Monday, August 13, 2007
Announcing: Ubucon Germany
For further info, see these links:
Ubucon Germany Home - register here
Ubuntu.com wiki page - includes links to brainstorming sessions
Blog post (in English) on the Ubucon Germany
Announcement on the Ubuntu Fridge
And of course, what would a Ubucon be without...
#ubucon-de - IRC channel on freenode.net
Edit: Oops - I corrected the IRC channel. I had erroneously listed it as #ubucon
Monday, February 26, 2007
The Ubucon is Covered in eWeek
It focused on Jay Sulzberger and Steve George, which covered the last 1.5 hours of the event. I wonder how much of the event the author had a chance to see?
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The Great Ubucon Write-up
I started things off with my usual "tell us your Ubuntu story, because I don't have enough things to say to make this interesting." I try to get people to speak up, because really, the success of the event depends on people sharing their stories for everyone else. For those who were present, we were privileged to have Mako Hill, who brought the latest prototype from the OLPC and gave the audience an overview of the Ubuntu community. Gerals Carter, SAMBA man extraordinaire, presented on interoperability with SAMBA. Rocky had a nice session going in the breakout room on command-line tools and debuggers. Mako had a breakout session on Debian packaging, which I'm sad to have missed, as I could use some pointers! Selso had a great session on Linux graphics tools - Gimp, Inkscape and Blender. Bradley Kuhn was kind enough to come by and talk about the Software Freedom Law Center. Fabian Rodriguez led a question and answer session on Ubuntu support. At some point, we had a bit of controlled chaos called a key-signing party... speaking of which, I need to sign my keys and send them out! Somewhere in the breakout room, Joey Stanford led a small group of brave people in a breakout session on Launchpad. And while that was still going on, Jay Sulzberger decided he had waited long enough and started in on his talk - on free software history and how it came to be. It was a perfect way to end the day.
Actually, the perfect way to end the day would have been over drinks with the others, but alas, I was unable to follow directions and I'll have to take a rain check for next time.
It turns out that some folks are interested in creating an Ubuntu LoCo team for New York, and I hope that comes to pass. Another good thing is that one individual managed to make good use of the event to become a card-carrying certified member of the Ubuntu community. And that, my friends, is what it's all about.
I'm happy to tell you that there will be more and more Ubucons in the future, with one in Sevilla currently in the works.
For now, you can still take a look at the wiki pages for the Ubucon New York. It won't be there forever, so visit it while you still can. There will be videos posted in the very near future, and I'll update this blog once those are online. If you're interested in putting on your own Ubucon, there are folks willing to help out. Come on down...
-John Mark
Monday, February 05, 2007
Be an UbuCon Evangelist!
UbuCon Speakers: Bradley Kuhn, Jay Sulzburger, Mako Hill, and more
Update: Google Logistics
Google's NYC office is located at 76 9th Avenue in Chelsea, Manhattan, between 8th and 9th Avenue and 15th and 16th Street. Please enter the building on the northwest side (16th Street & 9th Avenue). A Google representative will be on hand to greet you, provide you with a building badge, and direct you to the 8th floor.Note that we will have to supply video cameras if we want to record any sessions. Please let us know if you would like to volunteer for this - we will set you up with the Google AV staff to discuss logistics.
To get to Google New York, take the A/C/E or L subway to 14th Street, and exit onto 8th Avenue. Alternatively, the 1/2/3 subway lines and M11, M14, and M20 buses service the surrounding area. If you are driving, the closest parking lot is located in the building, accessible from 15th or 16th Street.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Registration and More
We've also added a section for proposed session topics to the conference schedule page, including hours for the Ubucon NY. If you'd so like to give a talk at the Ubucon NY, add your thoughts to this page. In true unconference style, we'll finalize the agenda following the opening remarks.
For folks hoping to share a ride from the airport, find housing or organize another activity around the Ubucon, we've added a meetups page. Subscribe to this page for updates and use this page to organize anything you want before or after the conference; we'll use the mailing list for planning any activities during the day.
See you tomorrow at 6 PM Eastern for the first Ubucon NY IRC planning meeting - #ubucon on irc.freenode.net.
Cheers,
Leslie Hawthorn, wearing both my Ubuntu and Google hat
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
The UbuCon New York Wiki
Moving Ahead With the UbuCon New York - February 16
Visit the wiki
Join the mailing list
And stop by #ubucon on irc.freenode.net. We will have the first IRC get-together for anyone interested on Friday, January 26 at 6pm ET.
Misunderstandings of Mark Shuttleworth
I think his [Mark's] main point is that it's difficult to get a polished, end-user friendly product out of the other guys. I agree that the "going from shrink-wrap to shrink-wrap" is a bogus comment, but I don't think that was the real point. The real point is that he's slamming other community editions and stating that Ubuntu is a better supported and more polished community distro.I happen to agree - not because Ubuntu is perfect, which it certainly is not, but because I'm a former Fedora user who was ultimately frustrated by the lack of devotion to something that actually worked for end-users.
I agree that Red Hat has every right to charge for services and must do that in order to survive. I think Mark is just trying to position Ubuntu favorably against the other guys. Whether he's successful at that is another question. IMHO, Linux supporters and distros will have to work very very hard to offer a compelling reason for Windows users and sysadmins to switch, and I don't feel that the current tactics of either Red Hat or Novell do that. In my mind, they have to have a compelling community edition in order to seed the earth in preparation for enterprise upselling.
I have long been a proponent of Ubuntu's community-based approach, mostly because I feel that the larger distributions get it wrong and aren't really helping win more market share for Linux.
Viva la Ubuntu!
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Announcing The UbuCon NY!!!!
Live on the Edge! Install Edgy Beta!
"Edgy Edge" will be the next version of Ubuntu, and it's scheduled to ship this month. Kudos to the Ubuntu folks for sticking with the original release schedule - as you may recall, 6.06 was orginally supposed to be 6.04, but then it was delayed for 2 months. Sticking to Ubuntu's mandated 6-month release cycle means that Edge will be 6.10, although I don't think anyone would give them too much grief if they had decided to make this one 6.12 instead. Confused? Meh, just download it and don't worry about it :@)
Relax... don't worry...
:D :D :D