Visa, finally got it

Tuesday next week is my last working day and I’ll be gone for three weeks, without laptop. If you have anything really urgent, talk to any members of my team, Michael or Ara, they know how to get in touch with me.

I’m very much looking forward to this one and happy to meet Mehdi of the LoCo team there!

I’ll be back on 29th September.

• how friendly, encouraging and motivating people were: in a very short time I made lots of friends, people who are always there for me and I’d always be there for (extended family – kind of)
• how much I learned in a very short period of time (a state of constant “a-ha! moments”)
• the incredibly strong sense of opportunity: “if I fix this bug, I not only fix it for myself, but for millions of users”

After a few months I helped out new contributors myself, answered questions and tried to give them a similar experience as I had. Learning to do something great by experiencing it first hand. The great thing is that a lot of contributors already went ahead and became involved in upstream projects and Debian.

I’m extremely grateful I’m in a position where I can do this as part of my job.

I’ve been working on a few things in the last time that will hopefully give even more people that sense of opportunity and that sense of achievement soon. Please note that all of the items below are just happening because of “a little help from my friends”, I couldn’t have possibly pulled this off all on my own.

• Daily Builds documentation and testing: with Jorge Castro and others I went through the process of getting Daily Builds up and running, we documented it, found issues, reported them and thought about how it would make most sense to package maintainers, upstreams and users. So we set up a knowledge base as well, that should help upstreams and package maintainers to figure out when a daily builds makes sense, how to sell it to their users and what kind of preparation ios necessary.
• Harvest: I had the extreme pleasure of working with Dylan McCall on Harvest this cycle. It was an awesome experience. He chose Harvest as his Summer of Code project and directly dived into the hardest things first: instead of fixing small things here and there, he implemented a great user interface that’ll be great to use. I did quite a bit of code-review and fixed a bunch of bugs myself. It’s soon in a state where it can be deployed. With Harvest out there, it will be a lot easier to find things that need doing, get a good overview of outstanding work regarding a few packages you might care about and coordination/cooperation might actually be easier too.
• LoCo Directory: Starting from a vague idea we first just set up a place where LoCo teams could register themselves, then we added team events and then started making it pretty. At times I was hacking a lot on it, at other times doing lots of code reviews, but I’m very glad to see that more and more people are starting to help out and implementing their ideas and visions into it. It’s an amazing project and hopefully helps LoCo teams to coordinate their work and make people interested in Linux and Ubuntu open source enthusiasts and contributors by giving them that great first experience.
• Lots of Sponsoring/Code Review: I still feel this is the best way to help out new contributors on their way. By explaining how things are done (also when to better get stuff upstream first), how to do them better and guide them on their way to commit access/upload rights, you do Ubuntu and Open Source a great service. Make people feel welcome, help them out, by having a good experience with the process of fixing problems for millions of people you get contributors hooked up forever.
• Operation Cleansweep: Speaking of patches and code review: we have a huge backlog of patches that didn’t follow the process and need to be reviewed and forwarded to Debian and Upstream. The team reviewed heaps of patches and I was glad to be part of the initiative. I helped with the documentation, organisation of events and reviewed a couple of bugs myself. This is an awesome way to get involved and immediately make the whole open source world benefit.

There’s quite a lot of other things where I could be helpful too to keep the ball in the Ubuntu community rolling: as member of the Community Council I do bits of organisation here and there, within Canonical I often answer questions about Ubuntu development processes to new starters and development-unrelated teams, I helped organising the Ubuntu Global Jam, Ubuntu Developer Week and other events, thankfully found a team to take over the “Behind MOTU” interviews, helped with the organisation of Ubuntu’s participation in Google’s Summer of Code, that plus calls, heaps of mails, small and big arguments keep me quite busy.

I feel very privileged being in this position and hope I’m instrumental to the open source world at large. One thing’s for sure: I still immensely enjoy it.

Ubuntu Global Jam.

The Ubuntu Berlinians will meet in Berlin’s c-base on 29th August from 12:00 to 18:00. Please come and join us!

Original announcement below:

Freie Software lebt vom Mitmachen und das ist gar nicht so schwer, wie
man vielleicht erwartet. Zum vierten Mal ruft Ubuntu zum "Global Jam",
bei der weltweit helfende Hände an einem Tag gemeinsam an der
Verbesserung der freien Linux-Distribution Ubuntu arbeiten. Gesucht
werden dafür nicht nur technisch versierte Entwickler, sondern alle
Nutzer, die Fehler aufspüren, melden und prüfen wollen, Übersetzer, die
Software in andere Sprachen übertragen oder die Dokumentation
überarbeiten möchten.

Für alle diese Schritte gibt es einfache Softwarelösungen, die einem
viel Arbeit abnehmen und den Einstieg erleichtern. Alles was man braucht
ist also: etwas Zeit, die Fähigkeit, englische Texte zu verstehen und
Lust, einmal etwas an die Gemeinschaft zurückzugeben.

Bei einem Jam arbeitet man gemeinsam an einem Ort, hilft sich
gegenseitig bei offenen Fragen und Einstiegshürden und hat dabei
übrigens nicht wenig Spaß.

Der Berliner Teil des Ubuntu Global Bug Jams wird am 29. August von
12 bis 18 Uhr in der c-base stattfinden.

Da die c-base im Moment keine Desktoprechner zur Verfügung stellt,
sollten ein Notebook mitgebracht werden. Weitere Informationen gibt es
auf http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/team/265/detail/.

Adresse der c-base:
Rungestraße 20, 10179 Berlin
U-/S-Bahnhof Jannowitzbrücke

Anfahrt zur c-base:
http://wiki.c-base.org/coredump/AnfahrtsSkizze
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:C-Base_Map_1.png
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:C-Base_Map_2.png

Definitely going!

As you all know loads of teams around the globe meet this weekend and do great Ubuntu and Open Source work together. Ubuntu Jams are all about making Ubuntu and the open source world in general rock even harder. No matter which part of it you’re interested, be it Translations, Testing, QA work, Packaging, Docs or anything else, we want you to have fun with your local team!

I personally will join in on the fun in Berlin (announcement coming up soon) and will try to put a bit of work into Operation Cleansweep, a great initiative to get our backlog of patches under control. As you can see from this week’s report, it could do with getting some love:

Total bugs with patches: 2196 (-37)
Reviewed patches: 420 (+11)
---
Bugs with 'patch-needswork': 99 (+5)
Bugs with 'patch-forwarded-upstream': 177 (+3)
Bugs with 'patch-forwarded-debian': 62 (0)
Bugs with 'indicator-application': 39 (-2)
Bugs with 'patch-accepted-upstream': 56 (-1)
Bugs with 'patch-accepted-debian': 10 (0)
Bugs with 'patch-rejected-upstream': 18 (0)
Bugs with 'patch-rejected-debian': 3 (0)

If you’re interested in reviewing patches, check out the review guide and help the reviewers team out.

• Berkeley, California, USA
• Birmingham, UK
• Novosibirsk, Russia
• Cape Town, South Africa
• Caldes de Montbui, Spain
• Dublin, Ireland
• Saudi Arabia
• Managua, Nicaragua

Lots of other teams are discussing their events right now. We in Berlin will definitely be part of the fun.

András Bognár also worked on new Ubuntu Global Jam badges:

Awesome! Let your friends know! Get planning! This will be a weekend full of awesomeness!

Lately I think we’ve gotten in a collective funk of “here’s what I think about this.” followed by “Oh yeah, well here’s what I think of that”, and “Allow me to retort!” and then getting stuck in a rabbit hole of distractions.

So screw that, let’s share some stories[…]

Needless to say: Jorge is spot on!

A lot of people have been doing ROCKing work in the last few weeks and I never took the time to thank them:

• Dylan McCall has been doing amazing work on Harvest. (Dylan wrote about it too.) Harvest came a long way from a nice idea about aggregating packaging/fixing opportunities in Ubuntu and thanks to Dylan’s great work as part of his Google Summer of Code project arrived in the 21st century. We had lots of ideas at the last UDS (spec1, spec2) but instead of fixing small bits and pieces here and there, Dylan took on the harder job: giving Harvest a nice, consistent and usable interface. I’ll be a very happy man once we deployed it and it’s in active use. Dylan is great to work with: a great attention to detail, still pragmatic and a great sense of humour.
• The LoCo Directory hackers! It’s just amazing to see what people who are excited about the LoCo world manage to pull off. Lots of bugs fixed, lots of nice fixes got in. It’s a pleasure to work with everybody. Every time I reviewed a piece of code I learneed something new.
• Sponsors! A big big hug to people who review code for newcomers who can’t directly commit to Ubuntu themselves yet. The Hall of Fame currently lists these folks, who did a lot of sponsoring: Stefano Rivera, Benjamin Drung, Sebastien Bacher, Didier Roche, Timo Aaltonen, Jonathan Riddell, Martin Pitt. If you can, help out!

Seen in Berlin…

Next Ubuntu Bug Day will be all about Operation Cleansweep, which as you all know deals with reviewing patches and forwarding them to our Upstream partner projects.

Make sure you join #ubuntu-reviews and #ubuntu-bugs on next Thursday (2010-08-12). It will be a great time to get involved in Ubuntu!

Stats from last week (we can do a lot better, so join us on Thursday and get involved!):

Total bugs with patches: 2286 (-27)
Reviewed patches: 379 (-9)
---
Bugs with 'patch-needswork': 94 (+1)
Bugs with 'patch-forwarded-upstream': 163 (-5)
Bugs with 'patch-forwarded-debian': 51 (-2)
Bugs with 'indicator-application': 41 (-1)
Bugs with 'patch-accepted-upstream': 49 (-3)
Bugs with 'patch-accepted-debian': 11 (0)
Bugs with 'patch-rejected-upstream': 16 (+1)
Bugs with 'patch-rejected-debian': 2 (0)

UGJ - I'm going!

I’m SO looking forward to the Ubuntu Global Jam. Up until now we have 4 events registered:

• Berkeley, California, USA
• Dublin, Ireland
• Saudi Arabia
• Caldes de Montbui, Catalonia, Spain

and I talked to a number of people already who are planning additional events. This will be SWEET!

While there’s numerous activities you can dive into on a Jam event, I’d love to see a lot of work being put into Operation Cleansweep. If dealing with patches is nothing new to you, you’d do Ubuntu and the broader open source community a huge favour.

Here the Cleansweep stats of last week:

Total bugs with patches: 2313 (+30)
Reviewed patches: 388 (+10)
---
Bugs with 'patch-needswork': 93 (+3)
Bugs with 'patch-forwarded-upstream': 168 (+4)
Bugs with 'patch-forwarded-debian': 53 (+2)
Bugs with 'indicator-application': 42 (0)
Bugs with 'patch-accepted-upstream': 52 (+2)
Bugs with 'patch-accepted-debian': 11 (-1)
Bugs with 'patch-rejected-upstream': 15 (-1)
Bugs with 'patch-rejected-debian': 2 (0)

1. Party was outdoors, a few DJs played, great atmosphere, 100+ people at peak times
2. Some of my awesome office mates were there, my sister too
3. The police showed up and instead of shutting the party down, they told us where it was “OK” to have the party
4. We moved all the equipment, the generator, drinks and everything else to the new place, which was nearby, everybody helped
5. I played a 4 hour Drum’n'Bass set, which I (and others) were very happy with, they even collected money for the DJ – glad it was dark, so nobody could see if I was blushing
6. I watched the sunrise by the riverside while the party was still going on
7. I drove home on my bicycle
8. A few guys stopped me to take a picture of them and as a thanks offered me their last beer

Oh how I love this city!

Ok, so it’s Ubuntu Global Jam. What does that mean? What’s going to happen?

Simple. It’s going to happen what you make happen. Whatever your team enjoys doing is great. The only requirements are: it needs to be fun and it should make Ubuntu better somehow.

Ok. What does that mean?

We had loads of different jams around the world already: events where people get together locally and make Ubutnu better by working on bugs, packaging, translations, documentation, testing, upgrading or whatever else they enjoy doing.

In the past we had events all around the globe, where new friends met for the first time, people learned from each other, people from other open source projects were invited and where everybody (most importantly) had a fantastic time.

If your LoCo team already knows when and where it’s going to happen, add the event to the LoCo Directory. We set up the event on loco.ubuntu.com already.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams has lots of information on how to to organise the event properly, and what kind of preparation your team mates should look into depending on what your team wants to do. Stay tuned for tuition sessions where you can ask all your questions. A good place for getting that information is of course loco-contacts or ubuntu-event-planners.

If you’re part of a LoCo team, please bring it up with your team, talk to them, find out what they like, meet and make Ubuntu rock even harder.