We had what I’m calling a min-Fedora Activity Day today for No Frozen Rawhide (NFR).  As announced earlier this week, a few of us met on Fedora Talk and Gobby (two of my favorite Fedora collaboration tools!) to make sure we had a clear announcement plan for No Frozen Rawhide.

Although not part of the original plan, we found great success writing use cases to explain each of the interaction points different roles would have to the changes in the release composition process.  Along the way we encountered holes in the existing processes and identified ambiguous terminology.  The best part of the meeting was clearly explaining each of the release trees.  Next week I intend to create a stand-alone diagram for it.

I’m a firm believer in choosing the right tools for the job.  I’m also convinced that the full power of this meeting was our ability to talk in real time using Fedora Talk.  All five us where in different geographical locations on opposite sides of the United States.  As it was, it took three solid hours to generate the substantial amount of information that we did.  I’m not even sure a full day of IRC could have generated as much success and solid information.

Thanks to Jesse Keating, Paul Frields, Luke Macken, and James Laska for giving up a big chunk of their day.  These are my favorite kind of Fedora events–where a group of folks collaboratively solve problems and brings greater clarity to our release processes.

We’re hoping that the switch over to No Frozen Rawhide will be a non-event where developers and testers can benefit from the new release process and easily find answers to the questions they have.  See how we are doing by reviewing the page we have so far and leave feedback if you have more ideas.