This is an accomplishments system that can be used to identify when people have accomplished various things in the Ubuntu project and reward them with trophies. The plan also makes additional skills and accomplishments more discoverable and provides better help for people to get started. While designed for Ubuntu, the system can be used for other projects and also for local applications (e.g. completing Level 1 on a game). Accomplishments in community projects are verified for their integrity so people can’t fake their trophies.

I wanted to present a video demo of the system working so far:

Can’t see it? See the video here!

You can find out more about the project here and the code is available in the following branches:

• lp:ubuntuaccomplishments – contains the main trophy viewer app, the daemon, and the libaccomplishments Python module.
• lp:~jonobacon/ubuntuaccomplishments/ubuntu-community – a collection of Ubuntu accomplishments for different things you can accomplish in the Ubuntu project. There are only two accomplishments right now – can you help write more?.
• lp:~jonobacon/ubuntuaccomplishments/validation-service – the server-side verification service that runs on an Ubuntu One headless machine.

Now, this is really early in the stages of development. If you grab the code you will find various bits that are not yet implemented, but the core idea works.

Things we need to do next:

• Generate the user’s trophy directory and share it with Ubuntu One. I have the code written to do this, I just need to merge it in.
• Add a Getting Started page which asks the user if they want to use verified trophies that use Ubuntu One.
• Fix support for machine-verifiable trophies that are dependent on others.
• Actually sign the trophies.
• Implement the categories filter in the My Trophies view.

I plan on writing a longer blog entry about how the system works later for those who are interested in contributing.

I thought this could be of general interest to the community, so I figured I would write these things down into a blog entry. So meta.

Some tips:

• Keep it concise – your blog should get the point and talk through the topic you are presenting. Now…seasoned readers of my own work will know I tend to ramble from time to time, so I myself always need to try and keep this in check. Few people will want to commit to a huge block of text, so keep it concise.
• Format it – the web has many wonderful things, and this includes formatting such as italic, bold, code, different heading sizes and more. Use them to help add emphasis to your posts.
• Make it visual – pictures say a thousand words, and so do videos. Break up your content with images illustrating what you are discussing, or just amusing images to make a joke (example). If you want to display images, I recommend you upload them to Flickr and then link directly to the images. For videos you can usually embed them directly from YouTube or other video sharing sites, but aggregators such as Planet Ubuntu often strip out the embedded videos, so be sure to provide a direct link underneathe the embedded video (example).
• Link to interesting things – if you are discussing something online, always provide a link to it. This helps the user get access to the information quickly and easy.
• Be professional – always keep your posts professional and thorough. Ensure your writing is clear and that you have spell and grammar checked it.
• Be fun – being professional doesn’t mean you can’t be fun. Writing in a fun and amusing way is a great way to keep your readers interested.
• Invite discussion – if your blog has a comments feature, always end your posts and ask for input and opinions from your readers. This provides a wonderful way to trigger some discussion around your post.

In terms of blogging more and getting more eyeballs on your posts, here are some tips:

• Get into the habit – to become a regular blogger you need to get into the habit of thinking “this is cool, I should blog about this“. This can take a while to get used to. If you are in a team, it is helpful to suggest to others when they should blog about something; this keeps us all regularly posting. If you are struggling with getting into the habit, put a reminder in your calendar to remind you.
• Ensure you are aggregated – if you are an Ubuntu Member, be sure to add your post to Planet Ubuntu. Add your post to other appropriate aggregators (e.g. Canonical staff should add their blogs to voices.canonical.com).
• Use social media – post a link to your post on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and other social media accounts.

I am sure there are plenty of other suggestions from you folks; please add them to the comments!

From 2nd – 4th March 2012 we will be running the Ubuntu Global Jam. This is a global event in which we ask Ubuntu users and contributors to organize events in their local areas to meet other Ubuntu people and help contribute to Ubuntu.

The Ubuntu Global Jam is a fun event, and a great way to meet other Ubuntu and Free Software folks. It is also really easy to organize an event if there is not one near you.

To explain more, tonight I created a video explaining what the Ubuntu Global Jam is, and how to organize an event:

Can’t see it? Click here!

We are going to be encouraging you good folks to start organizing your events. You can find out more about the events here at loco.ubuntu.com and more information on the wiki.

Please feel free to ask whatever questions you like about how to organize an event in the comments here. Do let me know if you organize an event!

Mike is also working on some website updates on loco.ubuntu.com that will make the event a little more interested both before and when the event is running.

Sponsored by Colgate.

L-R: Daniel Holbach, David Planella, Yours Truly, Jorge Castro, Michael Hall, and Nicholas Skaggs.

Google Hangouts are awesome for team meetings.

All questions are welcome!

You can also find help if you get stuck in #ubuntu-unity on Freenode. Happy testing!

I am running it now and the multi-monitor improvements in Precise are so much better than they used to be.

Can’t see the video? Watch it here.

Just a quick note to let you know that this Friday, 3rd February in San Francisco we will be having the Severed Fifth CD Release Party. The new album ‘Liberate’ was funded by donations from the Severed Fifth community and will be released soon under a Creative Commons license.

As such, on Friday we will be releasing the album at Cafe Cocomo, 650 Indiana St, San Francisco, CA where we will perform a full, live set of the new record. We will also be supported by Ulysses Siren and My Victim. Not only this but everyone who comes to the show will get a free copy of the new album on CD and there will plenty of give-aways and prizes.

Tickets are $10 advance ($12 on the door). You can buy tickets for the show here as well as buying tickets on the door. Doors open at 8pm.

I would love to encourage you to come out to support Creative Commons and local music and have a great time.

When you load the app it shows you a list of the available opportunities you can achieve:

(obviously a bunch of these are dummy ones).

You can use the combo boxes at the top to choose which types of opportunities (e.g. Ubuntu Community, Ubuntu UK LoCo Team) you want to view, as well as their category (e.g. Ubuntu Community could have categories such as QA, Development, Advocacy).

Some of the opportunities have padlocks on them. This means that you need to complete another opportunity before that one is unlocked. This helps provide more of a logical journey of things that you can do.

Part of the goal of the accomplishments project is to provide better, more contextual information for how to get started doing something. As an example, if you are curious about the Filed First Bug opportunity, you can double-click it to read information about how to complete it and where to find help:

Obviously this information can be improved (and particularly the links, they are just dummy links). We would also want to add nice things like clicking on an IRC channel and it loading in an IRC client.

The Filed First Bug is a real working accomplishment. When you run the scriptrunner (part of the prototype, but not tied into the GUI yet) it will run the accomplishment’s script and check Launchpad to see if you have filed a bug. If you have, a small notify-osd bubble appears and you can see your trophy in the My Trophies view:

In the real implementation the scriptrunner would run as a service without you having to run the app to start it.

I am pleased with the progress I am making. Next I want to get some more example accomplishments tied in and then I am going to start looking at building the verification service. Should be fun!

I am certainly not presuming that this documentation was as a result of someone reading my blog post; I assume I didn’t see it online before, but thankyou to everyone who has contributed to it.