Hi Ambassador community. I sent the below email to Fedora contributors who registered a free ticket for our annual FOSDEM contributor appreciation dinner last night. However, I also wanted to share it with our wider Ambassador community because I know there are so many of you who cannot be with us there in-person, and I want to share some of the community vibes here with the rest of you. <3
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Hi folks. This is your friendly, neighborhood Fedora Community Architect 👋🏻 You are receiving this email because you registered a ticket for the Fedora & CentOS Contributor Appreciation Dinner at FOSDEM 2025. Don't worry, you were not added to any mailing lists, but I did want to share some remarks that I originally planned to give last night during our meal.
A special thanks goes to CentOS Connect and sponsors for their support in making shared community experiences like this happen. Our contributor appreciation dinner is a special tradition in Brussels. It is always one of the most memorable community moments of the year for me. I enjoy it most because I love seeing our community come together, "break bread", and share our stories and wisdom with each other. And of course, eat yummy food!
Even though we had a great dinner last night, I know a lot of people are on edge. There is no shortage of headlines grabbing our collective attention. The world we live in right now feels divided. In many ways, this is new. But in our Fedora community, division is actually nothing new. Although I like to think of our "division" as "diversity of thought." In the world of Linux distributions, we know we will not always agree with each other. We may not always think the other person is right or we may think there is a better way to solve a problem. The thing is, that is okay. What matters is wherever we go as a community, *we go together*. As Friends. The ability for us to work together, collaborate, and have fun while doing it is what makes our community so special and unique. Over the ten years I have been in this space, that magic feeling of community is what keeps me here and brings me back to Fedora every day. I have learned so much from many of you. As we get close to nearly a quarter of a century building Fedora, I am excited about what is still yet to come in our shared future.
The FOSDEM contributor appreciation dinner is one very small way that we get to say THANK YOU to our community members. We know not everyone can or even wants to travel. We know that there are a lot of amazing Fedora folks who were not in the room with us. But our contributor dinner is one way that we share the common experience of being a Fedora community member. In turn, I ask that you help pay it forward for Fedora, wherever and however that makes the most sense for you. Maybe it is at a local Fedora meetup in your region, or maybe it is mentoring a newcomer on their first Fedora package. Whatever your meaning of paying it forward might be, as one of our appreciated guests, I hope you will help extend the light of the Fedora community in your own circles of the Project.
Finally, I wanted to give a special acknowledgement to Dorota "Dorka" Volavkova and Fernando Fernandez Mancera. Dorka is a phenomenal part of our Events team and Fernando volunteered as event owner for this year's FOSDEM event. What we pull off here every year in Brussels is a community effort, and Dorka and Fernando did incredible work to bring the Fedora community vibes to CentOS Connect and FOSDEM. Thanks to all the visible and invisible work done by these two to help bring us together for a few days in (surprisingly warm and sunny!) Brussels.
On behalf of the Fedora leadership team, thank you for all that you do to make Fedora what it is. Over our 22 years as a community, we have accomplished a lot together. I believe we are only just getting started.
Enjoy the rest of your FOSDEM! See you around the Fedora stand and the Distributions DevRoom. — JWF
Thanks for sharing Justin. <3 This probably doesn't need to be said, but we appreciate you as well. :)
On Sun, Feb 2, 2025 at 3:01 AM Justin W. Flory (he/him) via ambassadors < ambassadors@lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
Hi Ambassador community. I sent the below email to Fedora contributors who registered a free ticket for our annual FOSDEM contributor appreciation dinner last night. However, I also wanted to share it with our wider Ambassador community because I know there are so many of you who cannot be with us there in-person, and I want to share some of the community vibes here with the rest of you. <3
===
Hi folks. This is your friendly, neighborhood Fedora Community Architect 👋🏻 You are receiving this email because you registered a ticket for the Fedora & CentOS Contributor Appreciation Dinner at FOSDEM 2025. Don't worry, you were not added to any mailing lists, but I did want to share some remarks that I originally planned to give last night during our meal.
A special thanks goes to CentOS Connect and sponsors for their support in making shared community experiences like this happen. Our contributor appreciation dinner is a special tradition in Brussels. It is always one of the most memorable community moments of the year for me. I enjoy it most because I love seeing our community come together, "break bread", and share our stories and wisdom with each other. And of course, eat yummy food!
Even though we had a great dinner last night, I know a lot of people are on edge. There is no shortage of headlines grabbing our collective attention. The world we live in right now feels divided. In many ways, this is new. But in our Fedora community, division is actually nothing new. Although I like to think of our "division" as "diversity of thought." In the world of Linux distributions, we know we will not always agree with each other. We may not always think the other person is right or we may think there is a better way to solve a problem. The thing is, that is okay. What matters is wherever we go as a community, *we go together*. As Friends. The ability for us to work together, collaborate, and have fun while doing it is what makes our community so special and unique. Over the ten years I have been in this space, that magic feeling of community is what keeps me here and brings me back to Fedora every day. I have learned so much from many of you. As we get close to nearly a quarter of a century building Fedora, I am excited about what is still yet to come in our shared future.
The FOSDEM contributor appreciation dinner is one very small way that we get to say THANK YOU to our community members. We know not everyone can or even wants to travel. We know that there are a lot of amazing Fedora folks who were not in the room with us. But our contributor dinner is one way that we share the common experience of being a Fedora community member. In turn, I ask that you help pay it forward for Fedora, wherever and however that makes the most sense for you. Maybe it is at a local Fedora meetup in your region, or maybe it is mentoring a newcomer on their first Fedora package. Whatever your meaning of paying it forward might be, as one of our appreciated guests, I hope you will help extend the light of the Fedora community in your own circles of the Project.
Finally, I wanted to give a special acknowledgement to Dorota "Dorka" Volavkova and Fernando Fernandez Mancera. Dorka is a phenomenal part of our Events team and Fernando volunteered as event owner for this year's FOSDEM event. What we pull off here every year in Brussels is a community effort, and Dorka and Fernando did incredible work to bring the Fedora community vibes to CentOS Connect and FOSDEM. Thanks to all the visible and invisible work done by these two to help bring us together for a few days in (surprisingly warm and sunny!) Brussels.
On behalf of the Fedora leadership team, thank you for all that you do to make Fedora what it is. Over our 22 years as a community, we have accomplished a lot together. I believe we are only just getting started.
Enjoy the rest of your FOSDEM! See you around the Fedora stand and the Distributions DevRoom. — JWF
-- *Cheers*, *Justin W. Flory* (*he/him*) || 📧 jwf@redhat.com || 🔗 jwf.io *Fedora* Community Architect TZ=America/Atlanta (UTC-4) 🕗 *Fedora is a registered Digital Public Good https://app.digitalpublicgoods.net/a/10035*
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