Justin Wheeler
Justin is best known as an Open Source contributor and Free Culture advocate originally from the United States. Justin has participated in numerous Open Source communities and led different initiatives to build sustainable software and communities for over ten years.
In October 2022, Justin joined Red Hat as the fourth Fedora Community Architect (FCA). He works closely between the Fedora Project community and Red Hat to lead initiatives that grow the Fedora user and developer communities. He also helps make Red Hat and Fedora interactions more transparent and open.
Justin is also a contributor to the Fedora Project since 2015. In Fedora, he co-founded the Community Operations Team and Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Team. He represented Fedora internationally at events and conferences, including FOSDEM, DevConf CZ, All Things Open, OSCAL, and others.
Sessions
Mentorship has always been a big part of what makes Fedora special. After a great response last year, we’re bringing back the Mentor–Mentee Lunch at the Fedora Mentor Summit at Flock 2026, with a small tweak. A casual lunch matching session where everyone can meet face-to-face, share stories, swap ideas, and connect over common goals.
Here’s how it works this year:
* Anyone attending Flock can join.
* Participants are grouped based on topic of interest, no pre-signup required.
* Each day features different topics, so people can explore multiple areas across the event.
* Need a conversation starter? We’ll have a few prompts ready to help break the ice.
* Take a group selfie during lunch and you’ll earn a Fedora Badge as a fun keepsake. 🐧
Topics by day:
Day 1 (Sunday, June 14)
* Documentation
* Operations
* Development
* Marketing
Day 2 (Monday, June 15)
* Packaging
* Infrastructure
* Interpersonal Skills
* Events
Day 3 (Tuesday, June 16)
* Artificial Intelligence
* Governance
* Release Engineering
* Design
No formal structure - just good food and good conversation with someone else who cares about growing the Fedora community.
Have you ever wondered how healthy your SIG actually is? Or wanted to know how to measure the impact of a recent Community Initiative? Data in open source can sometimes feel like a sensitive topic, but when it is built transparently and owned by the community, it becomes a superpower. The Fedora Data Working Group has been exploring new ways to understand our project's health, and we want to share what we've been building with you.
In this workshop, we are opening the doors to Fedora’s analytics ecosystem. This isn't a lecture—it's an open forum and hands-on hacking session designed to demystify how we measure community success.
What we will do together:
* Open Forum & Q&A: Bring your biggest questions about Fedora data. What do you want to know about our community that you currently can't see?
* The Current Landscape: A brief walkthrough of the analytics tools that currently exist within the Fedora community and how you can access them today.
* Exploring Hatlas: We'll introduce the new Hatlas data streams the Data Working Group has been incubating. We want your feedback on how these streams can best serve community needs (including how they might connect to things like Fedora Badges!).
* Hands-On Hacking: We are providing a "Data Bootstrap Kit" for all attendees. We will leave plenty of unstructured time for you to get your local environment set up, plug into the data streams, and start running your own basic queries right in the room.
Whether you are a seasoned data nerd, a Working Group lead looking for better insights, or just curious about how we measure the heartbeat of the Fedora Project, come grab a seat. Let's build a transparent, community-driven data culture together.
The Fedora Docs team would like to invite anyone interested in documentation to come and chat about the future of Fedora docs. We can't promise cookies, but we are interested in your thoughts. Should we merge all docs into a single repo? What's the actual target audience? How do we make sure packagers and testers become more involved? How about sharing docs with CentOS, or even RHEL? Let's discuss!
Join us to officially kick off Flock 2026 with conference organizers.
The Fedora Council would like to provide an overview of in-progress draft proposals to the community and hold a live community Q&A session to help refine the proposals further before adoption as project policy.
From getting resources for swagpacks to laying foundations for conferences, the Fedora Mindshare Townhall Session creates an inclusive and structured space for attendees to meet with their representatives, discuss community health, talk engagement strategies, and identify recognition opportunities and evaluate regional growth. This session will briefly cover what the committee has been up to since the last Flock To Fedora conference, before opening up the space for curious questions and open conversations.
While focusing on surfacing challenges and exploring opportunities related to contributor experience, crossteam collaboration, event impacts and outreach effectiveness, participants will be encouraged to share perspectives from their home regions, propose improvements to the committee's processes, and identify concrete next steps that can strengthen the Fedora Project's global community over the next release cycles. Hence, this session intends to take full advantage of both the participants and attendees present at the event.
Fedora is built by contributors working across many areas such as development, documentation, design, QA, infrastructure, user support, mentoring, and outreach, many of which happen behind the scenes. The Fedora Contributor Recognition Program was created to recognize and reward outstanding contributions to the Fedora community. In this session, we will explain how the program works, from the open nomination process to the review and selection process carried out by experienced Fedora contributors using criteria such as impact, quality, innovation, and community engagement. We will also share lessons learned from running the program last year. The session will conclude with the announcement of this year’s winners, celebrating their work and highlighting the many ways people contribute to Fedora.