Right as rain and day 1 begins literally lashing out of the heavens with rain. Early start 4am and wide awake so the day kicks off with a blog post to Ubuntu IE and UK and post about remote participation as I do think it’s essential for people to realise that although they may not be present their comments and thoughts about processes are welcomed and encouraged.
Catching up with folks at breakfast time and before UDS sessions kicks off and there is an amazing buzz going around, many people waving hands and roaring as they’ve not seen one another reminds me how close a knit family we really are.
The sessions kick off with Jono Bacon discussing what UDS is about what we’ve looked at in the previous cycle and reminding people to eat healthy, drink lots of water and sleep, and it’s true or you will be exhausted and sick and not able to take part. Mark Shuttleworth gave an interesting keynote in so far as there were no massive shocks being announced more of a plan for the next 2 years which is good to see. He did mention that in the coming months that there is a future with Ubuntu on TVs, smart phones and tablets. Mark discussed the fact that we now have Lens with larger integration so for example the Music Lens, where ARM is going and the fact that in 2 years time we will see it in the data centers and servers. What I find interesting and I am really happy to learn is that LTS will now be a 5 year maintenance which comes down to the fact there is now a larger audience and we need to cater for this. Finally a highlight for me he mentioned was juju a language for talking about services.
I thought I’d talk about some of the sessions I attended today and how I feel they went and what kind of progress is being planned. Up first was one of the most organised and productive community round table discussion sessions. Here we came away on day one with action items. What we thought of the survey results, what did we think about the fact there were no shockers in Marks keynote and general feelings of the Ubuntu community.
Next up for me was Better Recognising Community Contribution I for one have an interesting one which I’m going to be working with locoteams with. Each month I am going to blog about a person in a locoteam who has contributed to Ubuntu in some way shape or form. The idea behind this is put the face to the name to someone in the community, but also some Kudos or say thank you or cheers for the help, some people referred to this as giving thanks but I think that sounds too biblical in terms and doesn’t really sum up the way I blog, so I’ll be writing a Kudos to locoteam members once a month. Bring on the action items!
Before lunch and now I’m starving and in need of a chocolate fix was Designing and creating Ubuntu experience, how best the community can help here, but also the fact that sometimes on mailing lists numerous ideas will come out but nothing will ever be completed I thought Alison Randall really has some great ideas and really open minded on how to get more team intergration with the community which I think will help in getting items accomplished. Todays session was one of 3 Alison has planned to run on this topic so stay tuned and follow the etherpad. 1) ”Designing and creating Ubuntu Experiences” 2) ”Meet with the Ubuntu Desktop Designers” 3) ”Community Participation in User Experience”.
Lunch wasn’t just lunch I got to hang out with the awesome team that is launchpad and do some usability issue testing, very odd being watched how you do something and talking about your logic for way of doing it, and interesting to get feedback.
The Afternoon sessions kicked off with Ubuntu Women session. It’s interesting to see how this team has changed in two years and one area I wanted to ask what was planned was longer than 6 months, the future for the team and where do we see ourselves in 2 years time and we needed to have longer long term plans rather than 6 monthly. So for me I don’t use the Ubuntu women irc channels any more nor do I take part in the meetings. 2 years ago I was elected to the LC last year the EMEA and most recently the CC I think women can see we have women in many divverse areas in the community and for me I think we’ve succeed in that area.
Finally the LoCo Council session. We reviewed what we the LoCo Council had done in the last cycle, discussed the idea of twinning teams which are approved with teams that are unapproved . Should teams be broken up in to smaller sub teams was vetoed but there is a plan to break up larger countries into provinces/states possibly. Standardisation of the DISPLAY team name on the LoCo team portal was also discussed and finally language locale v loco team on the portal.
So what was agreed from this session was the LoCo council would pick a selection of teams this cycle to twin with unapproved teams and help them get on their feet more a budding up type system. A way of helping smaller younger teams learn how teams do things for their community, give them tips and ideas so we can get more teams approved. We will be contacting teams in the coming weeks to set this up . The idea of splitting teams up into a city sub loco was vetoed by many as it didn’t seem appropriate, what will happen instead is on the LoCo Team Portal (formally the LoCo Directory) will have an area on the team page to add city contacts, we would also encourage teams to have this information on their website. Regarding Standerdisation of team names it was agreed that the DISPLAY name on the LTP would be done but no other change to the teams name would be. We are also hoping to schedule another loco council session for later in the week.
For the rest of the sessions the LoCo Council sat and worked with a loco team with some Q&A and helped them better understand the options that are available to them.
A great day was had and much catching up with people was done. Day 1 is over and it’s only just begun….. clearly I need sleep that was cheesy! 