Fedora DEI Team October 2023 update – Fedora Community Blog
October 2023 recently came to an end. With it, so did the first sprint of the Fedora Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) Team. This post is a brief recap of our highlights from the last month. It was a busy month for the DEI Team:
- Began planning and execution of Fedora Appreciation Week.
- Ratified new vision and mission statements for the team.
- Revised several pages of our Fedora Docs site.
In September, our team adopted a new GitLab-based sprint workflow. Every sprint runs for one month. We use our two meetings each month to track progress and make necessary follow-ups. One meeting is a Matrix text-based meeting using Fedora Meetbot. The other meeting is an audio/video call on Jitsi Meet. After a dormant period, the team uses this workflow as we get back to full speed again.
Fedora Appreciation Week
The DEI Team is reviving the Fedora Appreciation Week event. This is the successor to the last run in 2018 for the 15th anniversary of Fedora. Fedora Appreciation Week, abbreviated as FAW, is a week-long event organized by the Fedora DEI Team. It is dedicated to celebrating the efforts of Fedora Project contributors and and expressing gratitude to one another. Fedora Appreciation Week kicks off on Monday, November 6, 2023 and runs until Sunday, November 12, 2023.
Event planning and execution is ongoing into our next sprint. The team invited special content to the Fedora Linux 39 Release Party & 20th Anniversary celebration. This takes place on Friday, November 10 and Saturday, November 11. Read this Community Blog article for more information about this year’s event.
New vision and mission statements for DEI Team
Perhaps most notably, the DEI Team collaboratively drafted and ratified new vision and mission statements. This takes inspiration from the Fedora Project vision statement and mission statement. Previously, the Fedora DEI Team did not have either a vision or mission statement. Vision and mission statements give the DEI Team clarity on what work is both most important and most realistic. The new vision and mission statements for the DEI Team are below:
Vision: “The Fedora community empowers contributors from diverse backgrounds to speak up, participate, and lead. The DEI Team supports Fedora contributors in making inclusive spaces, both as active contributors including others or as new contributors making their start in the Fedora community.”
Mission: “The Fedora DEI Team empowers diverse Fedora contributors by organizing events that celebrate Fedora community members and by partnering with DEI communities in Fedora to sustain safe and inclusive spaces for connections. Through events and DEI communities in Fedora, the Fedora DEI Team is also a bridge to other open source communities and the larger FOSS ecosystem.”
The main focuses for the DEI Team going forward are events and partnering with DEI communities inside Fedora.
Revising DEI Advisor role handbook
In September, Jona Azizaj filled the DEI Advisor role to the Fedora Council. This follows Vipul Siddharth’s tenure in the role. After the nomination, the team reflected on the Advisor’s responsibilities. Were there ways to further support the success of the Advisor in their role? The team took to HackMD across October and made two key revisions to the role handbook:
The full changes are available in this GitLab Merge Request on the Fedora DEI Team docs repository.
Looking ahead to November 2023
The team continues to lean into our milestone-driven sprint planning on GitLab. As the October 2023 sprint comes to an end, we are already looking ahead to the November 2023 sprint. Top areas of focus for November are listed below:
- Fedora Appreciation Week: Focus on running and executing the event from 6-12 November. This is on track so far.
- DEI Advisor role handbook changes: Finish the revisions to the DEI Advisor role handbook. This includes a new handbook page describing the responsibilities of the Meeting Chair.
- Fedora Week of Diversity: Begin planning for the next Week of Diversity event. Determine a timeline and roadmap for executing the event.
The DEI Team intends to continue this format for reports going forward. Whether we keep a monthly cadence or move to quarterly is to be determined. But we look forward to sharing more with the community next month!
Want to get involved? Join the DEI Team Matrix chat room (#dei:fedoraproject.org) and follow the Fedora Discussion tag. We meet twice monthly. Our next meeting can be found on the Fedora Calendar.