![]() |
Photo Credit : Prima Yogi |
FAD Singapore 2015 was held on 5th and 6th of December in Singapore and I participated at the event. FAD (Fedora Activity Day) is supposed to be an event of one day or multiple days with the intention of working on a specific task(s) related to Fedora Project. So FAD Singapore 2015 was organized in order to discuss the way forward and the issues APAC region.
The two day event was held in Red Hat Office in Singapore and we had participation from Singapore, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, China, Philippine, Myanmar, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Special thank goes to Danishka (who couldn't participate at the event due to a personal matter), Harish and Troung for the superb event organization and for to the Fedora community in Singapore for the hospitality. I am glad that I met Heherson, my mentor, in person.
One of the major points discussed was the way forward in the region in promoting Fedora for users and to increase the contributions back to the project. There we recognized that we do a less number of events as a region and we need to improve a lot.
Next we moved on to discuss about organizing events, swags etc. We noticed that most of the ambassadors are not aware of the procedure (swag requesting, budget etc.) on how to organize an event. So those should be accessible and should be able to be easily found. Centralized media (Fedora DVDs) and swag production was discussed and PJP distributed the Fedora DVDs produced in India to be used in local events in each country. Another key point stressed is that it is important to follow up on users. We not only need to distribute the media but also need to follow up for feedback, issues etc. so that we can make sure the event or the media distributed served the purpose. Also the follow up is important in converting a Fedora user to a contributor. With the advancing hardware, since we are losing the DVD drive, Harish suggested the "give one get one program" where at an event we ask the participants to bring in their old thumb drive and in return we give them a one with Fedora. So there is a pool of Fedora thumb drives that we can share. This is a great idea that needs to be tested in field. Izhar brought up the idea to develop/use an event management application so that it is easier for all of us to track the progress of the event, where resources can be shared etc. One of the key concern was that wiki is good, but not for all purposes :-)
Budget allocation for the region for the year 2016 was discussed where we first listed the events that we are planning to have in 2016. Then we all went through each one of them and commented/suggested how we can improve the event. Next we had a table round session where each participant expressed what and how they are doing in terms of promoting Fedora in their countries and the issues in doing so or the issues in the community itself. Most of the issues were already experienced by other communities also and had solutions.
Overall, it is a fruitful two days at the FAD and we need to execute the actions items to be successful as a region in the years to come.
Add a comment