Jaunty Release Parties
Ladies and gents, this week is a big week for Ubuntu. As we build toward the release of **Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope** on Thursday April 23rd 2009, final preparations are being put in place.
While there is much going on right now I just wanted to focus your attention in this particular post on [Release Parties](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JauntyReleaseParties). At the time of writing we have **92** release parties happening all over the world! Thanks to everyone who is participating in organising and joining these parties: we have already broken our record for the number of parties organised for a release. At the start of this cycle my goal was for us to break the **100* party milestone and we are so close to this record we can taste it! So, if there is no party in your area on [this page](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JauntyReleaseParties), go and organise one and add it. We can do this, friends. 🙂
Also, I would love to see just how many group photos we can get for these parties. To do this just get as many people as you can to stand against a wall, get someone to take a photo and put it online on Flickr / Picasa etc and tag it with `ubuntu`, `release`, `party`, `2009`, `9.04` and `jaunty`. I am also planning to build a montage of these group photos, so would appreciate if you folks could email at `jono AT ubuntu DOT com` with a link to your group photo and the name of the LoCo team and location of the party. Thanks, folks!
Interviewed on FLOSSWeekly
A few weeks back I had the pleasure of doing an interview on the rather excellent [FLOSSWeekly](https://twit.tv/floss65) podcast with Leo Laporte and Randal Schwartz. On it I talk Community, [Ubuntu](https://www.ubuntu.com/), [Art Of Community](https://www.artofcommunityonline.org/), [Canonical](https://www.canonical.com/), [Severed Fifth](https://www.severedfifth.com/) and more. Check it out [here](https://twit.tv/floss65).
First Videocast Tomorrow
Quick note: tomorrow (Wed 15th April) at 11am Pacific I will be doing my first real live video cast [here](https://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon) discussing various topics including [Ubuntu](https://www.ubuntu.com/), the Jaunty release, [Art Of Community](https://www.artofcommunityonline.org/) and the [Community Leadership Summit](https://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/).
I will also be fielding your community questions in the video cast: you can ask them in the chat channel that is on that page. Hope to see you there!
Community Leadership Summit 2009
Just a quick message to let you all know that today I announced the [Community Leadership Summit 2009](https://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/) on the **18th and 19th July 2009** in San Jose, California. The event takes place the weekend before [OSCON](https://en.oreilly.com/oscon2009) in the same venue: the [San Jose McEnery Convention Center](https://www.sanjose.org/meetings/facilities/convention.php).
The goal is simple: if those passionate about building great communities can get together to compare notes and discuss and debate these topics, we will all benefit from better communities.
The summit gathers together community managers, leaders and organizers as well as the projects, organizations, commercial vendors, ISVs and others who have an interest in building a strong and enabled community. The purpose of the event is to get everyone together to talk about the many nuances of building strong and effective community, such as governance, creating collaborative environments, conflict resolution, transparency, open infrastructure, social networking, commercial investment in community, engineering vs. marketing approaches to community leadership and more.
The event is very much a summit: it’s primary focus is around discussion. It will be run in the style of an *unconference*; a clear and open schedule in which attendees can volunteer sessions and engage with other attendees. This will ensure the summit packs in a healthy chunk of diversity, covering a wide range of topics and perspectives. In addition to the discussions the summit will feature some scheduled presentations, panel discussions and social events.
The event is entirely **free**, but you need to pre-register [here](https://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/register/). You can read more about the event at [www.communityleadershipsummit.com](https://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/).
In its first day day many community managers have signed up to attend such as Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier (OpenSuSE Community Manager – Novell), Dave Neary (GNOME Foundation Board Member – Neary Consulting), Brian Proffitt (Community Manager – Linux Foundation), David “Lefty†Schlesinger (Linux Foundation Mobile Advisory Board, GNOME Foundation), Karsten Wade – (Fedora Community Leader – Red Hat) and John Mark Walker (Community Manager – Collab.net). Rock and roll. 🙂
The Fourth Horseman Steps Forward
Ladies and Gents, I am tickled pink to announce the latest horseman to join my team at [Canonical](https://www.canonical.com/). His name is David Planella and he will be our new *Ubuntu Translations Coordinator*. He will join Daniel Holbach and Jorge Castro on the team.
David has a strong background in translations and development. He is an Ubuntu Catalan Team administrator and translator, a GNOME translator, Debian translator and had performed translation and coordination of several other projects through Softcatalà , a non-profit volunteer organisation for the promotion of the Catalan language in IT and the other technologies. Oh, and for kicks he is a core developer on the Linux `acx100` wireless driver. Rock and roll!
David joins the crew on the 6th April and our friends in the translations community will be seeing David more and more. Folks, give him a warm welcome!
Painting The Community Manager
Recently the tubes have been ablaze with chatter of where the somewhat popular topic of *community management* should fit into an organisation. When the coin is flipped, said chatterers have been debating whether to place their bets on either *Marketing* and *Engineering* as an apt destination for the reporting line. Do we expect our community managers and representatives to report to the Director Of Marketing or the Chief Technical Officer? More specifically, when you bring a community manager into your organisation, which of these two teams do you feel can most effectively support and enable a community builder to actually build a great community?
In recent months the word *community* has become quite the buzzword in the Open Source business world. Its presence is felt more and more at conferences, in papers, on blogs and across the current global Twitter sensation. Irrespective of the medium, this explosion of interest in community has happened for three closely interlinked reasons.
* Firstly, *community* is implicitly a positive word. It speaks of openness, participation, awareness, and an agreeable intention to engage in an environment driven by merit. For Open Source companies, this is powerful inferred meaning that speaks well to their audience. As such it makes entire sense for a company to light up their website like a Christmas tree with references to “*community*”.
* Secondly, *community* has become synonymous with “engagement in the Open Source space”. Open Source companies are fully aware that if they don’t have an answer for their community relations strategy, they simply won’t be taken seriously by a significant demographic of people. Whereas five years ago this demographic of people was often seen as strange hygienically-challenged bespectacled nerds who lived in their mother’s basement adorned with Buffy The Vampire Slayer posters, it is now well known that those with buying capacity and/or influence are placing importance in the community attributes of Open Source . These are *real* customers who have developed this value expectation due to the constantly re-enforced Open Source mantra of participation, community and technical quality. When the industry cradles Open Source and its associated values, the big cats in the ecosystem need to adjust to reflect that.
* Finally, irksome economic times have resulted in very real consequences for small businesses. Executives have been forced to re-assess how they can achieve their goals and ambitions with a more painful awareness of the bottom line. Multiple Marketing and Engineering people can be expensive, a lot more expensive than a Community Manager.
The amalgamation of these attributes has presented a strong commercial justification of community and those who can build it, and a set of expectations around what these community builders can deliver. And here folks, lies the problem.
In every industry certain words that once had reasonably obvious illustrative attributes and consequences have subsequently become colloquial references. We have seen this extensively with trademarks: Aspirin, the Hoover, Cellophane, Thermos and even Heroin were all once trademarked to specific companies (Bayer, Hoover Company, DuPoint, Thermos GmbH and Friedrich Bayer & Co respectively). Using Hoover as an example, in England many people will refer to any brand of vacuum cleaner as a “hoover”. At one point in time a “hoover” though would point to a very specific representation of focus, quality and expectation in a vacuum cleaner that was driven by the Hoover Company. Since then the trademark has been somewhat genericized in different parts of the world and what some refer to as a “hoover” will often bear no actual resemblance to the focus, quality and expectation of a product that would come from the Hoover Company.
Similar risks around mis-guided expectations are arguably facing community managers. We need to be careful that with all of the buzz, focus and excitement around community management that we don’t step over, hide or downplay the very real day to day focus of this work in favour of academically pleasing social science. If we unseat this balance, we face the risk of genericizing community management as “the theory of working with groups of similar interests” as opposed to connecting the term firmly with hands-on best practise in building real communities that do real measurable work.
Recently much of the rhetoric around community has been presented in a generic and somewhat ethereal way. Many people have stood on many stages and many blog entries have been written by even more people that speak to the theoretical, buzz-word entrenched social architecture of community, but unfortunately fall short of the details of how they actually *build a community*. Of course, this theory and social science is hugely important and I would never wish to demote it’s piece of the picture, but it does represent a *piece* as opposed to the picture as a whole. The rest of the picture (in the Open Source space) is filled with the nuts and bolts of *collaboration*.
The essence of great Open Source community is in great collaborative processes, infrastructure and opportunities that help drive a united team of contributors in a shared direction. When your community can get their hands on freely available and powerful tools, simple and non-bureaucratic processes, have a world of great opportunities to contribute to in different, diverse and exiting ways, and have their contributions recognised, a powerful and productive community flourishes.
Getting back to the puzzle that we set out to explore at the start of this post, community management is a tale with both *Marketing* and *Engineering* story lines flowing through it. If one is missing, community can feel unbalanced, misrepresented and ineffective. We should always seek to celebrate and market the opportunities and importance of community, but that means nothing if you are not willing to roll up your sleeves and build and re-enforce the collaborative groundwork in your community.
My recommendation for the Open Source businesses uncertain of how to move forward: ensure your community manager is well versed in the mechanics and technical/social foundations of collaboration in Open Source communities and ensure he or she is able to strategically structure and execute on objectives that enable your community on the ground to do great work. Ensure your community manager has a close connection to your technical leaders, but also have a close connection with your marketing department to help them articulate and express your community story.
*Tiny Plug: Keep an eye out for my up and coming book on effective community management – the [Art Of Community](https://www.artofcommunityonline.org/) to be published by O’Reilly in Summer*.
Ubuntu Members Get Free LWN Subs
Good news, friends. From today [Canonical](https://www.canonical.com/) is contributing a new benefit to Ubuntu Membership: a complimentary subscription to the rather glorious [Linux Weekly News](https://lwn.net/). Our friends in Debian have been doing this for a while, and we thought this could be an excellent gesture too.
To enjoy this benefit you need to be a member of the Ubuntu project. You can then follow this devilishly simple process to switch on your free subscription:
* Apply for an account at LWN [by clicking here](https://lwn.net/newaccount).
* Send a mail to my friend and yours Rachael at rachael.tripp (at) canonical dot com (preferably using your ubuntu.com address) asking for a subscription sponsorship. This email MUST contain:
* Your LWN username
* Your Launchpad username.
* Rachael will then go and double check you are a member and not telling porkies.
* You will receive an email when the subscription has been accepted and is ready to roll (or read).
More details about this and other membership related benefits are [here](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership).
Enjoy!
Ubuntu 9.04 Free Culture Showcase Winners!
Ladies and Gents, I am pleased to announce the results of the Ubuntu 9.04 [Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase). This is the competition in which creative types can submit their work for inclusion in the `Examples/` folder of the next edition of Ubuntu. In this competition we expanded the *Audio* and *Video* categories to also include a *Graphic/Photo* category too. We netted a fantastic range of entries and many great submissions!
Our submissions list was then assessed by our esteemed community judging panel and they made selections from each category. This final set of selections was then voted on by the Ubuntu Community Council to find our winners. I would like to thank everyone for participating and congratulate each of the winners for having their work about to be delivered to millions of Jaunty desktops. 🙂
Without further ado, onto the winners!
## Audio: Jean Francois Marais
* **WINNING ENTRY**: [Invocation](https://moshang.net/MoShang-Invocation.ogg)
South African bred and Taiwan based sound jeweler MoShang polishes rough audio diamonds and melds them with traditional Asian instruments and laid-back beats. In addition to his commercial releases, MoShang has made a remix album available for free download (Asian Variations – 2007) and was heavily involved as musician and producer with the free CABACA album by the CC Asia Band (2008). He has won a South African award for his music to the short film Angels in a Cage (2000) and his music has been featured in the HDTV Discovery Channel production Fantastic Festivals Of The World.
About the entry:
> “I started the track Invocation early in 2008 with an eye to expanding my usual Chinese-based sonic palette with the addition of traditional Japanese instruments. I kicked it around some, but was only inspired to finish it after my first visit to Japan to attend the 2008 iCommons Summit in Sapporo and released the track on the Stone Bell EP towards the end of 2008. It opens with a tribal feel thanks to hira-daiko and shime-daiko drumming, and also features shakuhachi and male vocals in the Esashi Oiwake style of Hokkaido island”.
## Video Category: Robbie Ferguson
* **WINNING ENTRY**: [Spirit Of Ubuntu](https://blip.tv/file/get/Category5-SpiritOfUbuntu595.ogv)
Former radio announcer, Robbie Ferguson hosts Category5 Technology TV; a live, weekly TV-style broadcast that answers technology questions for a global audience. With roughly 50,000 viewers per week through their video podcast alone, the show has quickly (albeit unofficially) become a popular resource for both seasoned and rookie Ubuntu users. Robbie is happily married with two young children. He has been a respected professional in the technology field for many years, and is currently a senior web developer at an IT firm, where he spends his professional time coding advanced PHP applications and wooing other employees toward Ubuntu.
About the entry:
> “When good friend Alan Pope (Ubuntu UK Podcast) suggested I post an entry in the Free Culture Showcase, I thought it was a great idea. I did wonder what I could possibly give to such a project? After all, my show is a live question-and-answer broadcast with no “production,” and no script. So when it came down to sitting in front of the cameras to put something together, I decided to just “be myself,” and speak candidly on my thoughts about the Ubuntu community; because when it comes down to it, I am really just another Ubuntu user”.
## Graphic/Photo: William J McKee Jr
* **WINNING ENTRY**: [Canadian Clouds](https://fc30.deviantart.com/fs38/i/2008/334/4/e/Canadian_Clouds_by_m0deth.jpg)
William considers himself your typical down to earth guy, fascinated with technology, nature, and how the two can meet sometimes with beautiful results. He has lived most of his life on the east coast, traveled a little, enough to appreciate the beauty we live in. Photography is still just a secondary hobby for him, but has always interested him.
About the shot:
> “I snapped this, just over the border into Canada from NY. My wife was driving, and I happened to notice the clouds in one area were about to cut some light off, this usually looks good if you are fortunate enough to be in the right place/time. I took out our Canon Powershot Pro 1, and zoomed in, through the windshield of the car, and snapped a couple off. I got lucky with this one, although some editing of contrast was done, which brought out the color nicely. Even almost ruined shots can look good some of the time!”
Thanks also to [Keith Worrell](https://launchpad.net/~keith-penguin) and [Endolith](https://launchpad.net/~endolith) for some of the patches and branches involved in the Example Content package.
The Big Ubuntu Brainstorm Braindump
One of the facilities that has been hugely popular in the Ubuntu community has been [Ubuntu Brainstorm](https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/). With Brainstorm you can register ideas and features for the Ubuntu project and others can vote those ideas up or down. There are also tools in Brainstorm to indicate potential solutions or notes around the idea. Brainstorm has become a great way to get an idea of what our users want.
As we build towards the 9.10 release cycle, I figured it would be useful to present a summary of the most popular ideas of all time and the most popular ideas within the last six months: thanks to Jorge for helping me with this. This should offer some great food for thought for the wider community to work on. Here goes…
## Most Popular Ever
These ideas are the most popular Brainstorm ideas that exist in the system. They show a pretty strong sense of demand for which features many Ubuntu users are craving.
### Fix suspend/hibernate
On 28 Feb 08 – 7053 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/94/
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/jaunty-suspend-resume
### Speed up ubuntu/gnome boot time
On 28 Feb 08 – 6208 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/42/
* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/Specs/BootPerformance
* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/Specs/BootPerformance
### Easy mounting of images and ISO and CUE
On 28 Feb 08 – 5647 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/194/
### Clean up preferences and administration
On 28 Feb 08 – 5620 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/80/
### Improved file/folder sharing experience
On 29 Feb 08 – 5142 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/403/
* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EasyFileSharing
### Fix compatability with webcams and microphone
On 28 Feb 08 – 5116 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/97/
* https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Webcam
### Enhanced Mobile Device Sync
On 28 Feb 08 – 4301 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/28/
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ltsp-palm-devices
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/pim-device-sync
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/pocket-pc-support
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/pda-support-out-of-the-box
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/syncintegration
### Better wifi support
On 29 Feb 08 – 4273 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/295/
### Easy way of backing up/moving your documents and settings
On 28 Feb 08 – 3497 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1/
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/jaunty-backup
### Disk Manager by default
On 29 Feb 08 – 3167 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/323/
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/disk-manager-by-default
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/fstab-gui
### Mouse button extension
On 28 Feb 08 – 3121 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/120/
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/gui-mouse-configuration
### Better Hardware Profile Manager
On 16 Mar 08 – 2482 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4848/
### Better DVD support
On 29 Feb 08 – 2347 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/372/
### Better monitor support and configuration tools
On 29 Feb 08 – 2337 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/322/
* https://blog.qa.ubuntu.com/node/9
### Professional looking boot loader
On 28 Feb 08 – 5859 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/21/
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/plymouth
### Restoring the bootloader by Ubuntu installation CD
On 29 Feb 08 – 3740 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1242/
### Include a graphical frontend to edit `/boot/grub/menu.lst` installed by default
On 28 Feb 08 – 2759 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/141/
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/graphical-grub-config
Some recommended solutions (startupmanager is in universe):
* Start Up Manager – https://web.telia.com/~u88005282/sum/
* GRUBConf – https://grubconf.sourceforge.net/
* GRUBEd – https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t#228104
* KGRUBEditor – https://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content#75442
### Provide a simple interface for labeling partitions
On 3 May 08 – 2506 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/8008/
### Make ubuntu more responsive (performance)
On 28 Feb 08 – 2316 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/85/
### GUI configuration front end for common services
On 28 Feb 08 – 1813 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/68/
## Most Popular over the last 6 months
These are the most popular ideas that have been registered in Brainstorm in a recent cycle. Many of these ideas give a great impression of more recent desires around functionality in Ubuntu.
### Check my hardware against application blackists BEFORE ‘upgrading’
On 12 Jan 09 – 1653 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17218/
### Better life battery for laptop
On 3 Feb 09 – 646 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17825/
### Volume control should close when you click somewhere else
On 14 Feb 09 – 829 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/18045/
### Redesign ubuntu for 2010
On 21 Jan 09 – 773 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17540/
### Allow ALT+Tab when drag and drop
On 4 Jan 09 – 753 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17042/
### “Scan wireless networks” option in NetworkManager
On 29 Jan 09 – 750 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17725/
* https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id#498887
### Easy screen-sharing and audio-chat for instant messengers
On 7 Jan 09 – 743 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17102/
* https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/replace-pidgin-with-empathy
* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EmpathyVsPidginUsability
### There should be a simple GUI to do basic disk maintanence tasks
On 30 Dec 08 – 723 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/16919/
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/DeviceKit
### When abbreviating filenames, cut out the middle, keep the beginning and end
On 19 Nov 08 – 720 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15752/
### Guest account needs a change
On 19 Nov 08 – 690 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15773/
### Make System Monitor as powerful as Windows Task Manager
On 24 Sep 08 – 682 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/13626/
### “Speed up” Ubuntu by reducing duration of Compiz animations
On 3 Jan 09 – 664 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17009/
### Automatic handling of external monitor
On 20 Jan 09 – 647 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17509/
### ubuntu main menu icons are too big, they take too much space
On 30 Jan 09 – 594 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17748/
### Native Firefox on Ubuntu is even slower than on Wine
On 21 Jan 09 – 767 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/18058/
* https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Building_with_Profile-Guided_Optimization
### Synaptic/Apt-Get should check for free disk space before download or install
On 15 Sep 08 – 669 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/13235/
### Unify sound drivers and the sound api
On 22 Oct 08 – 661 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/14682/
### Usplash should use a time-based progressbar
On 18 Nov 08 – 578 Votes
* https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/15741/
Something in this big ‘ol list strike your fancy? Well, roll your sleeves up and start making plans for the Karmic cycle. Lets see how many of these features and problems we can fix. Start your engines folks… 🙂
Quickies
Working like an animal right now, hence little in the way of blogging. I am microblogging where I can though on [my Twitter](https://twitter.com/jonobacon) and [my identi.ca](https://identi.ca/jonobacon) feeds (using the excellent Gwibber).
Some real quick links before I get back to the grind-stone:
* I recently did two interviews, one with [OSTATIC](https://ostatic.com/blog/talking-community-with-ubuntus-jono-bacon) and one with [LinuxQuestions](https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/interviews-28/interview-with-jono-bacon-ubuntu-community-manager-712635/).
* Now is the time to start getting your Jaunty Release Party organized! See the current list of parties [here](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JauntyReleaseParties) and find out how to organize your own [here](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BuildingCommunity/RunningReleaseParty)!
* UDS Sponsorship results will be forthcoming over the next week or so.
* I will be participating in a panel at the [Linux Collaboration Summit](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/events/collaboration) from the 8th – 10th April.
And quick thoughts:
* Snow-mobiling is incredible fun. Tahoe is beautiful.
* I am back in England and in London from the 19th – 25th April. Fancy meeting up?
* Jaunty is rocking. Upgrade and report bugs!
* Brainstorm report to focus ideas around Karmic is coming. Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase results are coming!