Alternate Meeting Channel

Over the past several years the Ubuntu community has grown to encompass projects that range a variety of teams that work on everything from tablets to servers.

We’ve recently been seeing an increase in meeting time collisions among teams, so we’ve decided to go ahead and open an alternate meeting channel called #ubuntu-meeting-2 where teams can host their meetings if a meeting is already happening in #ubuntu-meeting during the time they want to host their own meeting. The Ubuntu Technical Board was the first to have their meeting on the schedule for this new channel!

If your team wants to have their meetings scheduled in our meetings ground, please let us know by dropping an email to ubuntu-news-team@lists.ubuntu.com or contacting us on IRC at #ubuntu-news on irc.freenode.net (click here to join from your browser).

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 370

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #370 for the week May 26 – June 1, 2014, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Elizabeth K. Joseph
  • Paul White
  • Emily Gonyer
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Community Donations Funding Report

Last year the main Ubuntu download page was changed to include a form for users to make a donation to one or more parts of Ubuntu, including to the community itself. Those donations made for “Community projects” were made available to members of our community who would use them to benefit the Ubuntu project.

Every dollar given out is an investment in Ubuntu and the community that built it. This includes sponsoring community events, sending community representatives to those events with booth supplies and giveaway items, purchasing hardware to make improve development and testing, and more.

But these expenses don’t cover the time, energy, and talent that went along with them, without which the money itself would have been wasted. Those contributions, made by the recipients of these funds, can’t be adequately documented in a financial report, so thank you to everybody who received funding for their significant and sustained contributions to Ubuntu.

As part of our commitment to openness and transparency we said that we would publish a report highlighting both the amount of donations made to this category, and how and where that money was being used. Linked below is the first of those reports.

View the Report

Originally posted here by Michael Hall on May 29, 2014

Calling for Ubuntu Online Summit sessions

A couple of months ago Jono announced the dates for the Ubuntu Online Summit, June 10th – 12th, and those dates are almost upon us now. The schedule is opened, the track leads are on board, all we need now are sessions. And that’s where you come in.

Ubuntu Online Summit is a change for us, we’re trying to mix the previous online UDS events with our Open Week, Developer Week and User Days events, to try and bring people from every part of our community together to celebrate, educate, and improve Ubuntu. So in addition to the usual planning sessions we had at UDS, we’re also looking for presentations from our various community teams on the work they do, walk-throughs for new users learning how to use Ubuntu, as well as instructional sessions to help new distro developers, app developers, and cloud devops get the most out of it as a platform.

What we need from you are sessions. It’s open to anybody, on any topic, anyway you want to do it. The only requirement is that you can start and run a Google+ OnAir Hangout, since those are what provide the live video streaming and recording for the event. There are two ways you can propose a session: the first is to register a Blueprint in Launchpad, this is good for planning session that will result in work items, the second is to propose a session directly in Summit, which is good for any kind of session. Instructions for how to do both are available on the UDS Website.

There will be Track Leads available to help you get your session on the schedule, and provide some technical support if you have trouble getting your session’s hangout setup. When you propose your session (or create your Blueprint), try to pick the most appropriate track for it, that will help it get approved and scheduled faster.

Ubuntu Development

Many of the development-oriented tracks from UDS have been rolled into the Ubuntu Development track. So anything that would previously have been in Client, Core/Foundations or Cloud and Server will be in this one track now. The track leads come from all parts of Ubuntu development, so whatever you session’s topic there will be a lead there who will be familiar with it.

Track Leads:

  • Łukasz Zemczak
  • Steve Langasek
  • Leann Ogasawara
  • Antonio Rosales
  • Marc Deslaurs

Application Development

Introduced a few cycles back, the Application Development track will continue to have a focus on improving the Ubuntu SDK, tools and documentation we provide for app developers. We also want to introduce sessions focused on teaching app development using the SDK, the various platform services available, as well as taking a deeper dive into specifics parts of the Ubuntu UI Toolkit.

Track Leads:

  • Michael Hall
  • David Planella
  • Alan Pope
  • Zsombor Egri
  • Nekhelesh Ramananthan

Cloud DevOps

This is the counterpart of the Application Development track for those with an interest in the cloud. This track will have a dual focus on planning improvements to the DevOps tools like Juju, as well as bringing DevOps up to speed with how to use them in their own cloud deployments. Learn how to write charms, create bundles, and manage everything in a variety of public and private clouds.

Track Leads:

  • Jorge Castro
  • Marco Ceppi
  • Patricia Gaughen
  • Jose Antonio Rey

Community

The community track has been a stable of UDS for as long as I can remember, and it’s still here in the Ubuntu Online Summit. However, just like the other tracks, we’re looking beyond just planning ways to improve the community structure and processes. This time we also want to have sessions showing users how they can get involved in the Ubuntu community, what teams are available, and what tools they can use in the process.

Track Leads:

  • Daniel Holbach
  • Jose Antonio Rey
  • Laura Czajkowski
  • Svetlana Belkin
  • Pablo Rubianes

Users

This is a new track and one I’m very excited about. We are all users of Ubuntu, and whether we’ve been using it for a month or a decade, there are still things we can all learn about it. The focus of the Users track is to highlight ways to get the most out of Ubuntu, on your laptop, your phone or your server. From detailed how-to sessions, to tips and tricks, and more, this track can provide something for everybody, regardless of skill level.

Track Leads:

  • Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph
  • Nicholas Skaggs
  • Valorie Zimmerman

So once again, it’s time to get those sessions in. Visit this page to learn how, then start thinking of what you want to talk about during those three days. Help the track leads out by finding more people to propose more sessions, and let’s get that schedule filled out. I look forward to seeing you all at our first ever Ubuntu Online Summit.

Originally posted here on Wed May 28 08:00:00 UTC 2014 by Michael Hall

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 369

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #369 for the week May 19 – 25, 2014, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Elizabeth K. Joseph
  • Paul White
  • Diego Turcios
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License