Organize Fedora community presence at FOSDEM 2025

[jwflory]

Summary

Plan, organize, and execute the Fedora community presence at FOSDEM 2025 in Brussels, Belgium.

Background

I am partnering with @ffmancera for the upcoming FOSDEM as the event owner. This will be the first time in a long time that someone other than the Community Architect will be the Fedora event owner. Together, me and Fernando will trial this process and see how we can make the process for organizing FOSDEM easier.

There are various milestones that need to be considered for FOSDEM. It is close to CentOS Connect and CHAOSScon, which are historically big draws for our community. We organize a Fedora + CentOS contributor community meal. We help organize the FOSDEM Distributions DevRoom. There are a lot of moving pieces! So, the earlier we can be on top of it and start communicating out to the Fedora community about our plans, the better.

The scope of this issue is to be a high-level tracker for coordinating the Fedora community presence at FOSDEM. A lot of the work for this issue will likely happen over on the Fedora GitLab organization or in Fedora community spaces. However, since it is a big event for the Red Hat OSPO, it will be tracked here in a high-level sense.

Details

• Pre-event phase: Getting organized with @ffmancera. Creating a Fedora Wiki page for the event. Creating a Fedora Discussion topic for people to discuss FOSDEM and Fedora. Identifying a suggested Fedora hotel. Booking social activities in Brussels. Everything we need before onboarding more people and opening up budget requests.
• Lead-up phase: Share FOSDEM event logistics on Fedora Ambassador mailing list and in various Matrix channels. Set up a Matrix room for event discussion. Solicit budget requests to individual Fedora contributors with financial assistance needs. Propose a budget to the Fedora Mindshare Committee. Write articles about the Fedora community presence on the Fedora Magazine.
• Event execution phase: Show up in Brussels! Run the Fedora stand. Run the Distributions DevRoom. Take lots of pictures. Talk to lots of people. Take notes.
• Post-event phase: Write an event report. Suggest changes for 2026. Work with all funded travelers to close out expense reports and reimbursements.

Useful links:

• FOSDEM 2025 — Fedora Wiki
• FOSDEM 2024 — Fedora Wiki
• Fedora @ FOSDEM 2024: Let's get our plan together! — Fedora Discussion

Outcome

Fedora has another spectacular year in Brussels for FOSDEM, and we continue to use FOSDEM as an important community-building event for the Fedora community.

[jwflory]

@py0xc3 started a public Fedora Discussion topic for organizing and coordinating FOSDEM with the community.