Archive for the ‘Ubuntu’ Category

Posted on August 26, 2010 - by jono

This Friday: Rockridge Ubuntu Global Jam In Berkeley

Just a quick reminder: as part of our awesome Ubuntu Global Jam I am organizing the Ubuntu California Rockridge Jam at A’cuppa Tea, College Ave, Berkeley. The jam is from 10am – 6pm – I hope to see you there!

Don’t live near me? Go and find your nearest jam or organize your own!

Posted on August 25, 2010 - by jono

Rocking The Application Indicators

Some time back the Ayatana project introduced the Application Indicator Framework, based upon technology created by the KDE project. We have been shipping this technology in Ubuntu for a few releases now and it makes the top-right part of the desktop a smooth, efficient, and pleasant experience, getting over the inconsistent and limiting notification area we had before.

To help build integration in the GNOME panel for this indicator work we had Ted Gould, Cody Somerville, and Jason Smith produce an implementation complete with C, Python and C# bindings, had Aurélien Gâteau continue to perform his excellent work with KDE, and Jorge Castro to help spread awareness of this work. In addition to this we contracted some developers to port apps with notification indicators that we ship in Ubuntu to the new framework, and this included apps such as Brasero, GNOME Bluetooth, GNOME Power Manager, Gnome Settings Daemon, XChat-GNOME, iBus, Nautilus, Policykit GNOME, Empathy, Gwibber and more. All of these patches are publicly available if other distros would like to use them.

The community has really got involved with the technology too, with community patches for Lernid, Banshee, LottaNZB, and DejaDup, and System Monitor, Weather, Screenshotting, Workspaces, Device Mounting indicators, support for the indicator framework built into AWN and Lubuntu, and more. I am absolutely delighted to see so much interest from application developers in the technology.

Posted on August 24, 2010 - by jono

Articulating IRC Contributions Concisely

Today I had a call with Jussi from the Ubuntu IRC Council. We spent some time discussing a range of different topics, but then Jussi raised an important question which I think could benefit from some community discussion.

Today we have many methods of providing free support for our users – the Ubuntu Forums, Launchpad Answers, Ubuntu StackExchange and of course IRC. With each of the web resources there is a method of identifying those who are providing a significant and sustained contribution when providing support by checking their account profiles.

Unfortunately we don’t have this today for IRC. The simple reality is that there are many community members who use IRC every day and provide fantastically valuable support for our community, but there is no way of sufficiently articulating their contributions in a way that could, for example, be assessed for Ubuntu Membership.

The outcome I would like to achieve here is that someone in the IRC community who provides support could apply for Ubuntu Membership and the Ubuntu Membership Board could take a look at a profile that accurately and concisely summarizes their contributions, thus identifying that such contributions are significant and sustained, and therefore suitable for membership.

One option I was thinking could be something that I am thinking of as a ‘thankbot’. Imagine this context

<jono> hey, how do I do X, Y, and Z on Ubuntu?
<erica> hi jono, all you do is click on the frizometer and select babang.
<jono> ahh, that is it, thanks so much!
<erica> jono, it would be
<jono> thankbot erica
<thankbot> erica got thanked by jono - erica has been thanked: 28 times

We could then provide a means for others to check how many times a given person has been thanked, and it could be even cooler to have IRC client plug-ins that shows the number of thanks next to the persons nick.

Of course, the bot would want to be armed with the ability to not be gamed (such as limiting the number of thanks from the same person, to avoid spamming the bot), but these would all be details.

Could this work, and if not, is there a better idea out there to solve the problem of providing better visibility on our contributors who provide great support?

Posted on August 23, 2010 - by jono

Getting More Developers Interested In Participating In Ubuntu

I am just beginning to get into the planning stages for the next cycle for my team, and as part of this cycle we would like to really focus on attracting more developers to participate in Ubuntu. We would like to see more people interested in getting involved in packaging, fixing bugs, and joining our community. Daniel Holbach on my team will be leading much of this work.

Right now the 11.04 planning slate is clean, and we are looking for what you all feel are the areas in which Daniel’s time and effort would be best spent in the interests of having more people participate.

Where do you think we should focus our efforts?

Posted on August 23, 2010 - by jono

11.04 Ubuntu Developer Summit Announced

Hot on the heels of the announcement of the Natty Narwhal, I am tickled pink to announce the details of the next Ubuntu Developer Summit taking place in Orlando, USA from 25th – 29th October 2010. We also have a brand new Ubuntu Developer Summit website which provides all the details about how to get there and why UDS is interesting if you are in our community, if you are an upstream, and if you are a vendor.

The Ubuntu Developer Summit one of the most important events in the Ubuntu calendar and at it we discuss, debate and design the next version of Ubuntu. We bring together the entire Canonical development team and sponsor a large number of community members across the wide range of areas in which people contribute to Ubuntu. This includes packaging, translations, documentation, testing, LoCo teams and more. UDS is an incredible experience, filled with smart and enthusiastic people, fast paced and exhausting, but incredibly gratifying to be part of the process that builds the next Ubuntu.

For every UDS, Canonical sponsors a number of community members to attend the event. We are looking for those who want to bring some real insight and expertise in their area of Ubuntu, be it development or community governance. If you feel you could offer this but can’t afford to cover your expenses of attending, you should apply for sponsorship. The deadline for sponsorship is 8th September 2010.

Posted on August 20, 2010 - by jono

On Visibility And Change

OK, before I begin, this is going to be a terribly presented ramble. I have written it, proof read it, and proof read it again, and it still sounds like a child with a crayon wrote it. This is because my thoughts are unstructured, but I am keen to share them anyway. Patience is appreciated, friends…

Recently I have been thinking about how my work as Ubuntu Community Manager balances out between the work I perform with volunteers in the community, and employees of Canonical who contribute to the community as well as other business units. The reason for these thoughts is that recently I have been feeling that I could do a better job of spending more time with our volunteers and supporting them with their goals. We have a tremendous, inspiring, hard-working and excitable community…and I have just been feeling like I could improve in how much “face time” I have with our active contributors.

So, I have been evaluating methods in which I can do this. As I thought more about it, I came to the realization that part of the limitations on my time these days is because my responsibilities today compared to my responsibilities when I started this role are two quite different places.

Just under four years ago when I joined Canonical as the Ubuntu Community Manager, life was a lot easier. Back then it was just me, I had no team, the company was a lot smaller, and not only were there no direct reports for me to manage, but there were far fewer other departments, units, teams, and other entities that needed input from me. When I started I had three primary high-level responsibilities:

1. Provide leadership and guidance in a core set of community projects.
2. Help to resolve and unblock issues and problems across the community.
3. Provide inspiration and encouragement for the community to feel passionate about the problems we are trying to solve and the opportunities that we are seeking together.

The majority of time working on these goals was working with our volunteers. I certainly did have tasks and objectives within the company, but by and large the majority of my focus was with our volunteers. One might suggest I was “foot loose and fancy free”, if you can say that about someone who plays in a thrash metal band…

Today things are quite different. I now have four employees who report to me, I am now a platform manager (this means I am one of the managers on the Ubuntu team), and the company has grown significantly in size, which means far more departments, units, teams, projects, and other entities who have subsequently requested input and assistance from me. Of course, I myself have experienced this change and growth first-hand, and so have my colleagues, but I have also realized I have not done a very good job talking about this change with our community.

Today my role has evolved to include an additional three high-level sets of requirements:

1. Provide leadership and guidance in a core set of community projects.
2. Help to resolve and unblock issues and problems across the community.
3. Provide inspiration and encouragement for the community to feel passionate about the problems we are trying to solve and the opportunities that we are seeking together.
4. Manage a team to help them be successful in their own work and bring value to the community.
5. Provide guidance to other teams and units inside Canonical.
6. Provide a public face and representation for Ubuntu (and increasingly, Canonical).

The challenge that I have faced is that these latter three additions require a significant amount of work. As one such example, my team is very distributed — I am based in California, Jorge is in Detroit, Daniel is in Berlin, David is in València, and Ahmed is in Cairo. With us being so distributed, I consider 1-on-1 time with the guys as very important in helping them to be successful in their roles and feel a strong sense of team spirit and morale. As such, it is important to me that I have an hour each week with them on a voice call for 1-on-1 time. When we take those four hour-long calls and also add our team call, that already sucks up half a work day just for the team. When we then factor in all the other interaction between the team and the guidance the team rightly expects from me, “managing the team” takes up a significant amount of time. Of course, it is valuable time, and time well spent and important for our team, but it is also time in which I am primarily working with my colleagues as opposed to volunteers.

Another element has been the sheer growth of Canonical. We are much bigger than we were, and I see a core responsibility of my role and my team’s role is in helping those who join us, particularly those who don’t come from an Open Source background, to get a strong sense of our community values and commitments. This not only involves helping to on-board new team members, but with six times as many employees than when I started, it also significantly raises the number of instances in which such team members are looking for help and guidance to ensure that such community relations, which are so important to the company, are well executed. Again, this is important and valuable time well spent, but again time in which I am primarily working with the company and not volunteers.

Finally, Ubuntu has become a global phenomenon. It has become increasingly a house-hold name, a common sight in coffee shops and trains, and with this success has developed (a) a lot of press interest and requests for comment, and (b) an increasing level of critique and expectations from a wider demographic of users. As one of the more public personas associated with Ubuntu and Canonical, I am therefore often expected to provide input and commentary to the press and elsewhere, particularly with anything community-related (which is a pretty wide spectrum of content both actually within and often outside my domain). Again, important and valuable work, but time handling company responsibilities as opposed to working with volunteers.

Of course, while the scope of responsibility has increased with these additional three areas, my time available has not really increased (it increased a little as I work longer days now and I travel a lot less ever since I got married), and as such the additional areas of responsibility have naturally cut into the time that was originally devoted to the first three areas I outlined which were primarily volunteer-targeted. This is why some of you who have been following my work for a long time may have picked up that I am spending a little less time collaborating with our volunteers than I used to – I am basically knee deep in these other responsibilities.

Now, this is to be expected. I now have a team, and priority is my team and their success. Part and parcel of having a team grow up around you is that you end up spending more and more time being a manager and helping your team to enjoy a structured, safe, and enjoyable work environment. In traditional management, this is common and the manager becomes a little less visible to the team as she is focused on managing the team and the expectations of the team from key stakeholders in the company (and in our case, the community).

The problem is, I don’t want to be less visible.

I believe that having a close and hands-on relationship with the Ubuntu contributor community is important, and irrespective of whether it is “important” or not, I just enjoy spending time with our community; they are my friends, my peers, my colleagues, and in many cases people who inspire me.

So, after all this rambling I wanted this blog post to achieve two primary goals. Firstly, for those of you who have not seen me as much as you did a few years back, I hope this explains a little about why that is. Secondly, if you have any ideas and suggestions about techniques and approaches that I can use to continue to fulfill my expectations to my team and peers, but squeeze in more “face-time” time with our volunteers, I would love to hear. Oh, and before some smart arse suggests it…spending more hours in front of a computer is not really an option; I don’t want solve one problem (trying to find smarter ways of working to spend more time with our volunteers) and replace it with another (my wife get the hump that I am working too much).

Thanks for reading.

Posted on August 10, 2010 - by jono

Ubuntu Global Jam: We Need Your Events!

Cornellà , Spain

Chicago, USA

Are you good folks aware of what is happening on 27th – 29th August 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 same room to work on bugs, translations, documentation, testing and more. And they did, all over the world, as can be seen here.

One thing that I am keen that everyone remembers: you don’t have to be an official developer, packager or programmer to take part in the Ubuntu Global Jam. Also, lets not forget that Ubuntu Global Jam events are a fantastic place to learn and improve your skills: you can sit next to someone who can show you how to do something or explain something in more detail.

If this is all sounding right up your street and you fancy organizing an event, go and read this page and then add your event to the LoCo Directory by following these instructions.

Rock and roll: let’s make this one to remember. Start your engines, folks…

Posted on August 7, 2010 - by jono

Making Ubuntu More Accessible

Today I had a great call Penelope Stowe who has been leading some excellent efforts with the Ubuntu Accessibility Team in conjunction with the (quite literally) always rocking Luke ‘The Muso’ Yelavich.

The reason for the call was simple: I felt like I didn’t have enough knowledge or visibility of the Ubuntu Accessibility Team and accessibility in general, and when Ubuntu was started, the project made a firm commitment to the core aspects of freedom such as freedom of access to the technology, the freedom to have Ubuntu in your language, and the freedom to experience Ubuntu in an accessible way. Penelope, Luke and others are passionate about bringing the focus back to accessibility more, and I wanted to echo this important ambition here.

Penelope, with some input from Alan Bell, articulated the goals of the project perfectly:

At the heart of Ubuntu’s philosophy is the belief that computing is for everyone, whatever your circumstances. Ubuntu was certainly hailed as one of the most accessible operating systems when it was launched however different approaches to accessibility APIs in the upstream projects have lead to some areas needing renewed attention to maintain a high standard of accessibility. The Ubuntu Accessibility team has existed from the start, providing support to those requiring assistive technology to operate the Ubuntu desktop. This year an effort started to bring the team together to take up a more active role than providing support. This led to a more defined leadership being selected at UDS-M. Penelope Stowe now heads the documentation and community engagement activities of the team and Luke Yelavich leads the development activities.

Penelope goes on to share what kind of work the team is focusing on:

Alongside the regular support activities we are working on updating documentation including the team wiki pages and information on how to use Ubuntu with assistive technology and we are running a project to create design personas that can be given to developers and user interface designers to bring to life the accessibility requirements of our users. This project is starting with a survey of a wide range of people who use assistive technology with computers (not just Ubuntu users) and we will use the results of the survey to create realistic but fictional characters who need Ubuntu to be better so they can use it.

the Ubuntu Accessibility Team are doing valuable and important work and I know they (a) want better awareness of the team (hence this blog entry as one such effort), and (b) they are keen to get more volunteers involved. Here is where you can find them:

• Mailing List – ubuntu-accessibility AT lists.ubuntu.com (subscribe) and ubuntu-accessibility-devel AT lists.ubuntu.com (subscribe)
• IRC – #ubuntu-accessibility on freenode
• Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility
• Forum http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=145

Keep up the awesome work Penelope, Luke, and co, and folks, if this interests you, do get involved!

Posted on August 6, 2010 - by jono

Request For Candidates: Application Review Board

In Belgium at the last Ubuntu Developer Summit, we had a fantastic set of discussions about how we could create a process that empowers application developers to bring their applications into the Ubuntu Software Center much easier. Today our developer and packaging processes are more designed for a contributor who wishes to contribute to the Ubuntu Platform as opposed to an application developer who wants to get exposure for her specific application in Ubuntu. As such, if you are an application developer and want to get your app in the software center, the process is probably too complex and involved.

We identified this disconnect at UDS and Rick Spencer and I proposed a process in which application developers can propose an application for approval by a community-driven review board, and when approval is granted their application will appear in the Ubuntu Software Center. This review board will assess the application for technical merit, packaging quality, perform a code review and ensure it is safe.

Since UDS I have been working on a proposed process (which you can read here) and first engaged in a series of discussions with some community members and then proposed the process to the Ubuntu Technical Board (Matt Zimmerman, Colin Watson, Kees Cook, Mark Shuttleworth, and Martin Pitt); our governance body that discusses and evaluates technical policy in the Ubuntu project. I am pleased to report that after a series of modifications and clarifications, the Ubuntu Technical Board have approved the process.

It is important to stress, and I know the Technical Board would like to ensure this is clearly communicated too, that this process is very much a first cut. While a mature and well-discussed process, we fully expect it to refine and change, and at the next Ubuntu Developer Summit we plan on reviewing the process and improving how it works.

Finding Our Application Review Board

With the process approved, the goal now is to find members to join the new Application Review Board. We are going to be looking for 5 – 7 members who exhibit the following skills:

• Strong technical experience.
• Strong experience of the Ubuntu platform and the desktop.
• Knowledge of packaging to effectively assess other people’s packaging work for quality.
• Enough free time to commit to reviewing the applications and providing timely feedback.

As a bonus:

• You would be a core-dev or MOTU.
• A knowledge of programming, so as to perform a code review.

Anyone and everyone who satisfies the above criteria is welcome to apply. There are no specific requirements for location; you can be based anywhere in the world.

If you are interested in applying, head to this page and follow the instructions. The Ubuntu Technical Board will ultimately assess the applications and decide who the final board will be. For full details of the expectations of a position on the board, read the codified charter.

The deadline for applications is 31st August 2010.

Posted on August 5, 2010 - by jono

Free Books For Approved LoCo Teams

Once again we have some wonderful free books to give away from Prentice Hall, the rather spanky-awesome publishers of The Official Ubuntu Book by Mako, Matthew Helmke and Corey Burger, and the brand new Official Ubuntu Server Book by our friend and yours, Kyle Rankin and Mako. These books were commissioned by Debra Williams-Cauley who has been awesome getting them on the shelves, and her sidekick is one Heather Fox who I have been chatting with recently to see if we can score some free copies for our rather fantastic Ubuntu LoCo Teams. Fortunately, Heather has been able to make the magic happen.

Prentice Hall are happy to send each and every approved LoCo team one free copy of The Official Ubuntu Book and one free copy of The Official Ubuntu Server book. To be entirely clear: this is one copy of each book per team. This will be a great addition to each team’s library of Ubuntu books!

To keep this as simple as possible, you can request your books by following these steps:

1. The team contact shown on our LoCo Team List (and only the team contact) should send an email to usergroups AT informit DOT com and include the following details:
   • Your full name.
   • Which team you are from.
   • Your full address (including zip/postal code, region and country).
   • Your phone number, including country and area code.
2. Heather will process your application and let you know if it is approved.
3. If approved, she will get your books in the post.

A few notes:

• Only approved teams are eligible for the free copies of the books.
• Only the team contact for each team (shown on this page) can make the request for the book.
• There is a limit of one copy of each book per approved team.
• Prentice Hall will cover postage, but not any import tax or other shipping fees.
• When you have the books, it is up to you what you do with them. We recommend you share them between members of the team. LoCo Leaders: please don’t hog them for yourselves!
• The deadline for getting your requests in Sun August 15, 2010.

If you have any questions or queries, don’t contact me or Canonical, contact Heather Fox at heather DOT fox AT pearson DOT com.

Also, for those teams who are not approved or yet to approved, you can still score a rather nice 35% discount on the books by registering your LoCo with the Prentice Hall User Groups Program.

All in all a pretty sweet deal, methinks. Enjoy!