the for the individual receiving it It is an ongoing benefit But it's not enough to keep a flywheel a flywheel has to be able to make a living So yeah, and that's the level of budget. I Just think it speaks to this maybe I don't think we have that level of budget to hire multiple people in if we did Yeah Matthew would be We would have that diversity coordinator if we did have that budget, right and Yes, please go ahead So I had a question for the design mentors This came up during my Outreachy internship as well and Recently when I was trying to volunteer for flock as well so one of the regions I struggled while contributing to Fedora was Using the open source design tools and I think I've been vocal about it for a very long time I have been trying to discuss this and I've gone to different open source communities Discussing the same issues and how they are dealing it so Like for better or worse, it matters to me what design tool I use and I've been using proprietary design tools for a longer time So when I came to Fedora, I saw that you all were using open source design tools and I'm nothing against it It's just that I know I'm more efficient while using the tools of my choice So I just wanted to know like what matters more to a mentor Like the contributions that are being made or the tools that are being chosen to make the contributions And is there any way that we can find a middle ground between new contributors who just want to use their tool of choice so that they can start contributing first and then maybe switching or I mean, it's just that if I use a tool of my choice I know I'll be more efficient. I can contribute more and if I am like pushed to Like push to use like different open source design tools I just know that I'll be frustrated and my will to contribute goes down. That's all. Thanks for the push I can take that So I would be the czar of making people use open source tools in the design team I have a lot of reasons for that and I understand as an individual You invest a lot of time into your tools and it is a huge ask and I could say this You're in the discourse session Asking me to use discourse is a huge ask because I have the tools I already have that the like but I'm being open-minded I have tried to score a number of times Matthew says he's gonna sit down with me and fix it for me So but the bit about that to you like I would be fighting that way more tooth and nail and the fire alarm would have Goed off multiple times in that session if it was proprietary Because fedora is really I see us as an open source first community And it's not just because of the dogma of open source and software freedom It's the reason I am so passionate about using open source design tools is that when I was a student I was a freshman and actually I had started working with this tool called Macramedia director as a high schooler at a Engineering summer camp So I was the director girl So anytime there was like a video project or what I would use director by the time I was a senior So this is within four years. I don't know if Adobe had already bought Macramedia At that point but director they you couldn't even buy it like you couldn't get a copy of it And I had all these projects in my portfolio that I couldn't play them And I couldn't open the files to edit them because I didn't have a copy of the DVD It came preloaded on my laptop so For me to apply to jobs and have a portfolio like I had all this work I couldn't use it was locked up in a proprietary format requiring a proprietary tool and that really sucked So that's why I'm passionate about the open source tools I think it's a practical consideration when you think about bit rot I think it's a practical consideration when you think about accessibility a lot of these tools cost money a lot of them cost Money on a subscription model now where it's hey, you know what pay us ransom and you can access your files Otherwise no and it's like yes I you know I understand that maybe the way the open source design tools work is different like I'm not when I go Into the discourse session. I'm like this is so uncomfortable. I don't like it. I have to learn all this stuff I understand that it works perfectly well for other people who are used to that system So I don't think it's an issue of the tool having a problem it's the having to retrain yourself and the investment of Having to do that with a tool that you already familiar with that It's like your right hands or your third hand or something that it's so natural I understand that's a big ass, but I think for us as a team It's really important from volunteers coming into the team Contributing something if they give us assets and yet they could be beautiful could be the most perfect design ever If it's in a format that I can't open With tools that I can access it might as well not have existed because say it's something for flock And we have to update it with the with the dates for next year if I can't open the file I'm gonna have to remake it from scratch So it's really important I think to think about the format of the files that it outputs You have to think about can other people access the tool that was used to make it You also have to think about the point of fedora is to be an open source project So I would quickly jump on to that because we just have Okay, one more question, right? Yeah, yeah, I guess my Guess my question is kind of a little bit more, you know, obviously most of us here folks who hack away at things, right? I mean, I've heard today a lot of things about You know, we need to understand who our mentors are we need to understand I mean, it's almost kind of a data question. I think I've also heard about the funding the resources and making sure that those things are there I think as a community we have a lot of tooling around things like badges and rewards and recognition I mean, is there any opportunity to leverage fedora to do this, right? Can we leverage, you know Show who's a mentor show who's you know who is being mentored by someone else Can we recognize that and then start to understand who is becoming a mentor because of this, right? I mean, I mean heck could we put that in fast, right? Literally show who's who's mentoring, right? Like I don't know about you know for most folks But you know being able to award a badge or some kind of recognition would be an amazing thing to do So I just throwing it out there folks have ideas or what your thoughts are. Yeah. Yeah That's totally something we could do And that's sort of a project-wide thing, right and a lot of the mentoring stuff is per team So we would have to get some sort of buy in at you know some sort of mentor summit of some kind About that, but yeah, we could totally do badges or some kind of relationship but one of the problems there is that a Lot of the relationships are ephemeral light so you're a mentor for a Month and then the person goes somewhere else or whatever or you're mentoring like five people and you know Some of them are you're seeing every week and some of them you're seeing every month and So there's that kind of complexity to it also But I think you're right that some sort of recognition or some kind of how to find the mentors or you know where to go Again, we get back to the flywheel You know who who in this in this team or project can direct me to the resources that that I need Yeah, I was just gonna say it's kind of an interesting comparison with say package sponsors or something like that We could that's the permanent part people who are willing to be mentors like The the individual relationships are fleeting and the mentees may be fleeting But if we can have something kind of tool-wise which says these are the mentors on this team that might be really useful, I guess oh No, I was I was gonna say something on a new Scha's point about the preparatory software and I suppose when When I first joined the Fedora design team like I had knowledge of Excuse my language illustrator before That kind of I suppose it helped me get into inkscape because there was a lot of stuff That were similar and I know inkscape has like a feature where you can like Use like the illustrator buttons in inkscape So like I suppose that kind of got me into it But then going back into college and learning illustrator. I was like, I don't like this piece of software I'm used to I'm used to inkscape now So I think it's like I know people learn like in different ways, but I suppose that was that was my experience of it and You know and as Mo was saying like the freedom of having You know like like dot SVG can be opened by anything Dot PSD, which is for Photoshop can only be opened by Photoshop. So it's nice to have the That freedom and but I do understand where we're coming from with the figma you were using so yeah so Like as you pointed out that dot SVG can be open anywhere. So recently I just saw that Inkscape SVGs are not supported on figma or other modern design tools So that's I mean the problem is the open source design tools that The community has been using sometimes a lot of files from those Tools are not supported on modern design tools and modern software like it's not just figma. There's like sketch and Framer which do not support these files and the like my point is not using just one tool I'm just asking if there could be ways that people could use the tool of their choice not changing the entire community's tool of choice like if you want to work with open source design tools you have the Free will to do that and if I do not want to do that I have the free will to do that The problem is is we don't work in a silo we work together as a team So we need to agree on the tools we use that's why for example I'm willing to give discourse a third go Because we all have to be there in order for it to work And I think that when you're saying inkscape SVG doesn't open up in figma Number one you can do save as plain SVG and inkscape and then it probably should but if it doesn't that's figmas problem It's not inkscape's problem because SVG is a standard and I know that there are members of the inkscape team who follow closely and participate in the W3C SVG standard If proprietary vendors don't want to adhere to that standard that is their problem. It's not the standards problem. I also want to say that Modern tools I think inkscape is a very much a modern tool And I don't like the proprietary stuff being said that it's better and the stuff That's free not because I don't think just because it's free software means it's less than It's a different model. It works differently But for us using inkscape is really a partnership for us because we are pretty close with the upstream inkscape community We just spent me and Madeline spent a lot of time with Martin Owens who is the lead UX developer for inkscape at Penn Pot Fest a couple Was it a couple months ago? It was in June no it was in July anyway And Penn Pot is another tool where it is an upstream open source project. We it is a modern tool very much There's a lot of large companies that use it And that's the tool we go because we know the upstream we have a great relationship with them There are features in inkscape right now that were implemented within the past release or two that was Fedora And I just would like to What is that we out of time overnight? So I will I would like to conclude this this question just with one sentence that In my career one thing I learned is change is the only constant be open-minded And that is how you will build your resume with different skills with different tools Okay with that I would like to thank you this lovely audience who has been very Very enthusiastic for the participation last night I was thinking after this long game night and beers and drinks who would be there just maybe five people or parallelist But no there are people who are very active and I am so thankful and glad that we had you here I noticed Note down a very good the conversation the summary with different learning curves join sake How do I can contribute red hat link up Fedora office hours Fedora directory Outreachy lessons train the training fly wheels Very easy three page pager how to be a mentor the best practices Exposing the resources that we have wisely So I'm not going to promise that we're gonna implement each one of them But we will definitely try and focus Step-by-step that how we can implement that in Fedora and make it a better place for mentors and mentors That thank you very much And outside is happening the group photo so we need to run