Welcome to Ubuntu Cloud Days! Welcome to the very first dedicated Ubuntu Cloud Days event from March 23^rd 2011 to March 24^th 2011!

With faster on-demand resources, and a flexible usage and payment model, Cloud computing is changing the face of IT! Ubuntu Server is arguably the most popular Cloud based Operating System with millions of instances launched a year. Are you interested to know more about using Ubuntu Server on the Cloud ? Find out from March 23^rd 2011 to March 24^th 2011!

Ubuntu Cloud Days is a series of online sessions where you can learn more about:

• Answering your questions about Ubuntu and the Cloud
• Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Images, using Ubuntu with Amazon EC2 cloud
• Building your private cloud over Ubuntu Server platform
• New virtualization and container technologies in Ubuntu Server
• Crunching Big-Data on the cloud with hadoop
• Scaling your web-apps on the cloud with Ubuntu
• much more…

The sessions will happen in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net.

Additional links:

• Ubuntu Cloud Facebook page

• Ubuntu Cloud Twitter page

• Ubuntu Cloud Identi.ca page

 

The timetable

 

If you’re unsure about UTC times: just run date -u in a terminal to find out what the current UTC time is.

 

 

 

Joining The Sessions

 

 

 

 

You use an IRC client already

 

Use your IRC client (such as xchat, irssi or mIRC) to connect to the freenode IRC network at irc.freenode.net. You can do this manually by typing:

/server irc.freenode.net

 

Then join #ubuntu-classroom for the time and date of the session you want to attend. You can manually join the channel by typing:

/join #ubuntu-classroom

 

You should also join #ubuntu-classroom-chat which is the general discussion channel for the session. Questions should be posted there. You should prefix your questions with QUESTION: to make them easier to spot.

Most sessions last for around an hour. Contact kim0 on IRC if you have any problems.

For instructions on how to use the various IRC clients, see XChatHowto and Irssi, respectively. General information about IRC is located at InternetRelayChat. For Windows users just getting started finding out about Ubuntu, you can use XChat for Windows from http://silverex.info/download/ or Pidgin from http://www.pidgin.im/download/ For Ubuntu users pidgin is installed from the repositories.

 

Simple Web IRC

For users who cannot or will not use IRC software (corporate policy, blocked IRC ports, etc.) you can click here to join in the discussion, just give yourself a nickname and press connect, you can switch between the classroom and the chat room using the buttons at the top of the page.

Originally posted on the Ubuntu Cloud Days Wiki page.

A great method of building our community up is to get people together face-to-face to work together, develop social bonds, and have fun. We see this at every Ubuntu Developer Summit; when we get contributors together, it helps seal a sense of camaraderie as we work and play together. All of this helps unite us all as we work to bring Free Software to the masses with Ubuntu.

With much of this in mind, in each cycle we organize the Ubuntu Global Jam in which our global LoCo Team Community organizes local events in which Ubuntu fans gets together to work and play together. Many of these events are loose and informal; just a collection of Ubuntu enthusiasts getting together to get to know each other, contribute in different ways (e.g. testing, creating advocacy materials, development, producing art etc), and have fun. I have organized a few events for the Ubuntu Global Jam in the past and it is great fun, and my goal here is to encourage you to do the same.

Picture by alexm

The next Ubuntu Global Jam takes place from 1st – 3rd April 2011 and here are some of the events that are taking place:

Africa

Egypt

• Ubuntu Global Jam – Cairo, Cairo – ubuntu-eg – Fri, 01 April

Asia

Afghanistan

• Afghan Ubuntu Jam, Herat – Afghanistan Ubuntu LoCo Team – Sun, 03 April

Europe

Denmark

• Global Jam i Købenahvn, København V – Ubuntu DK – Sat, 02 April

France

• Ubuntu Paris Jam, Paris – Ubuntu-fr – Sun, 03 April

Hungary

• Ubuntu Global Jam Budapest, Budapest – Ubuntu Hungary – Sat, 02 April

Slovenia

• Translation marathon, Ljubljana – Ubuntu Slovenian Team – Sat, 02 April

Spain

• Ubuntu Asturian Global Jam, Gijón / Xixón – Ubuntu Asturian Team – Fri, 01 April
• Ubuntu Global Jam, Les Borges Blanques – Catalan LoCo Team – Sat, 02 April

Switzerland

• Ubuntu Global Jam – Zurich, Zürich – Ubuntu Swiss Team – Fri, 01 April

United Kingdom

• Ubuntu UK Global Jam – Weybridge, Weybridge – Ubuntu UK – Sat, 02 April
• UCubed, Manchester – Ubuntu UK – Sat, 02 April

North America

Canada

• Global Jam in Kitchener, ON, Kitchener, Ontario – Ubuntu Canada – Sat, 02 April

United States

• Ubuntu California Global Jam – Walnut Creek, Walnut Creek – Ubuntu California – Fri, 01 April
• MA Narwhal Global Jam, Lexington – Ubuntu United States, Massachusetts – Sun, 03 April
• Ubuntu New York – Rochester – Global Jam, Rochester – Ubuntu New York State – Sat, 02 April
• Summit Jam, Lakeland – Florida LoCo Team – Fri, 01 April
• Ubuntu-Chicago – Ubuntu Global Jam, Chicago – Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team – Sat, 02 April
• Ubuntu Global Jam – Michigan, Ann Arbor – Ubuntu-Michigan – Sun, 03 April
• Ubuntu Florida Global Jam (Melbourne), Melbourne – Florida LoCo Team – Sat, 02 April
• Ubuntu New York – Syracuse – Global Jam, Syracuse – Ubuntu New York State – Sat, 02 April
• Berkeley Ubuntu Global Jam, Berkeley – Ubuntu California – Sun, 03 April
• Ubuntu Texas Global Jam, Austin – Ubuntu Texas LoCo Team – Sat, 02 April
• NYC Meetup for Ubuntu Global Jam 11.04, New York – Ubuntu New York State – Sat, 02 April

South America

Venezuela

• Día del Usuario Ubuntu, Tucupita – Ubuntu Venezuela Team – Sat, 29 Jan.
• Dia del Usuario Ubuntu Caripito – Ubuntu Venezuela Team – Tue, 15 March

Although we have organized Ubuntu Global Jam events before, I believe that this one is even more important than ever. We are working hard to ship Unity in Ubuntu 11.04 and this is a great opportunity for us all to get together, test Natty, provide bug reports and feedback, write documentation, translate, and more! If we come together as a community we can deliver an incredible Ubuntu experience.

Organizing An Event

Everyone is welcome to organize an event! We would like to encourage all of you to put together an event in your area.

If you are not a member of a LoCo team, see the list of teams, pick your nearest team, click on it, and click the Join This Team link to join that team’s Launchpad group (you might need to wait to get approved to join). When you are a member of the team, you can add an event.

Picture by ubuntuvancouver

To add a team just follow these steps:

1. First, decide a place where you want to hold the event. This can be as simple as a coffee shop that you decide to meet at (you don’t even need to neccessarily let the coffee shop know – just pick a place that everyone shows up to. Other good venues include university/school teaching rooms, local businesses, hotels etc.
2. Now pick a date to hold the event on between the 1st-3rd April 2011. Most teams pick one day or evening.
3. Next check the venues list and see if your venue is already in the database. If not, click Add New Venue to add the venue.
4. Now click here to go and add your event.
5. Finally, spread the word! Let Ubuntu users and Linux fans in your local area know, promote your event in your LoCo, at LUGs, put up posters in coffee shops, promote it on Twitter/identi.ca/Facebook etc.

When promoting your event or promoting existing events, be sure to use the #ugj hash tag. I look forward to seeing the photos and reports from the various events around the world!

Originally posted here by Jono on March 15, 2011.

The naming of cats is a difficult matter

It isn’t just one of your holiday games.

– T S Eliot, The Naming of Cats

For the next cycle, I think we’ll leave the oceanic theme behind. The “oddball octopus”, for example, is a great name but not one we’ll adopt this time around. Perhaps in 13 years time, though!

The objective is to capture the essence of our next six months work in a simple name. Inevitably there’s an obliquity, or offbeat opportunism in the result. And perhaps this next release more than most requires something other than orthodoxy – the skunkworks are in high gear right now. Fortunately I’m assured that if one of Natty’s successors is a skunk, it would at least be a sassy skunk!

So we’re looking for a name that conveys mysterious possibility, with perhaps an ounce of overt oracular content too. Nothing too opaque, ornate, odious or orotund. Something with an orderly ring to it, in celebration of the crisp clean cadence by which we the community bring Ubuntu forth.

There’s something neat in the idea that 11.10 will mark eight years since Ubuntu was conceived (it took a little longer to be born). So “octennial” might suit… but that would be looking backwards, and we should have an eye on the future, not the past. Hmm… an eye on the future, perhaps ocular? Or oculate? We’re certainly making our way up the S-curve of adoption, so perhaps ogee would do the trick?

Alternatively, we could celebrate the visual language of Ubuntu with the “orange okapi”, or the welcoming nature of our community with the “osculant orangutan”. Nothing hugs quite like dholbach, though, and he’s no hairy ape.

What we want is something imaginative, something dreamy. Something sleek and neat, too. Something that has all the precision of T S Eliot’s poetry, matched with the “effable ineffability” of our shared values, friendship and expertise. Something that captures both the competence of ubuntu-devel with the imagination of ayatana.

Which leads us neatly to the Oneiric Ocelot.

Oneiric means “dreamy”, and the combination with Ocelot reminds me of the way innovation happens: part daydream, part discipline.

We’ll need to keep up the pace of innovation on all fronts post-Natty. Our desktop has come together beautifully, and in the next release we’ll complete the cycle of making it available to all users, with a 2D experience to complement the OpenGL based Unity for those with the hardware to handle it. The introduction of Qt means we’ll be giving developers even more options for how they can produce interfaces that are both functional and aesthetically delightful.

In the cloud, we’ll have to tighten up and make some firm decisions about the platforms we can support for 12.04 LTS. UDS in Budapest will be full of feisty debate on that front, I’m sure, but I’m equally sure we can reach a pragmatic consensus and start to focus our energies on delivering the platform for widespread cloud computing on free and flexible terms.

Ubuntu is now shipping on millions of systems from multiple providers every year. It makes a real difference in the lives of millions, perhaps tens of millions, of people. As MPT said, “what we do is not only art, it’s performance art”. Every six months the curtains part, and we have to be ready for the performance. I’d like to thank the thousands of people who are actively participating in the production of Natty: take the initiative, take responsibility, take action, and your work will make a difference to all of those users. There are very few places in the world where a personal intellectual contribution can have that kind of impact. And very few places where we have such a strong social fabric around those intellectual challenges, too. We each do what we do for our own reasons, but it’s the global impact of Ubuntu which gives meaning to that action.

Natty is a stretch release: we set out to redefine the look and feel of the free desktop. We’ll need all the feedback we can get, so please test today’s daily, or A3, and file bug reports! Keep up the discipline and focus on the Narwhal, and let’s direct our daydreaming to the Ocelot.

Originally posted by Mark Shuttleworth here on Monday, March 7, 2011.