Czajkowski

The week is flying by and it’s been great to meet new people  I’m really trying to make an effort to sit with new people at breakfast so I can talk about new topics where possible and I do think it’s important to mix it up and meet new people.

I do like having the continuity of having the Community round table sessions each morning and we’re getting some topics discussed that don’t necessarily need a full session, or we are taking the time to plan future sessions later in the week which does help make them more productive.  We have spent a long time discussing the Community Survey results and looking at the feedback which was sent which is worth reading and also to note that this was the Ubuntu members thoughts on the project who are currently active and replied.

The next session for me was talking to Ubuntu attendees and seeing how they are doing and learning what they are planning for the coming cycle which is interesting for me as I’m probably not going to attend a Server or a start up boot session so me talking to them so hall session for me which is good as it’s nice to put the face to the name that I’m interacting with via bugs or on IRC. Today I met Curtis Horvey from the Launchpad team about a bug I’m having issues with and he and I and Mat Revell were able to bouce ideas off one another and possibly come up with a plan B.

Next sit down session for me was the LoCo Team Portal (LTP ) formally the LoCo Directory(LD), was a really  a what you want to see in the LTP that can be possibly developed given the current shortage of developers. Some ideas that were thrown out were replacing Google Maps with OSM, creating a page of where to send people so they can get started on development as the lads are doing a great job but clearly if people want more features but we don’t have enough folks helping them, so if you’re a Python developer please come and help, join #ubuntu-website and volunteer.

The Design and Community round table has been one of my favorite sessions so far.  As far as I can see the design team have a bad name which in my opinion is really unjust.  People really need to realise that design != unity there is a lot more work they do.  I really appreciated them reaching out and wanting to listen to the feedback from community people. So kudos to them!  They have a fantastic detailed blog covering lots of different ideas on their blog and it’s really worth reading.  One great thing that came from that session was creating a channel and mailing list that better describes the design team, so instead of Ayatana you would have ubuntu-design or ubuntu-design-discuss on mailing list and getting the message across that Ayatana is not just unity but there is the design team there.

Reducing Community Bickering is session that came about as a result of the Ubuntu Community Survey (here) began with discussing how to deal with the demotivating nonconstructive criticism on blogs. Me personally while I find the blog comments bad, I find the mailing lists worse from high up people in the Ubuntu community, I find that far more demotivating and frustrating.  When is a good time to step in and diffuse the situation as sometimes coming in too soon can not help also depending on steps in will or won’t resolve issues.

Penelope Stowe is doing a great job with the a11y team and it’s interesting to learn the difficulties people face when simple changes happen or how one new feature can really break a system when a11y issues are not considered.  The Accessibility Team are doing a great job and if you want to join in and help, they’d love people to help with packaging if you can.

Final session for the day was the Leadership Team Session, which I mostly went to sit in but did find extremely frustating, annoying and in the end I ended up having to bite my tongue as I felt I wasn’t being listened to. Which is not a good way to start.  I was under the impression it wasn’t a team more of a focus group, now it seems really formal, not really including the actual governing bodies, and most of the documentation is now on a Google doc being sent off to a locoteam to write, when surely if locoteams issues are being written would it not make more sense to ask the loco council to write that as they deal with it 24/7. My only saving grace is I’m not the only one in the boat who is thinking this way from the session and feeling frustrated.  google documents are great but not what we use in the community use to collaborate on, I wish it was coming from the councils down first.  Also calling it a team in itself was not what I thought it was all about so now they are talking about changing the name. who knows we shall see and keep following the progress of it all.

After a non evenful journey over to Orlando from Ireland and meeting up with some folks Sunday night in the bar which was great as I got to put the faces to the IRC nicks.  Sleep was had!… Monday kicked off with chatting with folks over breakfast then we headed down to the Keynote.  Which was kicked off by Jono covering some of the stuff that will be happening this week. Did you know…….This is the 14th release…

* Application Developers

* Package Selection and System Defaults

* Performance

* Multimedia

* ununtu the project

* hardware compatibility

* cloud infrastructure

If you are trying to following the sessions and want to keep track of the documents, have  a look at the new documentation path for sessions:  session proceedings.  Goto https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDSProceedings/N

What I came up with was an idea to work on Wiki clean up information moved to askubuntu.com and we’re going to have a session on this on Wednesday morning!

I sat down on one of the quiet evenings this week and went through all of the Gobby documents from UDS and marked off where I had items actioned to me and made a list. Now I’m checking it twice and going to start working through things and crossing them off or adding to them if I need more detail. ( I like lists)

LoCo Directory – Event Feature
* ”’OBJECTIVE”’: Implement an event handing feature.
* ”’SUCCESS CRITERIA”’: LoCo teams can add events to be displayed on their LoCo directory page and view event information.
* ”’ACTIONS”’:
* Ability to add an event with the following attributes:
* Event type (Jam, Presentation, Tutorial, Release Party, Installfest, Other)
* Time
* Location
* Description
* Name
* Events are visible on LoCo pages and a master list of events.

While I don’t have anything assigned to this I am following this as I worked on this last May at UDS Karmic and this week I’m seeing more developments in the progress of this. With LoCos getting involved asking how they can help.  I think this kind of feature would help more LoCos organise their events and keep track of them for approval and for re approval if they can see what has been organised at a glance.

The reason behind this feature is, it’s very hard to keep track of attendance, I can say 8 people came and it could have been 12 or 6, if the feature of replying and adding your name to it, like you do for attending UDS then you can see who came to the event.  It’s also a way of see all LoCo events across the board on the one directory.

Ubuntu NGO

ACTIONs:
- Liaising with NGOs: – I’m working on finding more NGOs for Interviews, and also this week I’ve had people mail me saying they are doing some with their Local NGOs and will mail me the interviews, so we can get these back up and running.
• document painpoints, transform into papercuts: file as bug reports, tag with ‘ngo’ (laura) -  Worked on this during the week and sent mail to the NGO mailing list.
• Advocacy (need leader for this role) - I’ve added my name to this since UDS as has Penelope Stowe
-  list of existing foundations, other organisations that already work with NGOs
- list of conferences that NGOs attend specific to gathering technical assistance
- talk to docs team about help.ubuntu.com export (and other loco documentation) (Laura talk to Jim Campbell, Milo Casagrande) – Need to start on this
- talk to Server team about PHP packaging  ( laura to go talk to ask) – this is going to come under paper jams

Ubuntu Women

* ”’OBJECTIVE”’: Clarify the purpose of the #ubuntu-women channel.
* ”’SUCCESS CRITERIA”’: A set of channel guidelines clearly communicated to #ubuntu-women participants.
* ”’ACTIONS”’:
* Discuss a set of guidelines for general discussion channel about the Ubuntu Women project (Laura Czajkowski). – This will be taken to the mailing list due to time constraints from meeting held on the 8th December followed by another meeting.
* Document the agreed set of guidelines (Laura Czajkowski). – Going to work on a draft so we can work against something to discuss, as no point in just waffling without having somewhere as a base line to work from.
* Communicate guidelines outwards (Jono Bacon, Amber Graner, Laura Czajkowski). – Can only do this when the above is done

* ”’OBJECTIVE”’: Appoint a leader of the Ubuntu Women team, complete with codified expectations around the role. – Well this was discussed at the Ubuntu women meeting held. And we’ve come up with a process.
* ”’SUCCESS CRITERIA”’: A delegated leader in place for a set term length, complete with documented expectations around the role.
* ”’ACTIONS”’:
* Documenting expectations of the role (Amber / Laura). – This has been done on the wiki and with input in from the team during the meeting.

LoCo Council

I was elected to the LoCo Council, and during UDS I said I’d look into drafting a document with outlining the re approval process. Working on that today, once I read some of the email archives  as this is all new to me.

So the above is keeping me very quiet and busy at the moment, but loving it all the same!

Very sad, it’s the last day, and it’s been an amazing week.  I really feel I got more out of UDS this time. Definitely more braver in saying I’ll take on tasks knowing if I get stuck or have an issue there is someone I can poke and ask. The participation levels have been amazing both in the room and remotely.  It’s been great having the IRC displayed on the screen in the room. We can see participants points and can include them in the discussion, which is what it;s all about.

Taking into account everyones opinion and helping to shape Lucid.  It’s also been great to hear about what other LoCos are doing, it’s given me some ideas and I encourage other LoCos to try new events out. Doing the same talk/demo handing out a leafet can get boring and hard to get people involved.  Doing something new encourages more activity, making it fun!

The big session that stood out for me today, was Ubuntu Women, our 3rd session.  We did need 3 sessions to get a lot of things out in the open and be able to tackle some of the issues.  It’s been interesting hearing the opinions  of people taking part. Many of the men said they wanted to learn more and felt they could do this by sitting back and listening, but wanted to know how to get their female members involved or how they can help.  Again, please pretty please show them the #ubuntu-women channel, or the mailing list, poke me! and I’ll talk to them, or Amber she’ll happily talk to the wall!  We want to make sure as many people take part and enjoy working on the channel.

From our 3 sessions, we have clear defined and attainable goals we can achieve during Lucid. I hope many people join and take part in this great team and make these goals happen!

I’ve no idea where this week is going, feckin’ hell second last day already is upon us. Getting to meet and talk to even more people this time at UDS as I’m not as shy this time and just jumping two feet in where I can.

Team Leadership Workshop – I’d been helping Amber out with brain storming a while back and she’s made massive improvements, leaps and bounds in the document.  The idea behind it is to help a loco leader, encourage them, and help them with getting set up and run a LoCo.  Yes sometimes you might think it’s common sense, and some of it is, but you often forget about the easiest things until someone points them out to you.  Also, sometimes the help is spread out over different wiki pages, and my most annoying gripe with wikis is they are case sensitive, so you may even miss reading the helpful document if you’ve searched using Upper case.

Progress was made in this session, the learning team are going to help get the document set up so more people can access it and help contribute to it, this will help get it going, and in the end, make it easier to be translated!

Launchpad Upstream Improvements -I sat in this as I hadn’t a clue and quiet frankly it was rather interesting and it’s great to know about these other community issues. Bugs sitting there and not being worked on due to perhaps upstream not knowing they were there, which isn’t really going to help anyone  The main idea is how can the charming folks over at Launchpad help make Launchpad even more effective for upstream projects. I’ll definitely be keeping more of an eye on this as I found it rather interesting.

Lucid Governance Changes Roadmap  -  This session was mainly clearing up and documenting all the councils that existed and listing all the members and the expiration date of members, when a call for new members should be announced and then when an announcement should be issued. Standardising the process.

Social outing, well this one was slightly unplanned, but rather eye opening.  I got to ride in a BIG RED AMBULANCE! To clarify actually, I was the passenger in the front seat, poor Grant was in the rear as he had fainted during one of the sessions and best to get checked out took a short spin up to the Trauma Hospital nearby.  I used to work in the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick before I moved to Dublin.  I’m used to Irish Hospitals. I moved to Dublin and saw Dublin hospitals at 2am when my back had thrown a wobbly and needed to get an injection into my spine, you get to see some interesting people at that hour.  Nothing prepared me to having to walk through a metal detector or having armed guards on patrol in the wards.  The staff were very helpful and pleasant, but I still found it odd to see a prisoner being treated on a trolley nearby, I know from seeing prisoners treated in Limerick, they get brought in plain clothes, handcuffs are very discrete,to the point where you actually cannot tell who’s the prisoner or who’s the guard.

The hospital and medical staff were very pleasant and helpful, and a quick call to the hotel afterwards had a car come and collect us which was great, and Grant was able to go get some well needed rest.