Wrapping up the Fedora Websites and Apps Community Initiative: Part IV

This is the fourth post in a series covering details about the journey of the Fedora Websites and Apps Community Initiative, those who were involved in making it a grand success, and what lies ahead down the road for the team. If you have not already, read the previous post before delving into this one.

Promising community diversification

By October 2022, the experiment of me stepping away to assess the team’s strength began to show promising results. Niko Dunk, Jefferson Oliviera, Deepesh Nair, and many others, joined the development efforts. Likewise, Madeline Peck, Jess Chitas, Dawn Desmarais, and numerous others contributed to the design aspects. Hari Rana also participated in testing, alongside others who were already involved. I am immensely grateful to Ashlyn Knox, Francois Andrieu, and Niko Dunk for their effective collaboration with members from Fedora Infrastructure, Fedora Design, Fedora Marketing, and other teams. Together, they gathered requirements and provided valuable feedback. This development initiative commenced on GitLab itself, making it the first project to be entirely developed there. The team utilized planning tools such as epics, stories, issues, and timelines. In addition to Fedora Websites 3.0, we began collecting testimonials to gauge community interest in maintaining Fedora Badges.

Rise of Fedora Badges 2.0

Given the growing interest in revitalizing Fedora Badges within the community, two community members, Sandro and Erol Keskin, willingly offered to delve into the project repositories. They dedicated their time to connect with experienced contributors of Fedora Badges, seeking guidance on maintaining the current system while planning its redevelopment. Around December 2022, I took the lead in conducting technological investigations and gathering requirements for the Fedora Badges platform. Collaborating with Michal Konecny and Lenka Segura from Red Hat’s Community Platform Engineering Team, we aimed to build upon the initial findings gathered by Ryan Lerch. Concurrently, work on Fedora Websites 3.0 was in full swing, encompassing usability testing events and onboarding sessions for the content management system’s WYSIWYG editor. We organized these activities within the team, but also the wider Fedora Project community. This allowed individuals who were not directly part of the team to contribute to content management.

Closing the finishing gap

By February 2023, we successfully concluded the technological investigations and requirements gathering for Fedora Badges. As the development of Fedora Websites 3.0 approached its final stages, it seemed like the logical next step to ensure the team’s continued service to the community. Inspired by Matthew Miller’s previous experiment, we initiated discussions regarding the using Discourse for the frontend of Fedora Badges. Simultaneously, we focused on organizing subteams for design and development, as well as determining the most suitable implementation approach. At this juncture, the team had gained complete autonomy over its tasks, leading to significant progress in both our applications and websites. We received the fourth and fifth design mockups for Fedora CoreOS and Fedora Cloud front pages, respectively, skillfully created by Emma Kidney and made available on Fedora Discussions for valuable community feedback. Additionally, during this period, I had the opportunity to visit Frankfurt, Germany, representing the team as the Council objective lead in the Fedora Council face-to-face meeting.

Evaluating the Community Initiative’s success

For the March 2023 Fedora Council video meeting, I presented the results of the community survey conducted the previous year. During the meeting, Ben Cotton and Matthew Miller suggested closing the community initiative as a successful endeavor. However, I held a different opinion at the time. I believed that certain aspects still required interaction with the infrastructure services, providing an opportunity for the team to gain exposure. However, following the advice of one of my community mentors, Pierre-Yves Chibon, I reconsidered the proposal. I realized that striving for perfection could impede the team’s progress beyond the scope of the community initiative. Considering the future inclusion of Fedora Badges and the revamp of Fedora Websites 3.0 for other spins, the team unanimously agreed to close the community initiative as a success by April 2023. This coincided with the release of Fedora Linux 38, accompanied by our brand-new websites. We spent countless hours spent designing and developing these exceptional creations and the community response is great.

This article was originally posted on Fedora Commblog on 25 May 2023.