Czajkowski

I’m not entirely sure where the last 12 months have gone.  I drove over 5.5 hours yesterday back to Dublin, from spending Christmas with my family in Castleconnell, Co. Limerick.  I did the drive two years to the day moving myself to Dublin for my current job.

When I was leaving the mothership was asking when I’d next be home, and already looking at my google calender I can see an opening in February, and if not then March for Mothers day. That’s 3 months into 2010 or a quarter the way through. Which made me think where had 2009 gone.

January 2009 was a quiet month, I don’t think anyone really is in the mood to do things, everyone is exhausted after Christmas and waiting on pay day! I did get the brain fart of having my own event over in Ireland for OSS events as I  was tired of always having to travel to events, and wanted one in my own back yard, and so I created OSSBarcamp.

February kicked started nicely by waiting for 6 hours for a flight to FOSDEM due to 2 inches of snow in Dublin airport, the inability to cater for a bit of snow is  baffling.  It was my first year at FOSDEM, and it was well worth the wait, I’d tried to go in the past and always other events clashed.  I’ve booked to go again this year and looking forward to seeing more of Brussels this time. Towards the end of February, Ubuntu-ie had its first big event, taking part in Global Bug jam.  We had the help of DIT sponsoring us a venue and had students come along and learn how to take part in logging bugs and triaging them. Good day out followed by a few quiet beers.

March swiftly arrived and my brain fart of OSSBarcamp turned into a reality, turns out if you organise it, set a date, book a venue folks do come! Great day was had and lots of good discussion took place.  As with organising any event, it takes it toll on you and you clearly need a holiday ( any excuse really) and I went over to London for a few days as a holiday.  Great break away and saw London again for the first time in a long time and did all the touristy things and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

April saw Jaunty release party and the Irish LoCo in full swing burning cds in the pub and handing them out to people, having a pub quiz and meeting more people off IRC land and over a drink having a chat.  I should add that once a month we all meet up in Dublin for a face to face meet up, but we did have over 20 people turn up for the Jaunty party, dinner and drinks, and a late night.

May, Kick starting the month was our first Geeknic – a picnic for Geeks. Knowing Ireland you cannot always guarantee the sunshine, but we had a nice day out and people brought along their kids and it was nice to do something different. I sponsored myself to attend UDS Karmic in Barcelona, but before I got here I went via Edinburgh for the weekend to see the Heineken Cup final, at least an Irish team won!  I’d bought the tickets Months in advance!

I’d never been to a UDS before, and it was fantastic, to quote ubuntu folks  it was AWESOME! Getting to meet people you’ve spent time talking online about the work you’re involved in, to work on projects face to face for a week and come up with ideas, solutions and a way forward is remarkable. I got to meet some great folks and I’m really glad I went.

June saw the first MySQL meet up in Dublin, not sure more were planned but it was nice and great to see more groups starting to have more meet ups and discussions take place.  I came back so energised from UDS I went for my membership which I’d been putting off as was nervous.

July moved house, bloody stressful!  Summer months tend be filled with weekend trips home and to Lahinch and visiting mates.  Ubuntu Ireland became a recognised LoCo in July, so we were rather happy as a team!

August, we had our second Geeknic in Farmleigh Park followed by drinks and meeting some of the people behind Ubuntu who were in Dublin for a sprint!  My mate TC came home from Canada for 2 weeks so was back and forth to Lahinch and Limerick. Busy month.

September, I ran another OSSBarcamp, and 3 of the presenters from Ubuntu-uk Podcast, Laura, Tony and Daviey came over!  It was a great way to celebrate Software Freedom day and meet more people.  Pretty sure there will be more of these to come. I just need to work on a venue.

October I turned 30 and fled to Canada for 12 days to see what all the fuss was about.  I had an amazing time and celebrated my birthday in multiple timezones to keep everyone happy.  Ubuntu Ireland had another Bug jam day and release party, Karmic Koala  this month so all around a busy month.

November, I got sponsored to attend UDS Lucid which took place in Dallas, USA.  It was a fun packed week, with working on Ubuntu and night time events, from firing range, ice skating, and meals out to having an afternoon in the A&E Department at local hospital.  Y’all come back now ye’ here!

December is the month, of Christmas meet ups, and working crazy to get it all done so I could take a few days off, and catch up on doing diddly squat.  I did just that!

Cripes, I did a lot, and now I know where the time went. 2009 was amazing fun packed and entertaining, I hope 2010 is just as good!  Looking forward to working on more cool projects and helping where I can.

Last day *sob* the week has flown, it’s not even funny, day one I knew nobody, and in less than a week I’ve made some great friends and it was fantastic.

Final sessions for the Community track:

• Friday Roundtable
• Revamping The Free Culture Showcase
• Translations Roundtable
• Women In Ubuntu
• Membership Boards Review
• Technical Board Review
• Feedback Session

So firstly for those not familiar with the Free Culture showcase, lets explain it a little.

The Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase is an opportunity to show off high quality free culture content in Ubuntu. At the heart of Ubuntu’s ethos is a belief in showcasing free software and free culture, and with each development cycle we open the opportunity for any Free Culture artist to put their work in front of millions of Ubuntu users around the world. Although the space restrictions are tight, and we are limited to how much content we can include, this is an excellent opportunity for artists everywhere.

So the discussion was about how to make it more open to more people how to advertise it better to include as many people as possible, how to better upload and perhaps the use of Ubuntu One to upload the submissions. The use of facebook, twitter, digg, identi.ca to promote the event, these avenues can always be used for LoCo team events also. I personally try and let local colleges know about my events as student might be interested in coming along or participating in them.

The Ubuntu Women discussion happened as I’d mentioned to Maco about the possibility of a meet up at the begining of the week, and the good thing about UDS is that you can at times if space is available add a new session which we did.

We covered topics on how best to encourage women to come into the channel, use the mailing list basically point out that these resources are availabe and are a way of intereacting with folks. It was a packed session with many guys participating which is great as they had some questions on how to attract more females into their groups and participate in events.

Also there seems to be some perception that one needs to be a developer not only to be involved in -women but also within the community.  You don’t have to be the are many other areas you can participate in the project.

I’m not a developer but I like to organise things, put people in contact with others.  Translations and bug triaging always need to be done and anyone can help out and do these things. Hopefully this month the Ireland LoCo will run a Jam session that will help with these two aspects.

Finally the feedback session, the final wrap up. It was a great week with ideas floating all around the place and projects to work on.  I can only imagine how long some of the leaders action list of items to do are.

Thanks to the folks at Canonical who made this week possible. Thanks to the community who were not only welcoming but also made particpating fun. See you soon!

It’s the second last day of UDS in sunny Barcelona, the week has flow by. There has been much discussion, brain storming and mingling taking place through the week, during the day and in the evening time over dinner. I’ve been lucky to combine my summer holiday and hanging out with some awesome geeks. Win

On todays schedule we have the following:

• The Burnout Cycle (presentation)
• Better LoCo Team Development Participation
• Community Participation In Translations Templates
• Community Council Review
• Ubuntu Developer Channel
• Remote Participation at UDS

So, how does one get LoCo community involvement, how do you get interaction, feedback organsie events.  It’s very hard starting off as you may not know who to talk to or approach. A great resouce is the #ubuntu-locoteams channel. Even if you’re already established, you might be going stale, low particpation at turning up to events. Why not ask other LoCo’s what they are doing, I suggested geeknic and a lot of folks were interested in it. A day out away from the laptops and a nice way to meet people face to face. Find more information here.

Now I was very lucky to attend UDS and participate, but not everyone can. Remote participation is encourage, though perhaps it could be a bit better know. All of the talks are streamed so anyone can listen in and intereact via channel and comment on the discusion.

We also got to take a group pic, savage amount of people from all over the world involved in Ubuntu in one way or another and I got to meet them.

UDS Karmic Group picture

Half way through the week already, hard to believe. I must admit not knowing any people going to UDS it really forced me to make and effort and chat to new people which was great as I met some really great people who had some pretty cool ideas about how things could be shaped not only in the community but also in Ubuntu in general.

Todays Community Topics that I attended were

• Round Table
• Improving Bug Triage Best Practise
• LoCo Council Review
• Improving Packaging Training
• LoCo Team Conference Packs

The improving bug triage was my favourite discussion session today. It’s one I see is an issue as many folks want to take part in bug triaging but don’t know how to. Yes there is documentation out there, there is nearly too much at times so you don’t know where to start.  As a test I emailed the Irish LoCo and asked them about their experiences, where they ran into difficultly and what did they think could be done to help folks get more involved. Thanks to all the nice folks who replied, I’ve forwaded on all the replies to dholbach.

Day 2 of UDS, and there is still sun shining,and people being upbeat and chatty and ideas are flowing.

So again today I plonked myself in the Community stream as there was some very interesting sessions going.

• Tuesday Roundtable
  
• Improving Ubuntu Open Week
• LoCo Directory
• Improve The Translations Community
• Helping Ubuntu With NGOs
• Code Of Conduct Boundaries

I’d never been at a round table before, but basically it is where we discuss what ever is on our mind, perhaps something from the previous day or something that we think could do with having a session on.

An interesting one was the COC, as in is it being too often when talking to the person to resolve the issue rather than escalating the issues to council in some cases. If you can try and reason with the person and see both sides of the issue in question,  if a discussion on an issue is getting heated, walk away for 10 mins, or advise the person who’s ranting and raving like a loon to do so instead.

The COC is there for us to use and guide us by, but often it’s over used on small issues, one needs to remember we are a large community with a diverse active culture and one needs to respect that, as that’s one of the greatest things for us.

However, I’d like to point out that one needs sometimes to realise that what I say here is how I’d say it, not only is it myt whacked out opionion it’s also the way I say things in a coloquial manner and is unoffensive for here, elsewhere someome else may take umbrance with it as it means something else where they are from. I’m sorry but one needs to respect and understand that sometimes things said on here or on irc are a persons way of say  things and in no way mean offensive.

So another thing I got to work on today was an idea I had in the discussion group on Monday with Efrain Valles.  I’d never created a blue print which is the idea of what we want to work on, so Efrain guided me along and showed me what to do. So  our blueprint on the idea is HERE.

From there you need to write a wiki post and detail the reasons why, and a possible solution of what you’d like to see, again having never done this before, or indeed would have though5t I could even do so, it’s being here in UDS that has made this possible and now I can think that I may have made a slight difference in Ubuntu which is just great! You can participate and get help face to face and it makes all the difference.

Finally the NGO session was very interesting as I got to learn about resources that are available to them that I didn’t realise were there. Also i was able to suggest to folks that you should invite them to your talks so they can gain and mutially benefit can be obtained for everyone.

Still loving UDS would recommend it to anyone and everyone!