Day Two Part II - Flock To Fedora 2023

The discussion went on to include topics like managing expectations around a free and open-source software project - especially when it had both a community to develop as well as enterprise customers to deliver to. Admittedly, the conversation with David Cantrell was so fascinating that I lost track of time and at around 1110 am Ireland Standard Time, I ended up rushing back to Harbour 6 room a bit late. At that time, the next assigned speaker Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek, who worked as a Principal Software Engineer in Red Hat at the time of writing this article, had already begun with their presentation about "What's New In Systemd (With Emphasis On Individual Users)" and the room was almost occupied.

While I did not get the opportunity to introduce the speaker, I did make sure to mark out the remaining time and perform other moderation duties to help with the presentation. When the talk got over, I found myself asking most of the questions which was quite ironic as being on moderation duty, I was meant to pass around the microphone. As people did not ask any questions, I went ahead with mine which included handling automated storage mounts using Systemd, understanding the role of the new service dependency handler called "UpheldBy" when it comes to units depending on an active network connection instead of "network.target" and rhetorically, remarking the expansion of scope for the Systemd suite.

Once the questions were done, the next scheduled talk in this room was about "Ansible Packaging In Fedora Linux and EPEL" and we had some time before the scheduled start. I instructed Maxwell G., who arrived in the room at that time, on the moderation callouts concerning time and at around 1200 pm Ireland Standard Time, I introduced them to the audience and the presentation began. The talk went well and apparently, a bunch of contributors like Kevin Fenzi, who worked as a Principal Software Engineer in the Community Platform Engineering team at the time of writing this article, and Carl George who had collaborated previously for packaging tasks were meeting them in person for the first time.

Surprisingly, Mark O'Brien, who worked as an Associate Manager in Red Hat at the time of writing this article and a good friend came by to visit me in Harbour 6 during my moderation duty. As there was a talk going on at that time, we exchanged a little bit of our conversations in whispers before deciding to keep the rest for later. Once the short presentation ended, people started heading for lunch at 1230 pm Ireland Standard Time in the same place where the meal was organized the day before. Mark and I met up with Fionn Kelleher who worked as a Technical Writer at Red Hat at the time of writing this article, Gerard Ryan who worked as a Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat, David Kirwan and Michal Konecny.

The lunchtime also marked the end of my moderation duty and now I had the liberty to go attend other talks of my interest in other halls and rooms. While the lunch menu remained the same as the day before, the lunch became interesting with the conversation I had with Mairin Duffy, Emma Kidney and Jess Chitas. Once I was through with the lunch at around 0140 pm Ireland Standard Time, I headed over to the Harbour 8 room to attend the next presentation about "Fedora Discussion - Moving Discourse From Benevolent Dictatorship To Community Team" which was delivered by Matthew Miller. Although I arrived a bit late to the talk, I was quickly able to get the gist of the discussions happening in the room.