Summary

Finalize a city of interest list and dates, request bids from those cities, and offer Council recommendations for the dates and venue of the next in-person Fedora Project contributor conference, Flock 2023.

Background

This ticket is coming to the Fedora Council ticket queue late, by the circumstance of my recent onboarding to the FCAIC role. Historically, discussion for the next Flock starts in September/October, but there are several great reasons why we are a little slow. Most are best summarized that all of us haven't done this in a long while. (Or, ever.) :grinning:

Some internal Red Hat conversations already started. These were together with me, @mattdm, @bcotton, and our long-time Fedora friends in Red Hat who support our in-person events. These early conversations helped us understand what the landscape looks like for events in 2023 and also what options are possible for the next Flock. Since the last Flock in the United States was five years ago, we agreed to return Flock to the United States in 2023 (see note below).

Recently, in October 2022, KubeCon hosted their annual North America event in Detroit, Michigan, USA. Our Red Hat events friends ran a side-event there for a Kubernetes community and therefore have recent experience with running an event of our size there. There is also a strong presence of the automotive industry, which could tie into shared areas of interest in Fedora IoT or Fedora Cloud. We already have a bid for a venue in downtown Detroit if we decided to host Flock in Detroit.

The challenge is that should we host Flock in August 2023, we are less than a year away from the event. We need to narrow down a list of top cities that we would want to request bids from. We also need to consider the unique diversity and expectations from Fedora contributors, so we find venues that are cost-efficient (especially when someone pays their own way to get to Flock). I suggest that we request bids for no more than two additional cities together with the existing Detroit bid. This list needs to be delivered as soon as possible so we can get the data we need to make a decision.

NOTE: Why not consider a LATAM or APAC location? For our first time back to an in-person conference since COVID, I think the right strategy is slow and steady. The groups of people involved now who also help us with critical needs like venue management and travel support are most familiar with regions where we already hosted Flock before. I believe it is better to play to our strengths so we can rebuild our muscle memory for running an annual event every year. In the future, I hope that Flock could one day go somewhere where people from that place are used to always traveling to us.

Details

The ask to the Fedora Council are these three steps:

1. Finalize a "city of interest" list by Wednesday, 7 December 2022 (at our scheduled meeting—sorry this is so soon).
2. Submit a city of interest list to our Red Hat friends in events to get bids and explore options for an event of our size.
3. Review proposed bids when available and offer Council recommendations for Flock absolutely no later than the end of January 2023.

Once the Council (via the FCAIC) submits our recommendations for a bid, this ticket is satisfied and can be closed. Any future Flock decisions would be opened in subsequent tickets.

Outcome

• Keep on target for organizing our next in-person contributor event, Flock 2023.
• Give timely guidance to our Red Hat events friends about what the Fedora Project wants to do next year.