FUDCon Marketing?

[Karsten Wade]

Here's an initial draft.  Once we have consensus, we can move it over to
the RHT press blog.  I *think* I am a writer on that blog, so I can do
the byline if Kerri et al wish.

I wrote this from a personal viewpoint, since that is the flavor at
www.press.redhat.com, which I happen to agree with. :)  But the facts
should be general.  Also, if anyone has a better approach, go for it!
In fact, we could publish several postings from several perspectives.

### begin

The <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon">FUDCon</a> (Fedora
User and Developer Conference) has once again sprung to life, this time
coming to Raleigh, NC 11 to 13 January 2008 for a meeting of the minds
near Red Hat HQ.  <a href="http://barcamp.org/FUDConRaleigh2008">Sign
up</a> is easy and <em>zero cost</em>.  If you can get yourself to
Raleigh, you are welcome to attend.  We're serious.  Come.

Started a few years ago as a grassroots conference with a bootstrappers
budget, FUDCon has slowly grown in size and importance.  These days at a
FUDCon, decisions are made about the next few releases of Fedora,
hackfests are held to produce code, content, and design, and leaders,
doers, and users meet to talk about just what they want.

<a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon#Past_FUDCons">Past
FUDCons</a> were held in Boston (<a
href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConBoston2007">2007</a>,
<a
href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConBoston2006">2006</a>,
<a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDCon1">2005</a>), <a
href="">Berlin</a>, <a
href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConBrussels2007">Brussels</a>, <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConDelhi2006">Delhi</a>, <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDCon3">London</a>, <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDCon2">Karlsruhe</a>, and <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConF8">virtually</a>.

At FUDCon Boston 2007 we had what I felt was one of our most successful
FUDCons.  The conference sessions were held as a <a
href="http://barcamp.org">BarCamp</a>-style, with session topics and
schedule finalized the morning of the event.  Over the weekend we held a
big hackfest, with hacks held by everyone from <a
href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure">Fedora
Infrastructure</a> to <a
href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging">packagers</a> doing final
reviews for a merged Core and Extras.  For me, the hackfest started
Saturday morning and finished Sunday night when we all started to fall
asleep in someone's hotel room.

The hackfest event I was most involved in resulted in a new, streamlined
process for <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join">joining Fedora
as a contributor</a>.  We worked out the target audiences via use cases
on a whiteboard with comments from Fedorans who joined us or happened to
be in our corner of the room, and while <a
href="http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MairinDuffy">Mo</a> drew up the cool
icons, I whipped together the wiki pages to make it all happen.  By the
next day we were announcing new pages and a new process for all projects
to follow, helping to improve new contributors joining experience.

At previous FUDCons, this happened, and so did that.

At LinuxTag FUDCon, organizers did that, and this was the result

[[Help with more cool FUDCon history.]]

While I can't make any <em>forward looking statements</em> for the
Project in general, the future of FUDCon is definitely looking good to
me.  One thing I'd like to hear about is a more fixed schedule for at
least some of the FUDCons, such as the one(s) held in the United States.

Bio -- Karsten Wade is a Fedora Project Board member, currently leads
the Fedora Documentation Project, and works as a developer community
manager for Red Hat.

## 30 ##


-- 
Karsten Wade, Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
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