Fedora 9 – Codename Sulphur

If you haven’t seen yet, the Fedora 9 codename voting results are in. Josh Boyer announced the winner last night with this email to the Announce List:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-January/msg00012.html

The winner was Sulphur with 62 votes beating runner-up Bathysphere which had 54 votes.

Yes, I admit it. I voted for Sulphur…

New Fedora Project Leader Announced

Max has announced who the new Fedora Project Leader is in this announcement:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-January/msg00003.html

I think Paul is an excellent choice for the position. In my time with the Fedora Project he has always been very active within the community and from his blog and email posts seems very informed with many aspects of the community. I am looking forward to working with you Paul!

And I also have thanks to Max as well. Most of my interactions with Max has been through the Fedora Ambassadors group and all have been positive. He has always answered my questions when asked, he helped make sure we had the funding we needed for the first Ohio Linux Fest we attended and helped make sure we had what we needed for the most recent Ohio Linux Fest.

Beyond my direct interactions with Max, I have always appreciated his communication with the project and trying to make all Fedora processes as transparent and open as possible.

Thank you for your hard work Max!

Fedora Store SIG

Back in November Max started a Fedora Store Special Interest Group with this post to the fedora-marketing mailing list:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2007-November/msg00136.html

The goals of the Store SIG are pretty straight forward:

• Making it easier for Ambassadors and event organizers to get swag in bulk, for a good price, and for reasonable shipping charges.

• Making it easy for users who just want one or two items to get them, again without crazy shipping fees.

• Making it as easy and automated as possible for designers to create new products.

• Not having to do any physical distribution or order processing ourselves.

• Providing an international service.

• Being transparent regarding money.

Most of these goals are all about making it easier to get Fedora “swag” out to events and LUGs for Fedora Ambassadors and help Fedora users easily acquire T-shirts, stickers and any of the other items people have proposed on the Store SIG page.

The SIG has had a few meetings before the holiday break and you can see some of the things we have discussed under the open action items and meeting summary page.  Now that the holidays are over we are looking at moving forward with this once again.  There are two major open items we need to take care of to really help move us along.

One, we need a mockup of the store.fedoraproject.org page we have in mind.  There is a general requirements page to work off of to help with that – we just need someone more artistically inclined to help us with that.

Two, we need to make a choice for a vendor to work through for this project.  We have a list of them on the Store SIG page.  We would like to see some more pros and cons added by people who may have used these sources in the past.

Unfortunately I will not be at FUDcon to work on this, so we will be holding a short meeting on Wednesday, January 9th at 18:00 UTC in #fedora-mktg to go over some of our open items.  Please drop by with comments on what we have so far – all input is welcomed.  And even if you do not have time to join the SIG, feel free to edit the wiki pages with feedback on any of the ideas proposed so far or add comments on the vendor list we have now.

Hello Planet!

I recently had my blog added to Planet Fedora and felt that a brief introduction was in order.  Despite the recent blog addition I have been a contributor to Fedora in some manner for the past two years.

I started out with the Fedora Ambassadors and continue to work in that capacity when and where I can.  My work there has included helping organize the Fedora booth at Ohio Linux Fest 2006 and 2007 – both of which very successful.  I am hoping for the opportunity to serve on the Fedora Ambassador Steering Committee.

I also worked with the Fedora Infrastructure team for a time.  That was a great experience and a lot of fun working with those guys.  I went on leave from that team at the birth of my second child which cut into my time just a bit.  As my time frees backup I continue to lurk and wait for a task I can help out on and get back involved with that team – my main interests are in system administration.

So why choose now to have the blog added?  Well, for one I am still here after two years!  And with the New Year upon us I am hoping to increase my roles as a contributor where I can.  More involvement with the Ambassadors, work on getting the Store SIG back on its feet, do what I can with the Bug Zappers and hopefully pitch in where I can with the Infrastructure team.  Having a widely read forum of like minded folks can sometimes play a great role in either drumming up support for a special project or simply help keep the community aware of what is happening within the Fedora community.

I’m looking forward to what lies ahead!