Fedora's FUDCon reborn as Flock

Fedora Project Leader Robyn Bergeron has announced, on behalf of Red Hat and the Fedora community, that the traditional Fedora user conference FUDCon will be re-named and re-imagined under the name "Flock". The new format will see the developer gathering transformed into a three day conference of scheduled talks with an additional, optional day of hacking. Flock will be a more organised, traditional conference that accepts talk submissions ahead of time, in contrast to the more ad hoc FUDCon that was organised in a barcamp style.

The first Flock conference will take place from 9 to 12 August at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. Pre-registration for the event is now open and Fedora contributors can apply to have their travel expenses paid by the Fedora Project and Red Hat, just as was the case with FUDCon. Bergeron also announced that a call for talks, workshops and sprints has been opened as well. Prospective presenters can choose from a large number of topics connected to Fedora development that include ARM development, community, design, fonts, games, marketing, QA, security and open hardware. The deadline for talk submissions has been set for 31 May.

FUDCon, short for the Fedora Users and Developers Conference, had been the main gathering of the Fedora community, and chiefly its developers, for over eight years. Bergeron did not go into details on why the project chose to change its approach, beyond saying "we’ve grown, and it’s time for a new approach". Flock does inherit some aspects from the older format as the conference schedule will be organised according to community votes on the submitted talks which is similar to the way barcamp-style events like FUDCon decide which of the pitched talks will be assigned what spot on the schedule.

(fab)