About GNOME Asia

GNOME Asia Summit is the featured annual GNOME conference in Asia. It focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop but also covers applications and platform development tools. The summit brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments, and businesses to discuss the present technology and future developments.

My experience

I had the pleasure of attending GNOME Asia 2024, a great event that brought together open source contributors and enthusiasts from different parts of the world. This year the conference took place in Bengaluru, India.

It was my first time visiting India, and I was really looking forward to connecting with the local community. One of the goals of the Fedora’s DEI team is to support local communities and find ways to empower their work. Therefore, my goal was to focus on building connections, understanding the unique challenges and opportunities contributors in the region encounter, and exploring how the DEI team can provide meaningful support. This includes amplifying their voices within the global open source ecosystem, facilitating access to resources, and ensuring their contributions are recognized and celebrated.

At the conference, I co-presented a talk with Smera Goel titled "Making Mentorship a Key Part of Your Open Source Community." We talked about how mentorship helps newcomers feel welcome and become active contributors, sharing examples from the Fedora Project like the Fedora Mentoring Initiative, Fedora Mentor Summit, and Fedora Ambassadors Program. It was exciting to connect with the audience and exchange ideas on making mentorship a priority across projects.

I also spoke during the release party about the work we’re doing with the DEI team, focusing on creating a more inclusive and welcoming environment in open source.

I attended several other talks that were really interesting, including:

Infrastructure and release engineering - What goes into building Fedora workstation? Akashdeep Dhar and Samyak Jain provided an in-depth look into the processes and challenges involved in building the Fedora Workstation, highlighting the critical role of infrastructure and release engineering.
Build a GNOME community? Yes you can. Aaditya Singh shared practical strategies and experiences on how to successfully establish and grow a GNOME community, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and inclusivity.
FOSS, chai, and change: brewing innovation in India Ramakrishna Yekulla delivered an inspiring keynote on the innovative impact of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in India, discussing how local communities are driving change and technological advancement.
Open source mentorship: crafting communities, creating leaders Samyak discussed the significance of mentorship in open source projects, illustrating how effective mentorship can build strong communities and develop future leaders.
Fedora × Outreachy: mentee/mentor retrospective + making a career out of FOSS Justin W. Flory and Nikita Tripathi reflected on their experiences with the Outreachy program within Fedora, offering insights into how such initiatives can pave the way for careers in open source.

Wrap up

A big thank you to the organizers and volunteers who made GNOME Asia 2024 such a fantastic event.

It was amazing to meet so many people passionate about open source, each bringing something unique to the community. I learned a lot from the sessions and had great conversations.

Thank you again to everyone who made this event such a memorable experience! 💙