I am requesting round-trip travel funding from Rochester, NY to Tirana, Albania and accommodation for three nights (Friday - Sunday) for OSCAL 2018. My estimated travel costs are approximately best case ~$1100 USD or alternatively ~$930 USD.

Accepted as speaker

I am accepted as a speaker for my talk, Open Source 101, and as an organizer of a Fedora community meet-up, targeting attendees to engage and involve them with the Fedora community.

Open Source 101

The talk abstract is as follows:

Welcome to Open Source 101! This session gives the big picture overview of what open source is and how you can get started. Learn what it means when we talk about free and open source software and where this movement began, over 30 years ago. After understanding the philosophy, get practical advice on how to choose a project and community to contribute to. You won't believe the two things nobody ever told you about choosing a project! At the end, we'll look at the Fedora Project community as an example and explain how you can begin contributing to an open source community today.

This session is targeted especially for beginners. From my experience last year, there were many students and newcomers to open source, so I thought this was a good angle to approach OSCAL with. My session tries to give a holistic overview of open source and connect the dots between the history, the philosophy, and actually making contributions and finding a healthy community. Towards the end, I plan to wrap it back to Fedora and talk about contribution opportunities (technical and non-technical) in our community.

Fedora meet-up

Last year, we ran a community meet-up since there were many Fedora contributors in attendance. I proposed another meet-up, but I want to run it differently than last year. Instead of focusing on existing contributors, I want to focus on event attendees and offer it as an opportunity to bring more people into the community by meeting our community.

The abstract is as follows:

Say hello to the Fedora community! Meet contributors from around the world and learn more about the Fedora community. Existing contributors, local and abroad, are encouraged to participate. If you are interested in Fedora, want to learn more about what the project is doing, or learn how to contribute, bring your questions! Did we mention there may be a sweet surprise?

I loosely had an idea of getting a Fedora-themed cake to draw people in and have a conversation with us. I also want to work with other Fedora contributors attending to find ways to make this a good on-boarding opportunity.

Written report

I am also willing to volunteer and help cover Fedora's participation in OSCAL on the Community Blog. With enough time to plan, I could run an interview series with other accepted speakers in our community leading up to the event, similar to what we did with Flock 2017 interviews.

Cost breakdown

There are two options for my travel accommodation: the preferred and alternative.

Preferred

Direct airfare from Rochester, NY to Tirana, Albania and back.

• Round-trip airfare: ROC => TIA => ROC
  • ~$1100 USD
  • Via skyscanner.com

Alternative

Bus tickets between Rochester, NY and New York City, and direct airfare from New York City to Tirana, Albania, and back. I prefer the other option because each bus ride is approximately 8-9 hours, but I am willing to take this option.

• Bus tickets:
  • ~$40 USD to NYC
  • ~$40 USD to ROC
  • Via greyhound.com
• Round-trip airfare: NYC (JFK/LGA) => TIA => NYC (JFK/LGA)
  • ~$850 USD
  • Via skyscanner.com
• Total: ~$930 USD

Lodging

I am assuming other Fedora contributors from our community will also attend. I am okay with sharing a room.