The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the 2016 Flock conference, coming August 2-5, 2016 in Krakow, Poland. At Flock, Fedora contributors gather to promote and discuss ideas to improve our distro, community, and userbase, and promote our core values: Freedom, Friends, Features, First.

Past and future Flock locations

The first Flock conference was held in Charleston, South Carolina in 2013. The event has alternated each year between North America and Europe. The 2014 conference was held in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2015, it returned to the US in Rochester, NY, and this year visits Krakow for its European location.

Want to know more about the process and effort that went into finding the venue this year? Check out this post from the Fedora Community Blog. (This is also a great way to learn how to win a bid for next year.)

What Flock is like

Flock operates somewhat like a traditional conference. We have a call for papers (CFP) in which participants submit talks for acceptance. This differs from our previous, Barcamp-style FUDCon events. This arrangement has worked exceptionally well for the past three years. This year promises to be one of the best Fedora conferences yet.

The Flock 2016 conference will feature four full days of talks, workshops, hackfests, and sprints. Your submission is encouraged, since we want to fill the schedule with good content. And of course there will be opportunities to interact with other contributors throughout the conference.

We’ll have scheduled sessions covering these and other topics:

Building a Better Distro

Growing the Fedora Userbase

Making Life Better for Contributors

Prepared Lightning Talks (plenary session)

Team Planning

Hackfests

Drop-in Clinics

Open hardware

…and more

Register and submit talks now!

Information is coming soon about CFP deadlines, hotel lodging, and more. But you don’t have to wait! You can submit your talks along with your registration right away. Visit the official website for Flock 2016 now, where you can register and submit a talk.

Image courtesy Qvidemus – originally posted to Wikipedia as Kraków, sukiennice, 1344-1392, 1557-1559, 1875-1879