About

Jono Bacon is a leading community manager, engineering manager, consultant and author. Currently he works as the Ubuntu Community Manager at Canonical, leading a team to grow, inspire and enthuse the global Ubuntu community.

Bacon is a prominent author and speaker on community management and best practice, and wrote The Art of Community (O’Reilly), is the founder of the annual Community Leadership Summit, and is a regular speaker at events about community management, leadership, and best practice.

In addition to The Art of Community, Bacon, co-authored Linux Desktop Hacks (O’Reilly), Official Ubuntu Book (Prentice Hall), and Practical PHP and MySQL (Prentice Hall) and has written over 500 articles across 12 different publications.

Bacon was the co-founder of the popular LugRadio podcast, which ran for four years with 2million+ downloads and 15,000 listeners, as well as spawning five live events in both the UK and the USA, he co-founded the Shot Of Jaq podcast and founded the Jokosher, Acire, Python Snippets, and Lernid projects.

Bacon is also leading an effort to change the music industry, inspired by Open Source and Free Culture, through Severed Fifth, an innovative music project, band and philosophy.

He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area in California with his wife, Erica.

Experience

  • Ubuntu Community Manager, Canonical Ltd (2006 – ?) – I work at Canonical to manage the world-wide Ubuntu developer, contributor and user community. I manage a team of four at Canonical split across the USA, Europe, and Middle East and the community itself numbers hundreds of thousands of contributors across a range of disciplines. The role involved project management, strategic planning, community growth, advocacy, engineering management, managing stakeholder expectations etc.
  • Open Source Consultant, OpenAdvantage (2004 – 2006) – I worked at OpenAdvantage as an Open Source Consultant and worked with a large range of SMEs, Enterprises, Education and Government to help them understand and implement Open Source solutions. In my time at OpenAdvantage I consulted with over 100 organizations.
  • Freelance Writer/Consultant/Developer (2003 – 2004) – Freelance journalist and consultant writing for over 12 publications and publishing three books. In addition to writing, my services included Open Source consultancy, web development and training.

Education

  • The University of Wolverhampton – Ba(Hon), Interactive Multimedia Communication.

Also received an Honorary Research Fellowship from the School Of Technology in 2010 for career achievements.

Events

Organized

  • Ubuntu Developers Summit – 2006 – current (every six months).
  • LugRadio Live – 2005 / 2006 / 2007 / 2008 (UK and USA events) / 2009.
  • Community Leadership Summit – 2009 – current.

Speaking Engagements

  • Keynotes – OSCON (USA), FISL (Brazil), MySQL Conference (USA), Ohio Linux Fest (USA), Southeast Linux Fest (USA), Southern California Linux Expo (USA).
  • Speaking Events – linux.conf.au (Australia), LinuxWorld (UK), Open Source Business Conference (USA), LinuxTag (Germany), GNOME User and Developer Conference (Germany, Spain, UK, Turkey), Linux User & Developer Conference (UK), Blender Conference (Holland), Ubuntu Live (USA), IBM Linux Migration Seminar (UK), European Friends Of O’Reilly (Holland), d:CODE (UK), 10 Years Of KDE (Germany), Association For Free Software Conference (UK), SkyCon (Ireland), UKUUG Conference (UK), West Midlands IT Association (UK), OSS Watch Conference (UK), IBM Developer Workshop (UK).
  • After Dinner Speeches – Python UK Conference.

Awards

  • Best Marketing Campaign (2006) – at the Linux User and Developer Awards for LugRadio.
  • Honorary Research Fellowship (2010) – from the University Of Wolverhampton for career post-graduate career achievements.

Media

Podcasts

  • LugRadio (2004 – 2008) – co-founder, with over 2million downloads and 15,000+ listeners, LugRadio was voted top Open Source podcast by Linux Format magazine, and spawned annual events in the UK and USA.
  • Shot Of Jaq (2009) – - co-founder, a new podcasting format that explored technology and science with a new focus on interactive colalboration from listeners.
  • FLOSSWeekly (2009) – presenter, joined FLOSSWeekly on the TWiT Network with Leo Laporte and Randal Schwartz.

Audio Interviews

Interviewed on Linux Action Show, Linux Link Tech Show, Linux Outlaws, Rathole Radio and others.

Television

  • G@mers (2007) – interviewed about a new Open Source games console.

Groups

  • Wolverhampton Linux User Group (2001) – founder, started this new Linux focused group designed to bring a new, more socially orientated form of group which encouraged other groups in the UK to take a similar spin.
  • West Midlands PHP User Group (2004) – founder, started a group to provide a local community and support resource for the increasingly popular PHP community.

Software Authored

  • Jokosher (2007) – developed the vision and co-developed the design for this multi-track audio editor. Wrote much of the initial code and the initial audio code (Python).
  • Acire (2010) – wrote this Python examples browser designed to provide a library of examples to make learning programming easier. Named after my wife (Acire is Erica backwards).
  • Python Snippets (2010) – founded this Python examples library to accompany Acire.
  • Lernid (2010) – founded this project to provide an electronic learning platform for the Ubuntu project. Used for the different online learning weeks.