With every cycle, part of my responsibility is to understand the needs of the Ubuntu community, understand the needs of some of the key stakeholders to my team, and to plan what the team will work on throughout the next cycle. Recently I have been asking the team (Jorge Castro, Daniel Holbach, David Planella, and Ahmed Kamal) to reach out to the community to get a feel of needs, and flesh out their goals in a set of blueprints. I then reviewed and accepted a set of blueprints ready for the cycle. I think this is a good, solid chunk of work and will make some inroads into some key areas.

In deciding on this strategy there were a set of high-level themes that we want to see work applied from the team:

* ensuring that the move to Unity in 11.04 is successful, and that we have an empowered and enjoyable community experience for those who participate.
* improve the Sponsorship Queue – the queue is where new contributors cut their teeth, and we need to better serve their needs.
* we want to see growth in the number of people who are interested in participating in Ubuntu packaging and development, and make it easier for the community to encourage and inspire people to join us.
* spread wider awareness and knowledge of translations as a key part of the Ubuntu ethos, and encourage people to participate in bringing Ubuntu to more people in their own language.
* start growing an inclusive cloud community, both in terms of end-users and people who want to improve the Ubuntu cloud-related products.
* spread better awareness of the capabilities of Ubuntu in the cloud via knowledge transfer and content.
* socialize the new Places API in Unity as an interesting target of opportunity for application developers.
* continue to grow awareness of Ayatana technologies for application authors.

In addition to this, there are a set of high-level goals that the team isnt explicitly tasked with, but I am keen to see improvements in:

* making the Ubuntu experience more personal and less process orientated.
* helping to encourage wider diversity in the Ubuntu project and at the Ubuntu Developer Summit.
* supporting the Ubuntu Accessibility team in their work, particularly in helping Unity to be fully accessible.
* helping to ensure that Brainstorm better informs the planning process of our user’s needs.
* helping to support the Ubuntu Beginners team; they are doing some truly awesome work.
* continuing to support the growth of our stunning LoCo Teams.

Of course, there will be other areas of focus throughout the cycle, but this provides a good idea of our thinking.

So let’s take a look at some of the work that I have committed the team to. As with previous cycles, you can track this work with our [team burndown chart](https://people.canonical.com/~pitti/workitems/natty/canonical-community.html) to see how on track we are.

Here are the items:

### Developers

These are items related to the growth of developers in the Ubuntu project:

> OBJECTIVE: Produce high-level overview of Ubuntu Development (Daniel Holbach)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-high-level-dev-overview](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-high-level-dev-overview)

> OBJECTIVE: Training Events (Daniel Holbach)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-dev-training-events](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-dev-training-events)

> OBJECTIVE: Produce Outreach resources (Daniel Holbach)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-development-outreach-resources](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-development-outreach-resources)

> OBJECTIVE: Improve the Sponsorship queue (Daniel Holbach)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-improving-the-sponsorship-queue](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-improving-the-sponsorship-queue)

> OBJECTIVE: Empower developers to encourage others to join Ubuntu Development (Daniel Holbach)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-developer-advocacy](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-developer-advocacy)

### Translations

These are items related to encouraging participation in translations and making Ubuntu available in your language:

> OBJECTIVE: Translation Stories (David Planella)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-translations-stories](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-translations-stories)

> OBJECTIVE: Translations Training Sessions (David Planella)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-translations-training-sessions](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-translations-training-sessions)

> OBJECTIVE: Translations Portal (David Planella)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-translations-portal](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-translations-portal)

> OBJECTIVE: Language Pack Updates Schedule (David Planella)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-translations-language-pack-updates-schedule](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-translations-language-pack-updates-schedule)

### Cloud

These are items related to growing our cloud community:

> OBJECTIVE: Start building server/cloud community contributers (Ahmed Kamal)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-buildingcloudcontributors](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-buildingcloudcontributors)

> OBJECTIVE: Work on next Iteration of Cloud Portal (Ahmed Kamal)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-cloud-portal-iteration2](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-cloud-portal-iteration2)

> OBJECTIVE: Screencast Library (Ahmed Kamal)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/cloud-community-n-cloudscreencastlib](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/cloud-community-n-cloudscreencastlib)

> OBJECTIVE: Training Events (Ahmed Kamal)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/cloud-community-n-cloudsessionsandoutreach](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/cloud-community-n-cloudsessionsandoutreach)

> OBJECTIVE: Merging-in cloud community outreach into existing outreach campaigns (Ahmed Kamal)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/cloud-community-n-cloudsessionsandoutreach](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/cloud-community-n-cloudsessionsandoutreach)

### Upstreams

These are items related to how our technology fits with upstreams:

> OBJECTIVE: Socialize Unity Places API technology with upstream application developers (Jorge Castro)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/appdevs-dx-n-unity-places](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/appdevs-dx-n-unity-places)

> OBJECTIVE: Unity Community Bug Fixing Participation (Jorge Castro)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-unity-bugfixing-participation](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-unity-bugfixing-participation)

> OBJECTIVE: Ayatana Application Development Advocacy (Jorge Castro)
> [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-ayatana-advocacy](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-ayatana-advocacy)

In addition to this we will be running the usual set of initiatives throughout the cycle:

* Ubuntu Open Week
* Ubuntu Developer Week
* Ubuntu Application Developer Week
* Ubuntu Global Jam
* Ubuntu Release Parties

I would also like increase the visibility and focus of the different work going on throughout the community. There is some incredible work going on throughout the community, and I am keen to see people get recognition for that, so we are going to work to try and highlight these contributions where possible.

Like previous cycles, throughout this cycle I will also be having some regular catch-up calls with representatives of our community who are leading key initiatives – examples of this include Penelope Stowe from the Accessibility team, Laura Czajkowski from the LoCo Council, Stefano Zacchiroli the Debian Project Leader and others.

I am sure I have missed off some areas of focus you feel we need to make, so do suggest them in the comments.