 So hi everyone, I hope everybody's doing good today. Thank you for coming to my session. We've had two speakers before me and I looked in both of them. I really, really loved it. And I think I went to a Fedora Women's Day before, once it wasn't Bruno, it was like three years ago. And I'm so happy to be back and I have two badges for it. Let me start by saying that I have not been involved with Fedora so much as I used to be, since I've had my baby two years ago. And I really admire women who start working right away or like in three months after having a child. Well, I just, you know, my head to you or what do you say? Okay, and it's been two years, like I said, and I'm planning on coming back eventually, but let's circle back to the beginning. So let me introduce myself a little bit better because every time I come to Fedora event, I have to remember that not everybody is a designer. And yeah, so I'm an interaction designer. I work at Red Hat and I started with Fedora back in 2015. We had just moved to Czech Republic from Russia and I was an out-of-work designer doing free lands here and there and so I was looking for something to do. And then a perfect opportunity came up. So my husband works at Red Hat, as a matter of fact. And he told me about Fedora and he taught me everything about open source. And so he told me there was this design team and that's how I got introduced to Mismo, to Mo Duffy, and then later to Marie. And basically they showed me everything and taught me everything I needed to know and to tell you the truth, at first it was terrified. First of all, because I had only worked in a very, very small company in Russia before that and it was just six people and they literally had PTSD after quitting. I did not want to touch the computer. It was so bad and so I was just slowly coming back and then all these new programs and new software, inkscape I've never seen before in my life and there was the old issue tracker and then I had never used IRC before that. I only used to work with Adobe products. So yeah, I was really scared to start and so I started contributing to Fedora. I had everything set up and actually it was not scary at all, I was so surprised to learn how supportive the community is, how nice everybody is and you'll get nice feedback first and foremost and you'll be supported by everybody. So I started contributing like I said in 2015 and then I think a couple months after that there was a position that opened up in Bruno office for a Bruno office of Red Hat for Fedora designer intern. And I had a couple interviews and I don't remember what else I did but eventually I got hired to Red Hat and I started working as an intern for Fedora design team. And during that, I did a lot of reaching out. So I, let's press that. So I, for example, I did design clinics every now and then like every two weeks, I'll book an hour and it was a mode of this idea to do this. So we book an hour and I invite everybody in the company to just come by and say hi. And if they had any design problem should it be graphic design or interaction design or user experience question, they could come by and ask me. I also did a bunch of workshops like Inkscape for beginners, for example, I did. And that was, I think that was for high school students and stuff like that. So yeah, and then during that time, I also helped and swag for DevCon and I also had a bunch of high school students work as interns for Red Hat. Okay, and another thing that happened to me and mind you, this was just like an avalanche of good things happening to me. I did not expect it at all when I was just, you know starting to contribute and draw on my first batch. Another thing that happened to me was I had a lot of travel. I did not put many pictures on this particular slide but just to give you an idea, I think a year into being at Red Hat, I was invited to direct activities in Westford and that was design-related. I think we had batches workshops and Inkscape workshops and then after that, I went to Vlog. I think I went to a couple of Vlogs and I traveled so much to so many conferences and I spoke to so many people. I even traveled back to Russia to promote open source. It was just amazing. I did not expect that at all. And so about nine months into my work as an intern for Fedora Design, I got hired to a different position at Red Hat and that was as an interaction designer at a different team. But I did not stop contributing to Fedora. So I attended all the meetings. I worked on tickets that had been designed tickets or work badges or whatnot. I went to events and I think the high school interns happened after I was hired to a different position. Yeah, so the most important part about Fedora that I love is actually people and that's just the most inspiring crowd of people. Most hardworking, easygoing, friendly and just all in all, so lovely and supportive. I just can't even describe how much I love them all. And like I said, they will always support you if you have a question, they will always answer it. And here's a picture of everybody in crackle at block and see if you can find me in there. And also I like how inclusive the community is this Women's Day being the example of it. And I just want to say that I miss everybody so much. And I hope in the post-COVID times we're gonna get back together. I also wanted to talk a little bit about how open source changed my life and why I like it now and what's so good about it. First of all, it gives you freedom, it gives you freedom to do what you want, to do what you love and to do it so freely and then it gives you passion because I think there are no people in the Fedora community who are not passionate about what they do. And that brings me to my next point, which is community. And the community is the most amazing thing that happened to me, it's all in all my people and have found so many friends. Then you can get experience, like if you're a student or even if you're a high school student, you can work and then you can find tickets and you can work on them and that all voluntarily. And then you can get a lot of experience and you can build up your portfolio which is especially important for designers, I feel. And then from that, you can go and get a job at a company that you love and you have real projects in your portfolio and it can be a graphic design as well as interaction design as well as coding and whatever you want to do, you can do it. And the other thing that I mentioned is travel. So you get to travel a lot, you get to meet a lot of people, you get to go to conferences, you get to promote open source, you get to make friends and that is all in all just so amazing. And so I have three dots down there and that means that there's so, so, so much more that working or contributing to Fedora can get you. My last slide is a little bit about developers because like I said, I always have to remember that not everybody is a designer and then part of the job of being a designer in an IT company or in Fedora communities working with developers and that's something that contributing to Fedora has taught me to collaborate and to communicate with people who do not do what you do. And it surprised me how much respect they get if they're not being coder. And also I try to promote the design work among the developers because Bruno is a very highly IT focused city, there's a lot of developers here and a lot of universities. And so being a designer here must be tough, but not necessarily so. And so you can learn to work with developers and educate people on it. And actually I have to say that my journey has not been anything but pleasant. Okay, so to wrap up, this was a short talk and I really want to thank Marie for inviting me to do this and for bringing me to walk on this memory lane and that I want to get back to working on Fedora tickets as soon as I can. Okay, I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna stop sharing my screen now. I was gonna go back to the video and should anybody have any questions or discuss stuff with me, I'd love to. Hi. Hi. Thank you, that was great. Fun story, so I talked about Amitabh being my roommate for the first time. Yeah. At Flock. My second roommate was Masha. Yeah, I remember. And I remember we had a lot of fun, but I also remember she teased me because I brought so many accessories. You did. And like, I had like all these like neck, you know, I just, that's who I am. Like I just accessorize and just like, wow, you have a different thing for, you know, all these different outfits and like that. Yeah. You had a huge bag, too. It was bigger than me. Well, I was traveling for longer than you two, but yes, nonetheless, I find that I am more comfortable traveling and I feel more myself, you know, when I have my accoutrement. Of course. Yeah. So I had some questions for you. Of course, people can drop them in the chat if they have any. Meanwhile, I will ask you a couple of things. I was curious, Mika, Mika's here saying hi, too. Hi. Did you go to school for design or UI or like, how did you get into the design UI? Out of the UI? Okay, that's a long way to get there for me. So I started to be a linguist. I did that five years. I studied at St. Petersburg University. I studied phonetics and English and French. And then in my last year, I realized that's not quite something I wanted to do. And I took a design course for a year and then I started to work as a graphic designer, which I did for four years, five years. And then honestly, doing UI was just, I guess, a leap of faith for me. So I just started doing it. There was a position open. And when I was starting, I honestly told my to be manager that I have never done this before. I know very little of it. I started it, but I had not done it before, but he believed in me. And yeah, that's what I started doing. And that's what I've been doing for four years, I think. Now, there we go. Awesome. That's awesome. Giving someone an opportunity, like the person who hired you just, yeah, we'll give you a shot. I think that's pretty cool story. Okay, we have a question in the chat. Cool. What advice would you give to someone who is interested in learning more about design work? Fedora or more generally? Uh-huh. Learning more about design work. Just in terms of design work, just being a designer. Get into the design, maybe how to learn more about it or start contributing to Fedora specifically. Okay, well, to learn more, my personal advice, if you have never done design in your life, like I'm a very bad online learner. Like some people can take an online course and just be cool with it. I just abandon it like a week in. So I would go to some course at least a year long, which now just study the basics, like if they've never done design in their life. And then from there on, you can just start picking up projects. But I feel like everybody's story and journey is different because people are different. So I don't know, read a book and just start doing it, I guess. Like Marie, you were saying the other day, just do it. Yeah. So I guess, oh, go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Oh, he's gonna say, so I would say that I agree with design having formal training is extremely helpful. It really is. Masha, it's impressive that you broke into the field without that and you just on your own gumption. Also, you will hear me calling Maria Masha. That's just a closer term of endearment we're very good friends. So anyway, the point that I was trying to make was, for Fedora, if you want to get involved, there's a few different ways. And you can join the IRC channel, which is also accessible from Telegram and Matrix and introduce yourself there and ask for some guidance, say, hey, I want to help out. There's a mailing list and you would want to sign up with a Fedora account. And between those three things, you should get somebody's attention and kind of get some guidance from there. So if you specifically for Fedora, if you wanted to get involved in design, that's how I would suggest going about it. But in the design field, generally, I do think formal training is helpful, especially with something like UI, UX. I think there's a lot more research tools and kind of processes that you can learn to really do the best job with it. I think that some people have an, I think some people might have more of an innate ability to just pick up to graphic design without going to school for it. Because I think if you maybe you're an illustrator or you have some tangential hobby or something like that, you can kind of get into using Inkscape. There's actually a lot of tutorials out there. So if you want to get to design, say you don't want to use a subscription to Adobe products or you don't want to use them illegally, so you choose to use Inkscape. There's actually many tutorials out there and including some from a lot of people on the Fedora design team. And so there are some things you can do to teach yourself. You don't necessarily need formal training to get started, though I do think it reinforces a lot and there's some fields which do need some specifics. So that's kind of my thought on the same question. Well, I'm interested with UI and UX. It's actually the most helpful thing that happened to me was watching someone else do it. So I had Nismo as my mentor for the first part of it. And just to know from her advice, I learned a lot, a lot. So yeah, and people are coming from different fields like Justin Clariface here in the comments that from another field of profession, if you're coming into UX, that's actually happens all the time. It's such a new field that people just jump from whatever a lot of psychologists in it, a lot of designers, but a lot of coders come in and just, you know, and it's such a vast field that for some of it, you might need training for some of it not. And most times you just pick whatever you want to do, like whichever part interests you. It's gonna be more technical, less technical. If you're just drawing, you can be testing, it can be, you know, design interfaces and using HTML. So, so, so much to do. Like I love all of it. I do. I have a question. Did you design the dev comp CZ logo? All right, no. I don't know. I helped a little bit. Like I wasn't immediately. Did you work on the designs for dev comp? I thought I remembered you doing like the design work for dev comp, but it wasn't the logo. No, I helped a little bit with that. Because it came, like it came with the, with the site. I was just curious. Yeah. Well, I did a lot of work and such. So I just put the logo on things and then we did maps, we did, you know, hoodies, famous hoodies, we did signing, whatever was needed. Yeah. And then I've changed like in 20, 17, 18, for the best and someone else did it. Yeah. Cool. What else? I had another question. I'm trying to think of it. Okay. So, you know, you had a couple of opportunities that came to you and, you know, you mentioned your mentor a couple of times as well. Fun fact, Ms. Moll is also my mentor. Totally awesome. So I think. Yeah. Totally awesome lady and an amazing designer and person. So I guess, yeah, I just, I'm like thinking about that mentorship aspect, you know, thinking about all the different talks that I've, I've seen over the weekend and how a lot of people have expressed that, that mentorship piece, you know? And I think it's interesting, like we don't have just like a mentorship program, but I kind of think it might be something we should look into. Because I'm thinking like, that's one of the most like fundamental pieces of finding your footing and kind of having that direction. Like it's, it's the difference between just talking to an, an open chat room and having someone to ask all of those questions to that you're like, is this a dumb question? Or is it what I, you know, other people are gonna know and I'm gonna look a certain way or whatever it might be. So I just, I really feel like that mentorship is important part. It was like a huge part of why I stuck around. So just hearing these through all, like it's kind of in a reoccurring theme. Yeah. And a lot of, a lot of the people here have had a chance to do Outreachy. So there's been at least a handful of us, five, six, which is really cool. So we know for sure that that's a great way to bring ladies into Fedora. So we've been reading the script. Really? I'm sure you've seen it. Yeah. And the first part being in your native tongue or if you wanted to speak in Czech, that would be cool too. I mean, I can't. I don't wanna embarrass myself on the camera. What language will you be speaking? Russian. Right, right. So Alexandra yesterday also spoke in Russian. Yes. Not that you can't also speak in Russian, but maybe you could do two versions for us. One in Czech and one in Russian. Or speak in French. And if you're making fun of me, you can listen to him. All right, I'm putting it into the chat right now. So the first line is the part you'll say in your language. And I just put an example of what it will say. And then the second part you say in English. So do you want two or do you want just one? Whatever you want, girl. Okay. You do it up. Do you? I'm gonna mute my. Cool. Привет меня зовут Маша, я из России. Я женщина, я говорю по-русски. We are from different countries. We speak different languages. We are of different cultures, but Fedora unites us with open source. We are Fedora. Great. Really great. Okay. So I don't see any more questions in the chat. I don't have any more for right now. I have a batch of brownies in the oven. For cake with that cake. Can I have a question? Yeah. Do we have cake? No. But I bet you already have the badge. I bet I do. I wanted to check. I need to check. So, yeah. So, question. Question. So anyway, I will be at the cake with F cake session in a half an hour with some brownies. And I hope to see everybody there, maybe with a snack or a drink, maybe some tea or something. And yeah. I miss you, girl. I wish I could give you a hug right now. Virtual hug. Virtual hug. Love you. And see everybody soon. Bye.