Archive for April, 2007

Posted on April 30, 2007 - by jono

UES, Ubucon, UDS…FYI, OMG, O RLY, YA RLY

Well, I am off on my travels again. This time I am heading out to Seville in Spain for a number of Ubuntu events. These include:

• Ubuntu Education Summit – 3rd / 4th May – two days of discussion about furthering Ubuntu in Education. I will be hosting a session to discuss how we can get LoCo teams and other community groups together to focus on education. Much of this hails from discussions I have had with Richard Weiderman, the Canonical king of education. Should be an interesting session.
• Ubucon Sevilla – 5th May – a single day community event organised by the local community as well as Paul Sladen and Melissa Draper. If you are planning on going, sign up here so there is an idea of numbers. Should be an interesting day. I will be there rambling on about cat herding.
• Ubuntu Developer Summit – 6th – 11th May – a week in which the fate of gutsy is decided and discussed. What goes in it? Well, come and be a part of the week and help shape the next version of Ubuntu. More details here. I will be there, knee deep in community discussions, and I have a number of different issues I am keen to get on with. We have an incredible bunch of people coming, so it should be an excellent week.

As ever, I will be capturing each of the above on camera, and my flickr account will be royally battered with new photos as they arrive.

I am also looking forward to getting out in the evenings and partying with a bunch of the folks coming to the UDS. Last year was a blast, and I have no doubt that this UDS should be pretty cool too.

Posted on April 29, 2007 - by jono

Jokosher update

Jokosher fans, time for an update.

The 0.9 release was delayed for quite some time due to a nasty bug in Gnonlin which has now been fixed, and we awaiting the legend Hervey to make his Gnonlin imminent release with the fix in before we make our release. This delay has in-turn caused a delay in Jokosher development, but I have good news to share.

Jokosher HEAD is now unfrozen. Laszlo branched 0.9 and hacking is now continuing for 1.0. The roadmap for 1.0 is not decided on yet – there will be an IRC meeting to discuss what is planned sometime soon, but the main plans are getting the current current code mature and well tested.

We are screaming out for more people testing Jokosher, particularly the editing tools. When Edward release Gnonlin we are hoping to get some updated Gnonlin packages built for Feisty and then Feisty is an ideal platform for testing Jokosher – it includes the required version of GStreamer. If you are a Fedora bod, fear not though, Snecklifter has been working on packages for you folks too.

If you are interested in helping the Jokosher community, head over to our forums and get involved.

Posted on April 29, 2007 - by jono

Ubuntu Open Week success

Ubuntu Open Week is done and dusted. Thanks to everyone who participated in giving a session, and thanks to everyone who showed up to the sessions. Its safe to say it was another huge success, lots of people in the sessions, bags of enthusiasm, stacks of great questions for our fearless tutors and seemingly a bunch of new contributors to the Ubuntu community.

The logs for each of the sessions is available on the main Ubuntu Open Week page – would be great to see the content there merged into FAQs for each of the different teams.

I am looking for success stories for the week – if you attended some sessions and are now becoming part of the Ubuntu community, or if you are an existing community member and the week helped you become more productive, do let me know. Send your success stories to me at jono AT ubuntu DOT com.

Posted on April 27, 2007 - by jono

Exhibitors and BOFs: We Need You!

Get all your LugRadio Live news and updates from the LugRadio Live Latest News Blog!

The fun and games for LUGRadio Live 2007 is ramping up, and we will soon be announcing the speaking schedule for the weekend of pure greatness in Wolverhampton, England on the 7th and 8th July 2007.

So now, our attention focuses to Exhibitors and BOFs. Read on for more…

Exhibitors

Do you contribute to a free software project? Do you work for an Open Source company? Do you have cool and interesting things to show off, demo and otherwise feel smug about? Well, we want you to come and show off your wares (not warez, that would be weird) at LUGRadio Live 2007.

We are really keen for fun, interactive and different booths as well as the usual booths that show off a project or company. Interested? Well, do the honourable thing and [mail us](mailto:show AT lugradio DOT org)!

BOFs

BOFs are loose and informal discussion sessions scattered around the event throughout the entire weekend. We have a number of BOF Points where BOF sessions will be happening, and we are keen for people to come along and run sessions. In the past we have had sessions about Ubuntu, SuSE, running LUGs, accessibility, women in Open Source, Jokosher, Ruby On Rails and more. The idea is to get some like-minded people together to discuss something and maybe make plans for things to do after the event. It is a great way of growing community and projects.

Interested? So you should be…in which case [mail us](mailto:show AT lugradio DOT org) to volunteer for a BOF.

LUGRadio is ramping up and the pace is the pulse is ticking faster – more news as it breaks.

Posted on April 25, 2007 - by jono

Ãœber Ubuntu Open Week Update

Well, Ubuntu Open Week is in full swing, and has been a huge success so far, with nearly 300 excitable people crammed in #ubuntu-classroom on Freenode, sucking in the goodness. Thanks to everyone has who given a session and to everyone for coming along to get involved. I hope you are all enjoying the week so far.

Now, a few scheduling changes:

• The Ask Mark session in which you can probe our fearless leader Mark Shuttleworth in any way you feel he should be probed, conventional or otherwise, is now on Wed 25th at 18.00 UTC instead of Fri 27th.
• The Ubuntu Marketing Team session is now on Thu 26th at 20.00 UTC instead of Wed 25th.
• The Ubuntu Desktop Team session is now on Fri 27th at 17.00 UTC instead of Thu 26th.

Got it? If UTC just confuses the hell out of you, see this site to figure out when to show up.

Thanks also to Jeremy Austin-Bardo who has been working on the logs of each of the sessions. On the main Ubuntu Open Week website you can see links to the session logs. Thanks Jeremy!

I hope to see a bunch of you in my Q+A session at 3pm UTC today. Questions about ducks or bottle dancing may be ignored.

Posted on April 24, 2007 - by jono

Life can treat you in new and different ways

Sometimes a situation in life unveils itself, and it is a thing of unparalleled beauty. Such experiences are infrequent, but their rarity is compensated by magnificence, elegance and grace. Importantly, these occurrences are defined by the combination and the whole; the elements, seemingly bland and uninteresting in the singular, coming together to form an event unmarred by the norm and pushing towards the divine.

Such an experience happened to me a few days ago:

• Aq, in Marks & Spencers (a relatively upmarket retail chain, for those of you unfamiliar with it).
• I call him on his mobile.
• He accidentally places me on speakerphone.
• His phone crashes and he can neither switch the speaker phone off…or…hang up.

Cue, your brave narrator shouting things down the phone as an embarrassed Aq desperately tries to remove the battery to silence the Bacon onslaught.

Beautiful. I could have not wished for a finer person to be stuck in M&S with a phone locked on speakerphone. Oh, and if the tables were turned, he would have milked it for all its worth too.

Posted on April 24, 2007 - by jono

He will climb it, fish it, ride it, jump it and then blog it

Glynn Foster, the Face Of Sun, is clearly the new MacGyver. Respec’

Posted on April 23, 2007 - by jono

LUGRadio Live 2007 Speakers Confirmed!

Get all your LugRadio Live news and updates from the LugRadio Live Latest News Blog!

LUGRadio Live 2007 is coming and its going to rock your socks off. Expect a number of announcements about the event as we get closer to the big event on the 7th and 8th July 2007 in Wolverhampton, England.

Right now I want to announce the confirmed speakers for LUGRadio Live 2007! Aq and I have been beavering away at getting these sorted, so we are pleased to announce the line-up which are spread across three stages:

• Chris diBona (Google)
• Nat Friedman (Novell and the Linux Desktop)
• Aaron Seigo (KDE4)
• Ted Haeger (TBC)
• Simon Willison (OpenID)
• Scott James Remnant (Ten Really Cool Things)
• Matthew Garrett (Linux Laptops)
• Rob McQueen (Telepathy)
• Thomas vander Stichele (Flumotion)
• Karl Lattimer (Wine-doors)
• Christian Schaller (Fluendo)
• John Leach (ELER: Kill Your Tribal Elders)
• Michael Sparks (BBC Research)
• Des Burley (I Am a Lawyer)
• John Alfred Knottenbelt (Making Linux games at Introversion)
• Malcolm Yates (ISVs and Ubuntu)
• Szilveszter Farkas and Jelmer Vernooij (bzr-gtk – Revision Control Made Easy)
• Laszlo Pandy (Inside Jokosher)
• Daniel James (Free software rocks)
• Ben Lamb (Konquering the Desktop with KDE4)
• Kat Goodwin (Alternative Advocacy: Taking it to the schools)
• Bruno Bord (The Great LUGRadio Quiz)
• Becky Hogge (Open Rights Group)
• Gervase Markham (How To Win Every Argument)
• Joe Born (The Path to the $100 Embedded Linux Media Center)
• Gareth Qually (OSS Graphic Design Tools)
• Michael Sheldon (SabreGL – Easy 3D Game Creation)
• Barbie (Selenium)
• Andy Davidson (Scaling up for Champions)
• Pablo Ruiz Múzquiz (Desktop migration in a Savings Bank)
• Dave Neary (OpenWengo Communication and Community)
• Michael Barker (Meldware and the Buni Dev. Community)
• Philip Coombes (Open Source Video + Domestic Security)

In addition to this fine selection of individuals we have some additional sessions planned on the main stages:

• Adam Sweet’s Gong-a-Thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza – Here we want to have people get on the main stage and talk about something interesting for literally a few minutes. We will let you figure out how this event will be run by the name of it.
• The Mass Debate – Once again we line up the great and good in the free software and Open Source community to battle it out in the legendary mass debate.
• The Hour Of Power – A big hit last year, we again have The Hour Of Power penned in this year in which a range of cool demos will wow and entertain you. If you have something cool to demo (and this blog goes out on Planet GNOME, Planet Ubuntu and Planet GStreamer, so I am looking at you folks here) do mail us and we can add you to this legendary hour. There are limited slots, so get in quick!

And lets not forget LUGRadio Live And Unleashed – once again the LUGRadio team climb on the stage and record a show in front of a live, heckling, raucous audience. Always good fun.

In addition to this we have loads of extra stuff going on, much of which we will keep for a surprise at the event. One thing we are looking for though are exhibitors. If you want to exhibit your project or company, and particularly if you have cool and interesting stuff to show, mail us.

Exciting news folks, more news as it breaks!

Posted on April 23, 2007 - by jono

Quickies

Short bursts of stuff:

• This week Ubuntu Open Week kicks off. Be there or be square – it is your chance to be a part of the Ubuntu community and learn from the masters.
• A bunch of new speaking slots are confirmed for me including LinuxTag, OSCON, Ubuntu Live and others. I will be updating the speaking calendar when I get a second.
• Hatebreed are stunning. I saw them in Liverpool on Saturday with Steve. We were also blown away by The Acacia Strain and I picked up their album and a few t-shirts. Stunning.
• Recorded LUGRadio on Wednesday with guest presenters Chris Jones from Canonical and Matt Lee from GNU. The show is out later today. Fun show.
• New music is in the works. Emelye and I are working on two new songs and I am starting work on a number of metal songs.
• Go and look at the stunning Little Big Planet video. Wow!
• Matt Lee gave me a rather cool “I’m a Musician And I support Filesharing” sticker for my laptop – thanks Matt! I am on a mission to plaster my laptop in stickers. Feel free to send any spares this way.
• My Playstation 3 userid is captfishhead.

That is all.

Posted on April 21, 2007 - by jono

I dug Digg, therefore I dig Digg, ya get me?

Awesome, my devious plan to get Ubuntu Open Week in all its glory noticed via Digg seems to be working, and now its on the front page of the Linux/Unix section. I love Digg. I know people think it sucks, but when it fits in with my devious plans, I love it. More focus and attention on the incredibleness that is Ubuntu Open Week has to be a good thing.

Thanks also to you Ubuntu dudes and dudettes who have helped promote it and thanks to everyone for digging it. If you haven’t dug it, get over and digg it now!

Its gonna be a fun week next week folks – real community spirit in action; a community sharing knowledge and experiences so it can grow further. This is what its all about.