International Women's Day — Competition!

By boredandblogging | Published: 2010-01-16

Firstly, some introductory reading for those who are not familiar with International Women’s Day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Day and http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

Ubuntu-Women has tried in the past to find some way to celebrate this event, but as far as I can remember it has never really amounted to much other than some chattering on IRC. So let us try a bit harder for 2010!

We have all come to Ubuntu in our own special ways — every single one of us differently to the next. Yet one of the most common questions we get asked is "How can I get $woman to use Ubuntu?".

Obviously we cannot really answer that question, but we would dearly love to have a collection of stories by women about how they discovered Ubuntu. Such a repository would allow us to demonstrate that there’s no one definitive answer, and at the same time maybe provide the gift of inspiration to women who are interested — showing them that it’s really not so unusual to be Ubuntu fans after all.

We are not expecting any particular length, but do remember that these stories should be suited to perusal at leisure and not require someone to allocate hours of their day to read. Anywhere between a few paragraphs and a OO.o Write page is ideal.

There will be two (2) prizes up for grabs. One (1) prize pack will be given to the story that the community votes is their favourite. One (1) prize pack will be given to a randomly drawn entrant. Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager will be drawing this entrant in a videocast, and announcing both winners to the world on March 8th.

Please email your stories to ubuntuwomen.competition at gmail.com by UTC 23:59 22nd February 2010.

By submitting a story, you acknowledge that it will be posted on the Ubuntu Women website under the Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivatives licence. If you prefer that your story be posted under a less restrictive licence such as Creative Commons Attribution or Public Domain, then feel free to let us know when you submit. All stories are to be non-fiction and of a family-friendly nature. The organisers also reserve the right to interview prospective winners over
the phone or other voice chat at their discretion.

We will celebrate International Women’s Day by announcing the winners, who will receive gift packs (which are still in negotiation — we will announce when it is confirmed!).

Good Luck!

p.s: Please pass this along to *any* women you know who *use* Ubuntu —
the more the merrier!

[Discuss the International Women’s Day Competition on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-women mailing list by Melissa Draper on Sun Jan 10 04:32:16 GMT 2010

Announcing Ubuntu User Day – January 23, 2010

By boredandblogging | Published: 2010-01-14

The Ubuntu User Days Team would like to announce the first Ubuntu User Day, on January 23, 2010. This will be a very informative one day session geared towards beginner and intermediate Ubuntu users, as well as people who are interested in using Ubuntu. We have 14 classes covering topics ranging from installing Ubuntu, finding help, equivalent programs, using IRC, getting involved in the Ubuntu Community and more. We have enlisted the help of many talented people to lead these classes throughout the day.

These classes will be taught in #ubuntu-classroom with questions being asked in #ubuntu-classroom-chat on irc.freenode.net. Please visit http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDays for a complete class list and schedule of classes.

There is also a Spanish version of Ubuntu User Days being offered on January, 23, 2010. Please visit Día Del Usuario Ubuntu at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DiaDelUsuarioUbuntu for more information on the Spanish Ubuntu User Day!

Please take a few minutes over the next week or so to promote the Ubuntu User Day to people you know, in your LoCo Team, in your blog, or any other resources you may have access to.

[Discuss Ubuntu User Day on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-learning mailing list by Chris Johnston on Thu Jan 14 04:13:09 GMT 2010

Announcing Ubuntu Developer Week

By boredandblogging | Published: 2010-01-13

Welcome to the Ubuntu Developer Week! We will have one week of action-packed sessions from Jan 25th 2010 to Jan 29th 2010!

Ubuntu Developer Week is a series of online workshops where you can:

  • learn about different packaging techniques
  • find out more about different development teams
  • check out the efforts of the world-wide Development Community
  • participate in open Q&A sessions with Ubuntu developers
  • much more…

All sessions will happen on IRC, and the best way to join is to use Lernid. (There are other ways too. :-))

If you’re not comfortable yet asking all your questions in English, we will have a couple of people helping to translate your questions and translating back the answers. Have a look at the Ubuntu Developer Week page to see how it works.

Like the sound of it? DIGG IT!

So let’s have a look at the schedule together, shall we? We have a number of sessions next week for all tastes and interests. Feel free to come to as few or as many sessions as you like. All of them are free and open to anyone.

Monday, 25th January 2010

  • 16:00 UTC, Getting Started with UbuntuDevelopment — Daniel Holbach (dholbach): The first session of the week is going to get you started with Ubuntu development. It’ll give you an overview over how all things work, so at least you’ll have heard the most important vocabularly already and get your initial development environment set up.
  • 17:00 UTC, Fixing small bugs in Ubuntu —Daniel Holbach (dholbach): So once we have our initial development environment set up, we’ll go ahead and fix a couple of small bugs… it’s going to be awesome and you’ll find out that it’s not really hard.
  • 18:00 UTC, Django — Dave Walker (Daviey): Dave Walker, of Ubuntu UK fame will talk you through the first steps of using the Django framework to create a lean, understandable and scalable web application in python.
  • 19.00 UTC, Working on the Bleeding Edge — Kees Cook (kees): Next up is Kees Cook, who will tell us how to best do both: 1) stay sane and 2) live on the bleeding edge. If you enjoy tracking development releases closely you should make sure not to miss this session. It’ll spare you a lot of pain.
  • 20.00 UTC, Server oriented packages — Mathias Gug (mathiaz): Are you a server person? Would you like to get involved with the server team? Do you want to know what’s server-specific about packaging? Find out during the session: we have Mathias Gug here who’ll help you get started.

Tuesday, 26th January 2010

  • 16:00 UTC, Java libraries packaging — Thierry Carrez (ttx): We have Thierry Carrez here who had the pleasure of working with Java Packaging extensively. Did you ever want to package a Java library or a Java application and struggled with your first steps? Don’t despair, we have an expert with us. Attend the session and learn Thierry’s tips and tricks.
  • 17:00 UTC, Launchpad Translations under the hood — Adi Roiban (adiroiban) and Henning Eggers (henninge): Launchpad Translations is amazing. Millions of strings, thousand of translators, hundreds of languages and thousand of applications get together and make for an accessible and understandable great linux distribution. If you ever wondered how it works under the hood and how things get together, this is the perfect opportunity. Listen to what Henning and Adi have to say!
  • 18:00 UTC, Internationalizing your application with quickly and Launchpad — David Planella (dpm) and Didier Roche (didrocks): quickly is a fantastic little application. It makes writing apps so much easier and comprehensible. There’s already a lot of apps written with quickly and already a bunch of instructions on how to use it. This session will specifically deal with how to get applications translatable and translated. Thanks a lot Didier and David.
  • 19:00 UTC, Getting started with EC2 — Scott Moser (smoser): Next up is Scott Moser who will talk to us about how to use Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. Ubuntu is a great platform to use in the cloud and this session will give you an overview and cover the best tools to make your cloud experience most enjoyable.
  • 20:00 UTC, Automated server testing — Søren Hansen (soren): Mr. Søren Hansen wrapped his head around Automated Server Testing in the last few months and he has a lot of ideas to share. If you’re intererested in automating tests in general and testing servers specifically, this is exactly where you should be going.

Wednesday 27th January 2010

  • 16:00 UTC, Writing good test-cases — John Arbash Meinel (jam): We all agree that encountering bugs in most cases is just not necessary. Sometimes it’s just a small typo that caused the problem or a wrong assumption. Enter test-cases. A lot of big open source projects have moved to test-driven development already or ask developers to add a test-case for bugs they fixed. The notion of making sure that bugs don’t happen again or that assumptions don’t suddenly change during some phase of re-design has prevented a lot of bugs. We have John Arbash Meinel here who will tell us how to cause less bugs by writing good test-cases.
  • 17:00 UTC, Adding Ubuntu One support to your applications — Stuart Langridge (aquarius): You want your application to save data in a clever way? You want to get it synced across various computers? You want it in a place where it’s properly backed up? You have heard of Ubuntu One? Great, because Stuart Langridge will explain how to get this all done very very easily.
  • 18:00 UTC, Getting your application in the panel — Ted Gould (ted): The status area in the panel has gone through some pretty fantastic changes in the karmic and lucid cycle. Ted Gould has been massively involved in the planning, design and coding. If you want to do some good work on the Desktop and make your favourite application benefit from the new indicators make sure you attend this session.
  • 19:00 UTC, Developing and Testing in KVM —Dustin Kirkland (kirkland): Dustin Kirkland has been working a lot with KVM, a fantastic virtualisation technology, in the last few months. Once you learned all of Dustin’s tricks you will never going to miss them for developing and testing every again.
  • 20:00 UTC, Python Applications Packaging — Luca Falavigna (DktrKranz): Your favourite application is writting in Python? That’s quite understandable. It’s not packaged yet? Looks like a small challenge ahead. Luckily we have Luca Falavigna who can help you with the task. He’ll talk about common pitfalls, how to avoid them and how to make the task as easy as possible.

Thursday 28th January 2010

  • 16:00 UTC, Adopt-an-Upstream — Jorge Castro (jcastro) and Daniel Holbach (dholbach): Jorge Castro and Daniel Holbach will talk about the relationship between the Ubuntu project and Upstream projects in general and how you can help out. It’s not as hard as it sounds and if you are really fond of and passionate about a certain Upstream project, this is the perfect session for you!
  • 17:00 UTC, Kernel patches — Leann Ogasawara (ogasawara): Kernel work is complicated? It can be… but there’s help! Leann Ogasawara is going to explain the workflow of the Kernel team and how we deal with patches there. You can get help from the team and Leann’s session will help you understand how to avoid the most common mistakes. Awesome.
  • 18:00 UTC, Getting more detailed bug reports — Brian Murray (bdmurray): Brian Murray has looked thounsands of bug reports in his life. He knows how important it is to have all the important information right there without going through a feedback loop for weeks. Luckily there’s tools that can automate the process of getting us the right information right at the start. Brian will teach you how.
  • 19:00 UTC, Bazaar and packaging — Jelmer Vernooij (jelmer): Jelmer Vernooij knows a lot about Bazaar and a lot about Packaging and he’s a great guy which will make this session great to fun to be in. Using a revision control system makes packaging and maintaining packages a lot more fun, especially if you start merging your work with others.
  • 20:00 UTC, How to get started hacking Launchpad — Karl Fogel (kfogel): Launchpad is open source and it’s written in Python, which make it a perfect opportunity to get involved with and your personal pet peeve fixed easily. Karl Fogel will talk you through the first steps of hacking Launchpad. Awesome!

Friday, 29th January 2010

  • 16:00 UTC, Writing Beautiful Code — Paul Hummer (rockstar): Paul Hummer is with us and he’ll show you how to write python code like a rock star. There’s a lot of worth in writing understandable, easily scanable code and there’s just a few conventions you have to follow to make yourself happier and your fellow contributors as well.
  • 17:00 UTC, Doing merges right — Colin Watson (cjwatson): Merging is one of the inevitable things in open source development. We collaborate, we work together in the open and sometimes we decide to focus our attention on different things, so merges might be a bit more tricky afterwards. Colin Watson has been doing hundreds (if not thousands) of merges in his life, so he’s the perfect person to share a few tips to make the experience more seamless.
  • 18:00 UTC, Meet launchpadlib — Jonathan Lange (jml): Ever found yourself in a position where you neede some data from Launchpad? Ever needed to automate a task that involved something in Launchpad somehow? There’s one answer to all these problems: Use python-launchpadlib. We’ll have Jonathan Lange there who will tell you how to use it efficiently and where best to start.
  • 19:00 UTC, KDE/Kubuntu Junior Jobs/Papercuts — Celest Lyn Paul (seele): You’re a friend of the big K? You have a small usability bug you always wanted to fix? Always wanted to get involved with hacking on KDE somehow? Awesome. Celeste Lyn Paul knows how to do it and she’ll deliver a great session where we’ll talk about exactly that! Awesome!
  • 20:00 UTC, Interpreting Stacktraces — Emmet Hikory (persia): Ever found yourself faced with a crashing application and you were told to decipher some kind of stacktrace? It’s definitely one of the proficiencies that are incredibly helpful and will help you fix a lot of problems. Emmet Hikory will deliver a great session about getting the most information our of stacktraces with the least amount of hassle.

This weeks is going to be fantastic and if you ever thought of joining the ranks of Ubuntu developers, this is the best time ever.

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #175

By boredandblogging | Published: 2010-01-10

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #175 for the week January 3rd – January 9th, 2010 is available.

In this issue we cover:

* Edubuntu bug day on Tuesday, January 12th
* 2nd call for votes: Ubuntu Developer Membership Board Election
* Simplified Main Inclusion Request process
* New MOTU members
* Ubuntu Manual Project
* 2010: Your Year for Ubuntu Membership
* Ubuntu Stats
* Ubuntu Florida Team and the “Youth Build Day”
* Lanuchpad – Jonathan Lange: The Road Ahead
* The Planet
* In the Press & Blogosphere
* Community and Ubuntu Live Videocast
* Ubuntu Women project growing in Strength
* Upcoming Meetings & Events
* Updates & Security
* And much, much more!

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

* John Crawford
* Craig A. Eddy
* Dave Bush
* Amber Graner
* Liraz Siri
* And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly News, 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 LicenseAttribution 3.0 License

LoCo stories: the Ubuntu Florida team and the Youth Build Day

By boredandblogging | Published: 2010-01-07

This week’s story takes us to the United States, in
Florida, where a group of remarkable individuals have taken up the lofty goal of making the world a better place by way of Open Source. Let’s learn some more about our heroes.

Meet the Florida LoCo: a group of over 250 enthusiasts with a broad scope of interests, ranging from DJ’ing to System Administration, united by the Ubuntu spirit and a common master plan.

QuinnCo, a non-profit organisation located in Central Florida run by Michael and Michelle Hall, also members of the Florida LoCo. They take donated second-hand computers, fix them if necessary, put Ubuntu or Qimo (their own distro for children) on them and give them out to kids and families in need.

Last but not least, the other rockstars in this story: the members of local LUGs, in particular the Lakeland Linux Enthusiasts, and the children from the Florida Baptist Children’s Home themselves.

It was last summer in Florida, when Michael and Michelle started planning to run a Youth Build Day in a local children’s home. The idea was to have a computer build day, where they’d bring in disadvantaged youth and mentor them through building machines. QuinnCo, being known from their impressive work and regular collaboration with the Florida LoCo, made other members not to think twice and to quickly get on board.

After careful preparation, thoughtful organization, meetings, and several calls for participation the big day finally came: the Youth Build Day on the 15th of August. LoCo members were driving from one end of the state to the other to turn out and help, while several people from local meetup.com groups also came over. On top of that, there were about 30 of the kids from the children’s home helping, learning about computers and installing Ubuntu and Qimo on the machines they had fixed up.

Not only were they building computers for the kids, they were teaching them about computers, both hardware and software, and also about Linux and Open Source.

All in all, it was an incredible success: by the end of the day there had been about 75 participants, who managed to process 47 computers. Of those, about 40 were working and the rest had to be used for parts. Seven of them were placed at the children’s home itself and the rest were given out to local children and child-care facilities in the community.

Some of the most memorable experiences recollected from the participants were the great time they had meeting new Ubuntu people and the kids, how encouraging was to see how everyone was working together as a team and how the adults took the kids under wing, mentoring them through all of the stages of computer repair and installation.

This demonstrates the essence of the LoCo teams at the very heart of the Ubuntu community: individuals sharing the familiar “humanity to others” ideals and working together as a team to accomplish their goals. One can only be proud of being part of such a community.

Links

Do you have an interesting LoCo story to tell? If you have organized an event, performed some work/advocacy in your local community, have built some resources, performed meetings or installfests, please email David (david.planella AT ubuntu DOT com). Do remember to send a picture to accompany the story!