From 2nd-4th March 2012 we will hold an Ubuntu Global Jam again. This is an event where Ubuntu teams around the world come together, meet locally and together make Ubuntu better. We have a number of events and teams already lined up, among them: the Italian team.
I had a chat with Andrea Grandi and Paolo Sammicheli, here’s how they organised everything.
How did you organise the event?
Paolo Sammicheli: Andrea is the president of the Pistoia LUG. They normally organize events so we’ll be using their big space.
Andrea Grandi: Basically:
- Asked in PtLUG mailing list how many people would like to help organizing the event and how many people were interested in.
- I contacted the owners of the venue where is our Linux User Group and asked them to reserve it for saturday march 3rd.
- I contacted Paolo Sammicheli and the other people of #ubuntu-it-promo to ask them to join us.
- I contacted Marco Trevisan to ask him to join us and lead the bug-fixing group during the event.
About the venue: our LUG has a small room with two desks and 4 PC, wifi connection ecc… we normally use it for our meeting. Next to this room there is another one capable of about 100 seats. It’s located inside a big structure few km far from the center of Pistoia.
What’s going to happen in Italy at the UGJ?
Paolo Sammicheli: We’ll start with an introduction about how to start contributing in Ubuntu. Then we’ll split in two team: the beginners team will do testing with me, the experts team will work on unity with Marco.
There will be also a translation session over IRC. So people will jam remotely with us helping translating big tasks (ie: package descriptions)
Andrea Grandi: I confirm this and talking about this to some friends their response was: oh I’ve never used Linux, but I’d like to help testing and translating, it looks funny!
How did you find people who were willing to help with the event?
Paolo Sammicheli: The Pistoia LUG gave all the support.
Andrea Grandi: I asked in our LUG mailing list and in #ubuntu-it-promo IRC channel.
How did you announce the event?
Paolo Sammicheli: We published in the loco directory, we announced in our weekly newsletter and Andrea just blogged about it. Few more blog posts in Italian will follow next week.
Andrea Grandi: using Facebook (inviting all friends), blogging about it and spreading the news on out Twitter and G+ accounts. We also have a local mailing list with about 100 people subscribed.
Did you run UGJ events before?
Paolo Sammicheli: Yes we made few already. Some times we had a peer to peer jam. We met in 3 different cities in small groups (2/3 people) and we worked together through IRC.
Andrea Grandi: personally this is the second UGJ I attend to. Here’s a picture of the last event we had in Pistoia.
How many people do you feel will attend this time?
Paolo Sammicheli: I don’t know, Andrea?
Andrea Grandi: I think about 12 / 15 people at the moment, but if we can do something more to spread the event we could have more people attending.
Do you have any good tips for anyone planning to organise an event
Paolo Sammicheli: Keep it simple, keep it fun!
Andrea Grandi: Oorganize it in collaboration with other Linux User Groups. Did you know that in Italy there are more than 100 Linux user groups?
Thanks a lot guys! Have a great time at Ubuntu Global Jam! 