 So up next we have Emma Kidney here who many of you probably know and it was a big part of this release party as well all the design and Beautiful assets you see around hop in and on social media Emma is probably one of the person people who is largely behind those So I will go ahead and hand it over to you Emma for you to share your contributor story with us today And I made a little fly show So I'll just Get that up As you probably saw in the badges song Previous and I don't know how to Yeah So it was very nice hearing and Chris's story and I Thoughts mine comes from it at a different angle and so for those who you don't know my name's Emma Kidney and You can find my email there and also my matrix username if you'd like to get in contact So first of all, I suppose I put together a little slideshow about who am I any time I do any of these and slideshow I kind of treat them like they're like Curriculum vitae like a CD and So that's a bit about my educational background. I did an undergrad in visual communications and also known graphic design After that, I would have went on to a post-grad and diploma in computer science and For my career I used to work in retail and For throughout my college years and a bit afterwards as well And I would have joined the Red Hat CPE team as an intern in July 2021 So it's part of my higher diploma. They had a work experience module So I applied to Red Hat For that and they got accepted. Thankfully and that's how I'm here today and I was converted to an associate engineer in March of 2022 Close cool calm is the surprise of some people because mainly do design work But I was initially hired as software engineer or so software engineer offline then of course I have my cat who my Who is my life space? I also like to crochet in it And I also like long drives so you can see a little picture of me here in County Kerry on the West Coast of Ireland and Then also, of course my by-friend then as well who I've been with for the last eight or nine years now and Yeah, that's kind of my life outside of online I guess And yeah, so I put together a little slide so I would start it as an engineering intern So when I first started in July 2021 And I was put on the infrastructure and release engineering team and I would have kind of Studied in on a lot of those meetings for the majority of my internship And my first interaction with the design team would have been at NIST 2021 So I was kind of a month and a half ish into my internship I was still kind of figuring out the community I was never kind of involved in an open-source community before so I wasn't quite sure how it worked and So yeah, I spent a long time trying to wrap my head around that but yeah I remember Mo Duffy she was doing and like a design session type thing at NIST where she would have went through some of the tickets and I remember I was like, oh my god like They have a design team like I can I can do this like I love design or whatever And I give my background then as well, of course, I was you know, it's really eager to kind of jump on that so and after NIST I would have joined in on the design team and the first kind of Big project I would have been a part of was the Fedora website revamp And it was already underway when I started I know Mo would have had done the workstation and mock-ups And When I reached out to her to kind of get involved in something and she asked me if I would like to do the Fedora IOT and Huge project, yeah Just if I'd like to do the Fedora IOT and front page So that was kind of my first big thing and I included some of the screenshots there and kind of of early ideas iterations and a very very early mock-up there as well and Yeah, so now with designers, so I would have continued on that and project for the next year I didn't realize it would take I didn't realize how big the project was I guess Until I started working on it. So I would have went on then to do and The Fedora cloud home page the Fedora server as well kind of make the hero images for that I did a lot of them in Blender and Just kind of figuring out a lot about open-source design and it was really interesting because throughout college I would have used proprietary software But when I started in the design team and I realized a lot of the software that we use I would have actually used before I would have started college when I was making and Glee gifts for tumblr. I used to use the PLC player and gimp to make gifts like a post on my tumblr blog So it came full circle there, but But yeah, so I was working on that project. It was kind of becoming more and more and Design based my role. I mean it's coming more and more design based and the more and more time on it then luckily at the start of 2023 kind of within the department I work in at Red Hat. They would have formed the community design team So that consists of myself. No Madeline and So it became, you know, my full-time job, which is amazing and I'm very lucky that I have that opportunity And I have a picture here as well of Jess Chitas. So after I got kept on full-time I know they would have taken on another community design intern specifically designated to community design and that was Jess and then we also had Paul as well So you would have seen a lot of work from the two of them. I know Jess and Definitely seen her around some of the logos. She would have created. She also created Calor and Paul would have done a lot of video editing work on the create freedom summit videos as well as the last release party videos as well and Yeah, and I'm a member of many community teams now floor design team and the accessibility working group the I team and I have out with the marketing team as well and Last year also got to help out with the create freedom summit organization so that was if you haven't heard about that that was Me co-founded by Marie Norden So that was a really good project to kind of get involved and see how an event is kind of how it comes together and as well kind of really proud of like the output and kind of what came as the work involved in that and and also fedora events such as this the release party and nest block and all that good stuff and I'd like to think I'm fairly involved now for someone who was very confused when she pressed And I also have a nice little slide here of my favorite event And it's also my first event that I would have attended and as part of the community Oh, yeah, I was meant to plug that Marie the call for a proposal. Marie has the link in chat there if you'd like to submit a talk And that's awesome. Sorry. So I would have actually presented at the open source design dev room And the talk was the create product creative freedom summit retrospective kind of a review of Some of that happens at the start of this year and I would have done that with Jeff and Chita so that was my first time traveling I guess as a fedora And community member and I got to meet people in real life for the first time I remember a core memory for me is when myself and Jess walked into the hotel And I was met with Justin and people and they were the first two people I remember I saw on that trip. I remember it was just so weird to me seeing these people in real life And yeah, and the sense of community there was unmatched I everything from being on stand to the community dinner afterwards the people there It's just the sense of community. It was just amazing And I don't think you'd get that in many places and That's important as well like the the wider fast connections that I would have made there as well kind of in the open source design space I would have met some folks from penpart I know the guy who ran the who would have helped run the open source design room. He's actually from the city I'm from so mad that I met this man who was From where I'm from but in a different country So it's just yeah, it's just great to kind of have all those And connections and experiences So very good. I'd recommend being a contributor And that kind of comes to the end of my little presentation I put together. I'll stop sharing that for now and Okay, so I have a question from Justin How did the experience of working in an open source community like fedora compared to experience in other communities? Was it easy or hard for you to get going in fedora? I guess at the start Um, it was a bit overwhelming because there was so Much to kind of wrap my head around Especially because I would have never been involved in that and like that before so It took me kind of a while to get adjusted But once I got adjusted, um, it was great and everyone was so welcoming and helpful um Yeah, so it did take me a while but I'm happy happy I got through it And maria asked me who do you consider to be your mentors? How do how did slash do they help you? um I guess for me I know like I would have never had like a direct Like an official mentor When I first started I know at the moment I would have asked Madeline to mentor me So that's something we're getting started but um I know the likes of people I look up to in the community would be mo doffee and your south mary um kind of both two prominent figures in the design sphere in fedora um And I know I can kind of reach out to you both if there is any questions I needed I know I've anything kind of ux related I can reach out to mo I am just more than happy to help me and anything kind of bad related or event related I can reach out to yourself Marie so like it is very It is very welcoming. It's just getting over that fear. I think of reaching out to people. It's what kind of um, I have to overcome. I'm a very introverted person. So um kind of getting over that Fear and you're flying then basically um Yeah, so I don't have any other questions Feel a bit weird being up here by myself being honest I was asking for Yeah Thanks for sharing the story and those were some great great questions