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International Women’s Day Comp: Get Your Entries In!
Posted on February 9, 2010 - · Reader Comments (0)
Look at this lovely bag of swag:
Image courtesy of Melissa Draper.
Want to own all this goodness, including Ubuntu Backpacks, women’s t-shirts, key chains, 1 year digital subscription to Linux Pro Magazine or a 1 year print subscription Ubuntu User, and a copy of the The Art of Community by some beardy community guy?
On January 10, 2010 the Ubuntu Women Project announced an International Women’s Day Competition; an awesome effort to gather wonderful stories of how women have discovered Ubuntu. From the announcement:
Ubuntu-Women has tried in the past to find some way to celebrate this event, but as far as I can remember it has never really amounted to much other than some chattering on IRC. So let us try a bit harder for 2010!
We have all come to Ubuntu in our own special ways — every single one of us differently to the next. Yet one of the most common questions we get asked is “How can I get $woman to use Ubuntu?”.
Obviously we cannot really answer that question, but we would dearly love to have a collection of stories by women about how they discovered Ubuntu. Such a repository would allow us to demonstrate that there’s no one definitive answer, and at the same time maybe provide the gift of inspiration to women who are interested — showing them that it’s really not so unusual to be Ubuntu fans after all.
We are not expecting any particular length, but do remember that these stories should be suited to perusal at leisure and not require someone to allocate hours of their day to read. Anywhere between a few paragraphs and a OO.o Write page is ideal.
Two prizes up for grabs. One prize pack will be given to the story that the community votes is their favourite. One prize pack will be given to a randomly drawn entrant. I have been given the pleasure of drawing this entrant in a videocast, and announcing both winners to the world on March 8th. Thanks to the Ubuntu Women project for asking for to do this. 
So, get your entries in to ubuntuwomen.competition at gmail.com by 23:59UTC on 22nd February 2010. Rocking!
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Posted on February 8, 2010 - · Reader Comments (9)
Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week: Call For Participation!
In the continued interests of helping to make Ubuntu rock as a platform for scratching itches and making awesome apps, I am putting together a new online learning event: Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week, happening online between 1st – 6th March 2010.
The week will be just like our previous online learning events such as Ubuntu Developer [...]
Posted on February 8, 2010 - · Reader Comments (17)
Master Of The Situation
I had a crack at creating some electronic music. I know, not metal. I figured I would share this, and I have never done this before, so be gentle.
Check out Master Of The Situation in MP3 and Ogg format.
Created in Cubase with Halion One, a KeyRig and Drumkit From Hell.
Posted on February 6, 2010 - · Reader Comments (76)
I Support Same Sex Marriage
I love being married, it has opened up an incredible sense of commitment and security in my life and my wife’s life. Love is love, and I would never want to prevent anyone from enjoying what I am afforded the privilage of enjoying. This includes gay people. As such, I have joined this Facebook group [...]
Posted on February 4, 2010 - · Reader Comments (18)
Project Awesome Opportunity
In the continued interests of making Ubuntu a rocking platform for opportunistic developers, today we formulated the plan for Project Awesome Opportunity. The goal is simple: build an opportunistic development workflow into Ubuntu. You will install one package from Universe and your Ubuntu will be hot-rodded for opportunistic application development, making development more fun and [...]
Posted on February 1, 2010 - · Reader Comments (8)
Lucid Ubuntu Global Jam Announced
Are you good folks aware of what is happening on 26th – 28th March 2010. But of course, it is the Ubuntu Global Jam!
In the last few cycles we have organized and run an event called the Ubuntu Global Jam. The idea was simple: encourage our awesome global Ubuntu community to get together in the [...]
Posted on January 30, 2010 - · Reader Comments (17)
Connecting The Opportunistic Dots
Something I have talked about extensively recently has been my passion to see opportunistic developers served well on the Linux desktop. These kinds of programmers are people who want to write small, focused, fun little applications that scratch an itch, even if that itch is to have fun. These kinds of developers are having a [...]
Posted on January 28, 2010 - · Reader Comments (7)
Passing On The Lernid Torch
This week has been a big week for Lernid in which it has received some comprehensive testing, feedback and exposure because of the always awesome Ubuntu Developer Week. It has been fantastic to see Ubuntu Developer Week session leaders using slides and the features in Lernid to get the most out of their sessions. Lernid [...]
Posted on January 26, 2010 - · Reader Comments (1)
Application Indicator Online Tutorial Today
Recently I have been talking about how stoked I am that we are solving the problems in the notification area with Application Indicators based on this spec from the KDE team. We are now shipping this functionality in Lucid with Rhythmbox, Nautilus, Empathy, XChat-GNOME, Lernid and other applications using it.
Application developers are pretty excited about [...]
Posted on January 25, 2010 - · Reader Comments (7)
Ubuntu Developer Week Begins and New Lernid Release To Enjoy It With
This week the always awesome Ubuntu Developer Week starts! I am hugely excited about this week, and I can’t wait to see the many fantastic sessions that will be taking place. Connecting to Ubuntu Developer Week has never been easier, with Lernid.
Just in time for Ubuntu Developer Week I have rolled out a new release [...]
Words From The Archive
Article Community
Failure as a Springboard to Success
Those lovely people at ZDNet have let me write a guest post about community, and I have contributed an article called Failure as a springboard to success.
The article talks about how if we embrace our failures in our communities, it can help us become better community members, and provides a model for doing so. This [...]
Article Ubuntu
Announcing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS: The Lucid Lynx
With Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 now out the door and momentum building towards a rocking Karmic Koala release, it is time to name and share the direction and focus for the next step in the Ubuntu evolution that follows Karmic.
To do this I want to pass on some words from Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of [...]
Article Community Ubuntu
Reporting Ubuntu Community Problems
Recently I have been thinking a lot about how we can refine and improve how we report problems and issues in the Ubuntu community. I shared some thoughts about this a little while back and I have been talking with many people inside the Ubuntu community, at the Community Leadership Summit, and with our Community [...]
Article Community
Change For Change
Today I have a little story followed by an idea that I want to share with you all.
A few weeks back I stepped out to go and grab a coffee. I headed over to my local independent coffee shop where I get on well with the owners. Like many small businesses, they have been struggling [...]
Article Community
On Validation
Today I just wanted to share a few thoughts on a much under-used and sometimes overlooked component in growing great communities: validation.
Every community is an organically grouped bundle of people, many of which spend their free time choosing to be part of that community. With the majority of communities being associative volunteer-based groups, our contributors [...]
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