Fedora Nest 2020

 August 10, 2020

This year Flock did not happen due to COVID-19, and in its place, Fedora Nest happened. After many events I’ve seen going virtual in the last few months, I was skeptical. I was yet to see an acceptable online platform to run events. I was wrong on the platform. Fedora Nest used Hopin, which is by far the best platform for events I’ve seen so far. Don’t get your expectations too high, though, because when I say the best one I’ve seen so far, only means that it is usable, and it does not mean in any way that is on par of real conferences.

I might be a weird being, but I find traveling relaxing, so I usually add to the joy of the conference the pleasure of traveling. In addition to this, at conferences, I find myself to connect with people - sometimes briefly, sometimes more deeply - and this does not occur in online events. For those reasons, I really hope we will be able to soon go back to in-person conferences.

Going back to the event that just happened, I had many occasions to go to talks, and I learned a lot about what the various people are doing within the community.

The most interesting talk I’ve attended has been the Meet your FESCo one. In this talk, FESCo members expressed their opinions on many topics, and I think that often those kinds of talks are way easier to follow than mailing list threads with hundreds of emails. Obviously, you will not get all the technical details of their opinions, but those talks give you a reading key to their emails.

Another talk I’d like to call out is the one about the replacement of FAS. This talk mostly reassured me. I was pretty worried about FAS replacement since it is such a central and critical point of our infrastructure. After having seen the talk and having understood the impact it will have on the other tools, I’m much more relaxed about it!

Overall, I appreciated the fact that we did not skip this year’s Flock altogether, but I really hope we go back to standard Flocks as soon as possible.