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Archive for March, 2009


Posted on March 30, 2009 - by jono

The Fourth Horseman Steps Forward

Ladies and Gents, I am tickled pink to announce the latest horseman to join my team at Canonical. His name is David Planella and he will be our new Ubuntu Translations Coordinator. He will join Daniel Holbach and Jorge Castro on the team.

David has a strong background in translations and development. He is an Ubuntu Catalan Team administrator and translator, a GNOME translator, Debian translator and had performed translation and coordination of several other projects through Softcatalà, a non-profit volunteer organisation for the promotion of the Catalan language in IT and the other technologies. Oh, and for kicks he is a core developer on the Linux acx100 wireless driver. Rock and roll!

David joins the crew on the 6th April and our friends in the translations community will be seeing David more and more. Folks, give him a warm welcome!


Posted on March 26, 2009 - by jono

Painting The Community Manager

Recently the tubes have been ablaze with chatter of where the somewhat popular topic of community management should fit into an organisation. When the coin is flipped, said chatterers have been debating whether to place their bets on either Marketing and Engineering as an apt destination for the reporting line. Do we expect our community managers and representatives to report to the Director Of Marketing or the Chief Technical Officer? More specifically, when you bring a community manager into your organisation, which of these two teams do you feel can most effectively support and enable a community builder to actually build a great community?

In recent months the word community has become quite the buzzword in the Open Source business world. Its presence is felt more and more at conferences, in papers, on blogs and across the current global Twitter sensation. Irrespective of the medium, this explosion of interest in community has happened for three closely interlinked reasons.

  • Firstly, community is implicitly a positive word. It speaks of openness, participation, awareness, and an agreeable intention to engage in an environment driven by merit. For Open Source companies, this is powerful inferred meaning that speaks well to their audience. As such it makes entire sense for a company to light up their website like a Christmas tree with references to “community“.
  • Secondly, community has become synonymous with “engagement in the Open Source space”. Open Source companies are fully aware that if they don’t have an answer for their community relations strategy, they simply won’t be taken seriously by a significant demographic of people. Whereas five years ago this demographic of people was often seen as strange hygienically-challenged bespectacled nerds who lived in their mother’s basement adorned with Buffy The Vampire Slayer posters, it is now well known that those with buying capacity and/or influence are placing importance in the community attributes of Open Source . These are real customers who have developed this value expectation due to the constantly re-enforced Open Source mantra of participation, community and technical quality. When the industry cradles Open Source and its associated values, the big cats in the ecosystem need to adjust to reflect that.
  • Finally, irksome economic times have resulted in very real consequences for small businesses. Executives have been forced to re-assess how they can achieve their goals and ambitions with a more painful awareness of the bottom line. Multiple Marketing and Engineering people can be expensive, a lot more expensive than a Community Manager.

The amalgamation of these attributes has presented a strong commercial justification of community and those who can build it, and a set of expectations around what these community builders can deliver. And here folks, lies the problem.

In every industry certain words that once had reasonably obvious illustrative attributes and consequences have subsequently become colloquial references. We have seen this extensively with trademarks: Aspirin, the Hoover, Cellophane, Thermos and even Heroin were all once trademarked to specific companies (Bayer, Hoover Company, DuPoint, Thermos GmbH and Friedrich Bayer & Co respectively). Using Hoover as an example, in England many people will refer to any brand of vacuum cleaner as a “hoover”. At one point in time a “hoover” though would point to a very specific representation of focus, quality and expectation in a vacuum cleaner that was driven by the Hoover Company. Since then the trademark has been somewhat genericized in different parts of the world and what some refer to as a “hoover” will often bear no actual resemblance to the focus, quality and expectation of a product that would come from the Hoover Company.

Similar risks around mis-guided expectations are arguably facing community managers. We need to be careful that with all of the buzz, focus and excitement around community management that we don’t step over, hide or downplay the very real day to day focus of this work in favour of academically pleasing social science. If we unseat this balance, we face the risk of genericizing community management as “the theory of working with groups of similar interests” as opposed to connecting the term firmly with hands-on best practise in building real communities that do real measurable work.

Recently much of the rhetoric around community has been presented in a generic and somewhat ethereal way. Many people have stood on many stages and many blog entries have been written by even more people that speak to the theoretical, buzz-word entrenched social architecture of community, but unfortunately fall short of the details of how they actually build a community. Of course, this theory and social science is hugely important and I would never wish to demote it’s piece of the picture, but it does represent a piece as opposed to the picture as a whole. The rest of the picture (in the Open Source space) is filled with the nuts and bolts of collaboration.

The essence of great Open Source community is in great collaborative processes, infrastructure and opportunities that help drive a united team of contributors in a shared direction. When your community can get their hands on freely available and powerful tools, simple and non-bureaucratic processes, have a world of great opportunities to contribute to in different, diverse and exiting ways, and have their contributions recognised, a powerful and productive community flourishes.

Getting back to the puzzle that we set out to explore at the start of this post, community management is a tale with both Marketing and Engineering story lines flowing through it. If one is missing, community can feel unbalanced, misrepresented and ineffective. We should always seek to celebrate and market the opportunities and importance of community, but that means nothing if you are not willing to roll up your sleeves and build and re-enforce the collaborative groundwork in your community.

My recommendation for the Open Source businesses uncertain of how to move forward: ensure your community manager is well versed in the mechanics and technical/social foundations of collaboration in Open Source communities and ensure he or she is able to strategically structure and execute on objectives that enable your community on the ground to do great work. Ensure your community manager has a close connection to your technical leaders, but also have a close connection with your marketing department to help them articulate and express your community story.

Tiny Plug: Keep an eye out for my up and coming book on effective community management – the Art Of Community to be published by O’Reilly in Summer.


Posted on March 24, 2009 - by jono

Ubuntu Members Get Free LWN Subs

Good news, friends. From today Canonical is contributing a new benefit to Ubuntu Membership: a complimentary subscription to the rather glorious Linux Weekly News. Our friends in Debian have been doing this for a while, and we thought this could be an excellent gesture too.

To enjoy this benefit you need to be a member of the Ubuntu project. You can then follow this devilishly simple process to switch on your free subscription:

  • Apply for an account at LWN by clicking here.
  • Send a mail to my friend and yours Rachael at rachael.tripp (at) canonical dot com (preferably using your ubuntu.com address) asking for a subscription sponsorship. This email MUST contain:
    • Your LWN username
    • Your Launchpad username.
  • Rachael will then go and double check you are a member and not telling porkies.
  • You will receive an email when the subscription has been accepted and is ready to roll (or read).

More details about this and other membership related benefits are here.

Enjoy!


Posted on March 24, 2009 - by jono

Ubuntu 9.04 Free Culture Showcase Winners!

Ladies and Gents, I am pleased to announce the results of the Ubuntu 9.04 Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase. This is the competition in which creative types can submit their work for inclusion in the Examples/ folder of the next edition of Ubuntu. In this competition we expanded the Audio and Video categories to also include a Graphic/Photo category too. We netted a fantastic range of entries and many great submissions!

Our submissions list was then assessed by our esteemed community judging panel and they made selections from each category. This final set of selections was then voted on by the Ubuntu Community Council to find our winners. I would like to thank everyone for participating and congratulate each of the winners for having their work about to be delivered to millions of Jaunty desktops. :)

Without further ado, onto the winners!

Audio: Jean Francois Marais

South African bred and Taiwan based sound jeweler MoShang polishes rough audio diamonds and melds them with traditional Asian instruments and laid-back beats. In addition to his commercial releases, MoShang has made a remix album available for free download (Asian Variations – 2007) and was heavily involved as musician and producer with the free CABACA album by the CC Asia Band (2008). He has won a South African award for his music to the short film Angels in a Cage (2000) and his music has been featured in the HDTV Discovery Channel production Fantastic Festivals Of The World.

About the entry:

“I started the track Invocation early in 2008 with an eye to expanding my usual Chinese-based sonic palette with the addition of traditional Japanese instruments. I kicked it around some, but was only inspired to finish it after my first visit to Japan to attend the 2008 iCommons Summit in Sapporo and released the track on the Stone Bell EP towards the end of 2008. It opens with a tribal feel thanks to hira-daiko and shime-daiko drumming, and also features shakuhachi and male vocals in the Esashi Oiwake style of Hokkaido island”.

Video Category: Robbie Ferguson

Former radio announcer, Robbie Ferguson hosts Category5 Technology TV; a live, weekly TV-style broadcast that answers technology questions for a global audience. With roughly 50,000 viewers per week through their video podcast alone, the show has quickly (albeit unofficially) become a popular resource for both seasoned and rookie Ubuntu users. Robbie is happily married with two young children. He has been a respected professional in the technology field for many years, and is currently a senior web developer at an IT firm, where he spends his professional time coding advanced PHP applications and wooing other employees toward Ubuntu.

About the entry:

“When good friend Alan Pope (Ubuntu UK Podcast) suggested I post an entry in the Free Culture Showcase, I thought it was a great idea. I did wonder what I could possibly give to such a project? After all, my show is a live question-and-answer broadcast with no “production,” and no script. So when it came down to sitting in front of the cameras to put something together, I decided to just “be myself,” and speak candidly on my thoughts about the Ubuntu community; because when it comes down to it, I am really just another Ubuntu user”.

Graphic/Photo: William J McKee Jr

William considers himself your typical down to earth guy, fascinated with technology, nature, and how the two can meet sometimes with beautiful results. He has lived most of his life on the east coast, traveled a little, enough to appreciate the beauty we live in. Photography is still just a secondary hobby for him, but has always interested him.

About the shot:

“I snapped this, just over the border into Canada from NY. My wife was driving, and I happened to notice the clouds in one area were about to cut some light off, this usually looks good if you are fortunate enough to be in the right place/time. I took out our Canon Powershot Pro 1, and zoomed in, through the windshield of the car, and snapped a couple off. I got lucky with this one, although some editing of contrast was done, which brought out the color nicely. Even almost ruined shots can look good some of the time!”

Thanks also to Keith Worrell and Endolith for some of the patches and branches involved in the Example Content package.


Posted on March 20, 2009 - by jono

The Big Ubuntu Brainstorm Braindump

One of the facilities that has been hugely popular in the Ubuntu community has been Ubuntu Brainstorm. With Brainstorm you can register ideas and features for the Ubuntu project and others can vote those ideas up or down. There are also tools in Brainstorm to indicate potential solutions or notes around the idea. Brainstorm has become a great way to get an idea of what our users want.

As we build towards the 9.10 release cycle, I figured it would be useful to present a summary of the most popular ideas of all time and the most popular ideas within the last six months: thanks to Jorge for helping me with this. This should offer some great food for thought for the wider community to work on. Here goes…

Most Popular Ever

These ideas are the most popular Brainstorm ideas that exist in the system. They show a pretty strong sense of demand for which features many Ubuntu users are craving.

Fix suspend/hibernate

On 28 Feb 08 – 7053 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/94/
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/jaunty-suspend-resume

Speed up ubuntu/gnome boot time

On 28 Feb 08 – 6208 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/42/
  • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/Specs/BootPerformance
  • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/Specs/BootPerformance

Easy mounting of images and ISO and CUE

On 28 Feb 08 – 5647 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/194/

Clean up preferences and administration

On 28 Feb 08 – 5620 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/80/

Improved file/folder sharing experience

On 29 Feb 08 – 5142 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/403/
  • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EasyFileSharing

Fix compatability with webcams and microphone

On 28 Feb 08 – 5116 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/97/
  • https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Webcam

Enhanced Mobile Device Sync

On 28 Feb 08 – 4301 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/28/
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ltsp-palm-devices
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/pim-device-sync
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/pocket-pc-support
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/pda-support-out-of-the-box
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/syncintegration

Better wifi support

On 29 Feb 08 – 4273 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/295/

Easy way of backing up/moving your documents and settings

On 28 Feb 08 – 3497 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1/
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/jaunty-backup

Disk Manager by default

On 29 Feb 08 – 3167 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/323/
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/disk-manager-by-default
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/fstab-gui

Mouse button extension

On 28 Feb 08 – 3121 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/120/
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/gui-mouse-configuration

Better Hardware Profile Manager

On 16 Mar 08 – 2482 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4848/

Better DVD support

On 29 Feb 08 – 2347 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/372/

Better monitor support and configuration tools

On 29 Feb 08 – 2337 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/322/
  • http://blog.qa.ubuntu.com/node/9

Professional looking boot loader

On 28 Feb 08 – 5859 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/21/
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/plymouth

Restoring the bootloader by Ubuntu installation CD

On 29 Feb 08 – 3740 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1242/

Include a graphical frontend to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst installed by default

On 28 Feb 08 – 2759 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/141/
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/graphical-grub-config

Some recommended solutions (startupmanager is in universe):

  • Start Up Manager – http://web.telia.com/~u88005282/sum/
  • GRUBConf – http://grubconf.sourceforge.net/
  • GRUBEd – http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t#228104
  • KGRUBEditor – http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content#75442

Provide a simple interface for labeling partitions

On 3 May 08 – 2506 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/8008/

Make ubuntu more responsive (performance)

On 28 Feb 08 – 2316 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/85/

GUI configuration front end for common services

On 28 Feb 08 – 1813 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/68/

Most Popular over the last 6 months

These are the most popular ideas that have been registered in Brainstorm in a recent cycle. Many of these ideas give a great impression of more recent desires around functionality in Ubuntu.

Check my hardware against application blackists BEFORE ‘upgrading’

On 12 Jan 09 – 1653 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17218/

Better life battery for laptop

On 3 Feb 09 – 646 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17825/

Volume control should close when you click somewhere else

On 14 Feb 09 – 829 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/18045/

Redesign ubuntu for 2010

On 21 Jan 09 – 773 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17540/

Allow ALT+Tab when drag and drop

On 4 Jan 09 – 753 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17042/

“Scan wireless networks” option in NetworkManager

On 29 Jan 09 – 750 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17725/
  • http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id#498887

Easy screen-sharing and audio-chat for instant messengers

On 7 Jan 09 – 743 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17102/
  • https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/replace-pidgin-with-empathy
  • https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EmpathyVsPidginUsability

There should be a simple GUI to do basic disk maintanence tasks

On 30 Dec 08 – 723 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16919/
  • http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/DeviceKit

When abbreviating filenames, cut out the middle, keep the beginning and end

On 19 Nov 08 – 720 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15752/

Guest account needs a change

On 19 Nov 08 – 690 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15773/

Make System Monitor as powerful as Windows Task Manager

On 24 Sep 08 – 682 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/13626/

“Speed up” Ubuntu by reducing duration of Compiz animations

On 3 Jan 09 – 664 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17009/

Automatic handling of external monitor

On 20 Jan 09 – 647 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17509/

ubuntu main menu icons are too big, they take too much space

On 30 Jan 09 – 594 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17748/

Native Firefox on Ubuntu is even slower than on Wine

On 21 Jan 09 – 767 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/18058/
  • https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Building_with_Profile-Guided_Optimization

Synaptic/Apt-Get should check for free disk space before download or install

On 15 Sep 08 – 669 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/13235/

Unify sound drivers and the sound api

On 22 Oct 08 – 661 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/14682/

Usplash should use a time-based progressbar

On 18 Nov 08 – 578 Votes

  • http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15741/

Something in this big ‘ol list strike your fancy? Well, roll your sleeves up and start making plans for the Karmic cycle. Lets see how many of these features and problems we can fix. Start your engines folks… :)


Posted on March 19, 2009 - by jono

Quickies

Working like an animal right now, hence little in the way of blogging. I am microblogging where I can though on my Twitter and my identi.ca feeds (using the excellent Gwibber).

Some real quick links before I get back to the grind-stone:

  • I recently did two interviews, one with OSTATIC and one with LinuxQuestions.
  • Now is the time to start getting your Jaunty Release Party organized! See the current list of parties here and find out how to organize your own here!
  • UDS Sponsorship results will be forthcoming over the next week or so.
  • I will be participating in a panel at the Linux Collaboration Summit from the 8th – 10th April.

And quick thoughts:

  • Snow-mobiling is incredible fun. Tahoe is beautiful.
  • I am back in England and in London from the 19th – 25th April. Fancy meeting up?
  • Jaunty is rocking. Upgrade and report bugs!
  • Brainstorm report to focus ideas around Karmic is coming. Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase results are coming!

Posted on March 3, 2009 - by jono

UDS Karmic Sponsorship Closes Soon!

Everyone, just a really quick reminder that if you want to get sponsorship to the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona from the 25th – 29th May 2009, you need to get your sponsorship request filed in the next few days – the deadline is Wed 4th March 2009!

All the deliciously juicy details are right here.

Good luck, and don’t forget that everyone is welcome to join us in Barcelona! :)


Posted on March 2, 2009 - by jono

LoCo Directory Moves Forward

At UDS we talked about the concept of a LoCo Directory: a database with all of the LoCo Teams that we currently have listed here. Well, we have been moving forward with the design and the always awesome Rich Johnson has been doing the development. The project is still just kicking off, but a few screenshots:

(the data in the screenshots was imported from a CSV that Efrain contributed, but much of the data will need refining, so don’t put too much faith in it yet!)

This is going to be incredible for the LoCo Community! :)

More soon…