My Q+A/Community Videocast: Now Weekly

My Q+A/Community Videocast: Now Weekly

For some time now I have been running a series of videocasts called [At Home With Jono Bacon](https://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon) on ustream.tv. These have been happening very Wednesday at **11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern / 6pm UTC/GMT**.

In each session I cover a range of topics, news in the Ubuntu world and importantly, I always do a Q+A session: this provides a great way to ask your questions about hot topics. I think it important for community leaders to provide a transparent opportunity to answer questions from their community.

Well, I used to do these videocasts whenever I could find some time, and now I have decided to commit to a weekly slot. As such, every week on a Wednesday at **11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern / 6pm UTC/GMT** you can ask me your questions and I will provide other interesting topics in the show too.

I have added this to the [Fridge Calendar](https://fridge.ubuntu.com/calendar) for future reference. I look forward to seeing you all there!

My Q+A/Community Videocast: Now Weekly

150 Python Snippets. 20 Topics. Nice!

I just wanted to share something I am rather proud of. [Python Snippets](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PythonSnippets), the project I put together to gather an archive of simple Python examples that can be viewed with [Acire](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PythonSnippets) on your desktop.

Well, today I merged in our **150th snippet**, contributed by Andy Breiner. For the curious, the record-breaking snippet demonstrates how to delete a record from a CouchDB database with DesktopCouch.

We now have 150 simple Python examples that span 20 different areas:

* Application Indicator – application indicator examples.
* Apport – the apport crash handling framework.
* bzrlib – bazaar source control system Python module.
* Clutter – clutter toolkit examples.
* dbus – dbus messaging system
* DesktopCouch – desktopcouch examples.
* feedparser – parsing RSS feeds.
* Gstreamer – python-gstreamer examples.
* Gwibber – gwibber microblogging tool
* Notify OSD – notify OSD examples.
* PyGTK – pygtk widget and framework examples.
* PyGTKSourceView – pygtksourceview widget and framework examples.
* Python Core – examples that demonstrate core features in the Python language.
* Python VTE – snippets using the VTE widget for GTK.
* PyKDE4 – KDE Python bindings.
* PyQt4 – Qt widget examples
* Patterns – design pattern examples.
* launchpadlib – examples using launchpadlib.
* WebKit examples uing the webkit browser widget.
* Zeitgeist – examples on how to use Zeitgeist.

I am really pleased how Acire and Python Snippets are becoming a constantly growing resource that is actively helping developers get to grips with different modules. Thanks to everyone who has contributed snippets to the library!

**Of course, we want more snippets, so if you want to add some, go and [read this guide to explain how](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PythonSnippets)!**

My Q+A/Community Videocast: Now Weekly

Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day

Today is [Ada Lovelace Day](https://findingada.com/); an important day in which we celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Like other positive equality-centric campaigns, the goal of the day is to highlight and bring awareness to great work and efforts going on: I think it is a tremendous effort on the part of Suw Charman-Anderson who founded it, and the many contributors across the world who help to bring *Ada Lovelace Day* to their local communities.

A key component in *Ada Lovelace Day* is writing a blog entry that highlights women who are doing great work. Well, in the spirit of the day, I want to highlight ten women who are doing wonderful work that touches many aspects of my world. Without these folks, the communities that I am part of would not be the same, and while we should never need a reason to highlight great work, I am chuffed to bits that *Ada Lovelace Day* gives me a great excuse to share some thoughts about each day.

Given the nature of the day a natural choice for someone to add in this list was *Amber Graner*, leader of the [Ubuntu Women](https://ubuntu-women.org/) team, but I am deliberately leaving her out of the list as she knows how much I adore her and her work, and she was too obvious a choice. I wanted to clarify that up front in case she thought I may have left her out. 🙂

Without further ado, in alphabetical order…

Laura CowenLaura’s Blog – Laura works at IBM and works in usability and interaction design. Despite her epic work at IBM, I never met her there but instead through her contributions to [LugRadio](https://www.lugradio.org/) and the various [LugRadio Live](https://www.lugradio.org/live) events in the UK and USA. She contributed so much to these events in the running of various logistical elements and in particular with A/V. Whenever I have worked alongside her I have always been wowed by her incredible humanity with people, her commitment to detail and her infectious personality.
Laura CzajkowskiLaura’s Blog – I first met Laura at the SkyCon, the event that she and the other Skynet crew put together in Limerick. Since then she has become increasingly involved in the Ubuntu community, Ubuntu Women and our LoCo Teams. Laura has been doing a particularly rocking job with the Ubuntu LoCo Council, providing experience and insight to various LoCo teams with regard to a range of challenges and opportunities that the teams face. As time goes on Laura carves out more and more respect for her across the community with her conscientious and detailed work, and she is a solid foundation in the Ubuntu world.
MáirĂ­n DuffyMáirĂ­n’s Blog – although I don’t know MáirĂ­n particularly well, I have been following her work for quite some time now on Planet GNOME. There MáirĂ­n showcases some her incredible visual work that she performs for GNOME and Fedora. From reading her posts I have always been inspired by her positive approach to visual design, her natural tendency to share skills and knowledge (e.g. see her Inkscape and GIMP posts) and her seeming endless levels of productivity: a clear case of irritatingly capable talents that I am frankly envious of.
Marsee HenonMarsee’s O’Reilly Profile – Marsee works at O’Reilly and leads their User Group Program. I first met Marsee while organizing LugRadio Live and her enthusiasm and eagerness to help, combined with her fantastic rapport with a hugely diverse range of user groups, really inspired me. Marsee and I have worked more together since I published the book, and she does a fantastic job in understanding the needs of user groups and ensuring she can do her best to help them succeed. I have never once seen her not try and help a user group make the most of their community, and with this in mind, she is an utter legend.
Rikki KiteRikki’s Blog – for those of us who tread the boards of the Open Source conference circuit, you won’t go far without seeing Rikki. She is the Associate Publisher and Managing Editor of Linux Pro Magazine and Ubuntu User Magazine. Rikki’s passion is to deliver great stories about real work by real people. She has always been there to give a voice to everyone from the bedroom hacker to the corporate executive. Rikki has really driven the success behind Ubuntu User and her commitment and endless devotion to her work makes her an utter delight to be around when I see her…typically, at a conference. 🙂
Elizibeth KrumbachElizabeth’s Website – Liz is a prominent member of Ubuntu Women and a well known and well respected member of the wider Ubuntu community. Liz contributes in a range of area of Ubuntu such as the Ubuntu Manual, various LoCo teams, the NGO effort and more. I really got to know her at the last UDS and she brought a calm, thoughtful and detail-orientated approach to many of the sessions. Ubuntu would not be Ubuntu if Liz was not there.
Ivanka MajicIvanka’s Website – Ivanka leads the Design Team at Canonical and works hard to have her team contribute excellence in design in Ubuntu. Ivanka is an absolutely incredible member of Canonical: she not only brings an adventurous, insightful and experienced guiding hand to design, but she balances an approachable demeanor with a phenomenal ability to get things done. She is well liked by her team, well liked by her colleagues and brings so much to Ubuntu.
> Celeste Lyn PaulCeleste’s Website – Celeste is well known in the KDE community and wider afield as a prominent contributor and spokesperson on interaction design and usability. By day she is Senior Interaction Architect at UserCentered Design, Inc. and by night a member of the KDE HumanComputer Interaction working group and has also helped contribute to Kubuntu, OpenPrinting, OpenUsability e.V., and WordPress. Celeste is a tremendous and inspiring mind, a great speaker and has fantastic insight into the challenges we face in delivering great interfaces.
Ara PulidoAra’s Launchpad Page – Ara works for Canonical on the Ubuntu QA team and she is deeply involved in building automated tests, smoke testing, and encouraging our wider community to get involved in improving the quality of Ubuntu. She is active in Ubuntu, upstream and demonstrates an incredible responsiveness and eagerness for her work and Ubuntu. As an example, I asked Ara to work on a last-minute EC2 test plan for Karmic the day she got back from her vacation and she had it ready within a day to an incredible level of quality. It is people like Ara which make Ubuntu what it is.
Maria RandazzoMaria’s Twitter Feed – Maria works with the Ubuntu Platform Management team that I am part of at Canonical and has brought so much to the team with her work, her personality and her enthusiasm for Ubuntu. Maria works on a variety of projects such as ShipIt, is coordinating the Ubuntu Summer Of Code effort with Daniel, and is a constant resource for the team. One of my colleagues once said that “Maria is the glue that holds the team together”: he ain’t wrong. 🙂

I want to thank everyone above for bringing a rich, insightful set of experiences to the communities that I am involved in. 🙂

In addition to this post, I will be celebrating *Ada Lovelace Day* on my live videocast at **11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern / 6pm UTC/GMT** and you can [watch it live here](https://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon) – I will also be doing a general Q+A about Ubuntu, community, free culture and anything else you care to ask. I hope to see you there! 🙂

Ubuntu Global Jam This Friday: Rockridge, California

Ubuntu Global Jam This Friday: Rockridge, California

Just a quick note: I will hanging out for the [Ubuntu Global Jam](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam) at the Rockridge, California event which I put together for **Fri 26th March 2010** from **10am – 6pm**. It takes place at:

> 3200 College Ave
> (at Alcatraz Ave)
> Berkeley, CA 94705

> (510) 420-0196

The venue is [here on the map](https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&q=A%27cuppa+Tea+Incorporated&fb=1&gl=us&hq=A%27cuppa+Tea,&hnear=3200+College+Ave,+(at+Alcatraz+Ave),+Berkeley,+CA+94705&view=map&cid=17845782234135597449&ved=0CE4). You can also go and see [the event in our rocking LoCo Directory](https://loco.ubuntu.com/events/team/39/detail/). Grant Bowman, Robert Wall, myself and others will be there. Join us!

There is also going to be an *Ubuntu Global Jam* event happening in Berkeley on **Sun 28th March at 12pm** – [Liz has all the details](https://princessleia.com/journal/?p=2639). 🙂

[DON’T LIVE IN CALIFORNIA? GO AND FIND YOUR LOCAL UBUNTU GLOBAL JAM EVENT](https://loco.ubuntu.com/events/global/3/detail/)!

Planning for 10.10: Improving How We Review Patches

Planning for 10.10: Improving How We Review Patches

*This is the first article in a series of posts where I will be outlining some of the goals for my team for the Ubuntu 10.10 cycle which I am in the process of planning for.*

At the heart of Ubuntu development are *gifts*. People join our community and contribute in a diverse range of ways. This includes documentation, translations, advocacy and many other efforts. Every day we are afforded with many of these fantastic contributions, and if people take the time to contribute a gifts, we should work hard as a community to do the right thing and review and utilize it in Ubuntu if it meets our quality needs.

Fortunately, we have a rather incredible problem to solve: we have *many* gifts in the form of patches and not enough hands to open them, review them and apply them. This is something I am keen for us to make progress on in 10.10, and I have assigned **Daniel Holbach** from my team to work on this.

I am a firm believer that the first step in solving a problem is to optimize your visibility on the problem to understand it better, and with this in mind in the Lucid cycle Jorge and the Launchpad team performed some excellent work in putting together a patch view which provides a better and more accessible means of viewing all unreviewed patches for a given project. Beforehand these patches were scattered about Launchpad attached to bugs: now they are in a single view, providing an awesome TODO list for those who are keen to review patches and apply them. It looks like this:

In the 10.10 cycle I have asked Daniel to build a plan for how we can raise awareness of the importance of reviewing patches and how many of our tools and resources can help. We already have a lot of documentation and resources but I believe we need to optimize them for more people contributing and then go and encourage people to join the effort.

This is very much a community project that I have asked Daniel to drive: I think this is good and important work and we would love to hear your ideas about what can be done to improve how we (a) review these gifts (b) encourage more people to get involved and (c) ensure that patches can flow upstream easily. Thoughts?

UDS 10.10 Sponsorship Deadline Drawing Close

UDS 10.10 Sponsorship Deadline Drawing Close

Just a quick note to everyone: Friday 26th March 2010 is the deadline for applications for sponsorship to the [Ubuntu Developer Summit](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS) happening from **10 – 14 May 2010** in Belgium.

For more details of how to apply, see [this post](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/2010/03/02/announcing-the-10-10-ubuntu-developer-summit/)!

Ubuntu Community Team Opportunities: Second Draft

Ubuntu Community Team Opportunities: Second Draft

Last week I posted a blog entry highlighting two internship opportunities on my team at Canonical, one for a *Ubuntu Community Documentation Author* and one for a *Ubuntu Community Web Developer*. After the announcement went out there was a little flame and fire surrounding the opportunities, particularly surrounding the rules and regulations about *internships* in different parts of the world. Thank you to those of you who shared constructive feedback about the opportunities.

I was really keen to make sure we do the right thing regarding these opportunities, so today I had a call with our head of Human Resources and HR rockstar Alice Paul, and we discussed the feedback and what amendments to the opportunities that we needed to make. We made a few mistakes I am keen to rectify. Firstly, we referred to these roles as *internships*, whereas they are more accurately *volunteer opportunities* and not internships. Secondly, they were too rigidly defined (more like normal job roles). Finally, they were written with the UK in mind (this is where our HR department is based). While the absolute best intentions were at heart (to provide a great opportunity for two smart and enthusiastic folks to get some experience working with my team), some of these mistakes made it sound too rigid. Well, let’s fix these mistakes, get these opportunities in shape, and get this train back on the road again. 🙂

So, let’s give this another shot. I am keen to provide an opportunity for two folks to come and spend some time with my team, work on some community projects, and get some experience. They are:

* **Ubuntu Community Documentation Author** – produce a series of well-written and clear materials about a range of different topics in the Ubuntu community surrounding how to participate.
* **Ubuntu Community Web Developer** – in conjunction with the team and the community, design new features and solutions for some of our community websites.

All of the projects these two opportunities would focus on are Ubuntu community projects and free and Open Source.

Unlike the previous post, there is no fixed time engagement period or hours for these opportunities: we can discuss these and figure out something that works well for you with your other commitments. As before, these opportunities are entirely optional and unpaid volunteer opportunities for those of you who are keen to get some experience working with my team ; this could be a great addition for your resume.

If you are interested in this, contact *Alice Paul* at `alice.paul` AT `canonical` DOT `com` and use the subject *Community Team Opportunities* – please include an up to date resume with your experience and skills.

Quick Acire and Python Snippets Guide

Quick Acire and Python Snippets Guide

Today someone asked me how to run Acire and Python Snippets from source and contribute more snippets. I just wanted to pop up the instructions quickly here so I can point folks at them. These should work on Lucid and Karmic for sure, and very possibly older versions.

First grab the tools you need to run Acire:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install quickly bzr python-mechanize python-gtksourceview2

First grab the python-snippets:

bzr branch lp:python-snippets

Now grab Acire:

bzr branch lp:acire

Now set an environmental variable to point to your snippets:

export SNIPPETS_DIR=/place/where/you/checked/out/the/snippets

Now go to the directory where you checked out Acire and run it:

quickly run

Job done! You can now contribute snippets by reading [this guide](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PythonSnippets). I look forward to seeing your snippets, folks!

Make a Difference: Ada Lovelace Day

Make a Difference: Ada Lovelace Day

Just a quick reminder to you good folks that [Ada Lovelace Day](https://findingada.com/) is happening on **Wed 24th March 2010**. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it is a fantastic initiative that was kicked off last year to highlight and celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.

The goal of the day is for people across the world to blog about women who are doing great work in technology and science. From the website:

> Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.

This year as part of the day there is a goal to get 3072 people to [sign a pledge to blog on Ada Lovelace Day](https://findingada.com/): it is a simple pledge to do something that doesn’t take much time but joins a chorus of people who support gender equality in technology and science. I have signed it and [so should you](https://findingada.com/). 🙂

### My Contribution

I will be writing my blog entry to appear on Wednesday, highlighting many of the women who I think are doing awesome work in technology, and I will also be delivering one of my [At Home With Jono Bacon](https://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon) videocasts which will be themed around Ada Lovelace day and also include the usual Q+A session. The videocast will be streamed live at **11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern / 6pm GMT/UTC**. You can watch it live [here](https://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon).

So, are you folks going to go and [pledge](https://findingada.com/) and blog?

My Q+A/Community Videocast: Now Weekly

Help Needed! Reviewing And Merging Patches

[Nigel Babu](https://justanothertriager.wordpress.com/) has been working to spread the word about gathering some community steam around patches in Ubuntu. We have an incredibly fortunate situation in Ubuntu where lots of people spend their time and effort producing patches which fix bugs, and they share their gifts with the project to help make Ubuntu better. With so many awesome people sharing patches, we have got behind in reviewing and merging these contributions.

Recently we have spent some time trying to get better visibility on patches in Ubuntu, and you [can read all about it here](https://blog.launchpad.net/bug-tracking/getting-patches-upstream). We now have an awesome patch view so we can see these contributions easier, we now just need to get these wonderful gifts reviewed and merged.

This leads me on to Nigel’s [efforts in raising awareness around this effort](https://justanothertriager.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/1801-bugs/). He writes:

> As of writing this post, there are 1801 bugs with patches attached in Launchpad that are not Fix Released or Fix Committed and do not have branches linked. This tells me 2 things: (1) There are some amazing contributors out there coming up with patches. (2) We have not been clearing up the backlog of bugs with patches attached.

> For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to change this situation by reviewing some of the bugs with patches attached. Well, we need help and everyone are welcome, especially people working towards being an Ubuntu Developer (like me). Patch review needs your help. Right now, we’re focussing on all the [bugs that have ubuntu-reviewers team subscribed](https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-reviewers/+subscribedbugs). This helps us get any potential patch in Lucid.

> If you want to help, check out the [Code Reviews wiki](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/CodeReviews). When stuck, pop by on #ubuntu-motu channel and mention you’re working on patch review and are stuck, I’m sure someone would be around to help you out.

> PS: Hello Planet Ubuntu, my first post after being an Ubuntu Member.

Thanks to Nigel (`nigelb` on freenode) for being so awesome in focusing on this, and I would love to encourage everyone to get involved. I am sure that if you are stuck where to start, Nigel would be happy to help. This is a great thing to spend the [Ubuntu Global Jam](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGlobalJam) doing next week too!

If in doubt, just head in `#ubuntu-reviews` on freenode IRC and ask there. Also feel free to ask questions in the blog comments here. Let’s rock this thing! 🙂