This is a two part act. First we have the welcome speech to later came with the sate of Fedora. So let us see what the welcome message was.

I am here exited to be in front of you sharing the experience of Fedora Community. Better said, sharing among Fedora friends. Over the time that I have been collaborating with Fedora Project, I have found the brightest people that I have ever met. Not only by their technical skills, but by their world view and how they value others peoples opinion. Nevertheless you have bad luck, instead of one of those great people, you got me giving you the welcome to this convention.

The road to FUDCon Managua has been long starting at small steps about a year ago. At the time that we were selected as host, budget approved and speakers were invited, the work keep becoming more intense. We hope that you can feel the intensity of all that effort in a blast of energy. An experience of learning and teaching at the same time. Jerome, one of those bright people in the community, told me once that free software is a way of making the world a bit of a better place. That is part of what we do and what we like to invite you all to be part of. Not only of free software, but free content and free knowledge.

Freedom is a flag for Fedora in every single level, from software to documentation and above all knowledge. Fedora is based on friendship, we are a diverse community and we appreciate the most of the differences. Fedora is features, we build Fedora, advertise Fedora, share Fedora using tools from Fedora. Last,we are first. You can find now in Fedora how Linux would be in six month.

We have found an ally in Universidad de Ciencias Comerciales. to organize together this event. This event has been an important change, where more that sponsor free software events, it has involve in the event. The event is part of the commitment with the technical formation of new generation of professionals. Not longer a passive subject offering spaces, but taking an active role to integrate knowledge.

This event would not be possible without the sponsorship of Güegüe Comunicaciones, Blue Host, Computer Net, Monchito, Clinica de Especialidades Dentales de la Doctora Barreto, SenCom, Movistar and Hotel Mansión Teodolinda. Thanks to all of them.

The second part is the State of Fedora. This is a real challenge, did my best.

In the last 12 to 18 months, Fedora Project has many things to talk about. Fedora y Red Hat sustain a interdependent relationship, a symbiosis. This alliance has been fortified in terms of more autonomy in budget, more transparency and better communication.
Red Hat made an alliance with Cent-OS which may imply a vertical integration in internal packaging tasks. Slowly this collaboration will signify more similar ways of working making more collaboration over the downstream chain toward Linux distros that depend on Fedora innovation. This will benefit many sysadmins. The triad of Fedora offering the newest in free software, Red Hat with great enterprise support and Cent-OS with community support will have a smooth transition from one to another at any time for sysadmins.

Yet, Fedora has proposed a change over three solutions to keep pace with time. Work Station, Server and Cloud. Focused in office user and developers; infrastructure from small to big business servers; and virtualization on the cloud creating virtual machines on demand on in house infrastructure or third party providers. Everything with the end to ease the integration with other upstream projects and make more easy to provide tools to the users. Of course that this does not mean that we lost the ability of a custom install. Neither is the end of the spins that have a life focused in specific user groups

Another event was the change of the Fedora project Leader, we welcome Matthew Miller. Matthew has started with a clear goal. How do we ensure that we are progressing? The simple metric of having two releases per year is very clear.. The number of downloads of ISO images. The number of updates. Collaborator number. All have been classical terms of the size of the project. But the question remains, how do we measure success? To evaluate ourselves, but most important to improve ourselves.

But the most important and most recent is the change from Fedora Board to Fedora Council. The board was a referent for important decisions brought up to them. The Council will be a dynamic group represented by key parts of the project, seats elected among the collaborators and dynamic seats call to solve concrete task with more specific roles. The idea is to move from a body of top authority toward more active roles focused in gear better the different project teams. Fortunately the Project has grow and organizational changes are need to keep up.
I honestly do not know what to said about the future with so many things going on at the moment. This is a very exiting time, full of challenges. We expect that this conference encourage people to join the Fedora family and participate with so many opportunities to make a difference.