Hi everyone,
As of April 1, I became Community Manager both for the Foreman and Pulp communities. Over the last few days, I have been finding my way around and would like to take a few minutes to introduce myself.
I am not new to Foreman. Over the last few years, I have spent a lot of time watching Foreman community demos, sifting through user manuals, and reading threads on Discourse to try and piece together documentation for specific features in Red Hat Satellite. This led me to join the effort to start open sourcing Satellite documentation so that it could become available for the community. As part of this, I attended Foreman’s tenth birthday party in Nuremberg, and had the opportunity to spend time talking with the wider Foreman community. What drew me to this community was the level of engagement and discussions, as well as seeing how you dedicate time to supporting others. Many of you have spent years helping others solve problems and grow in expertise to become Foreman contributors themselves. I found myself tempted to apply for the Community Manager position largely because of the contributions that preceded me, largely because of the efforts you have made to build this community.
As Community Manager, I will have some set tasks, for example, ensuring that we have regular community demos and deep dives, organizing conferences (when the world returns to normal), and managing communication content and channels. Another aspect of this role that I am particularly interested in is how we can identify and remove potential barriers of entry for new and existing users. It’s no surprise that with the size and flexibility of the Foreman project comes complexity and obstacles for new users. Most importantly, my role will adjust to match the needs of the community; I am here to help whoever with whatever they need. I will aim to connect people, facilitate discussions, unblock issues, and keep the community a vibrant place to work.
As I get up to speed, I would like to hear from you. As you are well aware, it is the time dedicated to conversations and debates that has shaped Foreman as much as the code. While it is easier to observe the evolution of Foreman from a technical perspective, understanding the thinking steps within the community that gave direction to the code is more difficult. Despite my best efforts, it might not be possible to see everything that has happened since the last time there was a full-time Community Manager. There might be things that have fallen by the wayside, questions that are important to you that were not answered, discussions that need revisiting, blockers keeping you from progressing, thoughts or opinions you have that I can be of help with. Even if you have no pressing issue to discuss, and just want to say hi, I would still love to hear from you.
I’m based in Cork, Ireland (UTC±00:00), which is well positioned to catch most people for a chat within their respective time zones.
Looking forward to working with you.
Melanie