Daniel Holbach is happy to announce the third Ubuntu Developer Week.

From Jan 19th to Jan 23rd we’re going to have loads of awesome sessions where Ubuntu developers share their secret of success, spend time answering all of your questions, help you to get involved. It’s an awesome opportunity to get started, get to know a lot of people and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

A lot of things are going to stay the same: we’ll have top-class talkers, top-notch talks and time for asking lots and lots of questions. One thing I’m totally excited about is this one: we’ll have a two-hour Getting Started session in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Fantastic! If English is not your mother tongue and you’d like to know a bit more about how it all works to feel comfortable, this is your opportunity to ask your questions.

The timetable:

Day 1

• Getting Started — This is a true novelty and is going to be awesome. We’ll have an action-packed two-hour session to get you started for UbuntuDeveloperWeek and getting you all set up for developing Ubuntu. Be sure to bring questions. Sounds good? It gets better: we’ll have the session in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish at the same time. (English: #ubuntu-classroom, host: James Westby, French: #ubuntu-fr-classroom, host: Dider Roche, German: #ubuntu-classroom-de, host: Daniel Holbach, Italian: #ubuntu-classroom-it, host: Devid Antonio Filoni, Spanish: #ubuntu-classroom-es, contact: Nicolas Valcarcel)
• Packaging 101 — MOTU Daniel Holbach will talk you through the bare-bone structure of an Ubuntu package and how to get there the easiest way.
• Working well with Debian — Debian is our most important upstream project. In their session Nicolas Valcarcel and Barry deFreese will demonstrate how to best collaborate with Debian, how to send patches to Debian, the workflow and what’s important. Barry is a Debian Developer as well, so together they’ll surely be able to answer all open questions.
• Understanding GNOME Technologies — Dbus? Gconf? GNOME Libraries? Huh? TedGould will give a one-hour session to explain which layer is necessary for what and what exactly they do. If you’re excited about GNOME and want to start participating in the Desktop world, this is a great place to be.

Day 2

• Launchpad Bug Tracking — Launchpad developer Tom “intellectronica” Berger is going to be there to talk about Launchpad Bug Tracking. This is an awesome opportunity to ask questions, understand how Launchpad Bugs, formerly known as “Malone” works, how to use it and how it is developed.
• QA Tools — We’ll stay on the QA side of things for a bit and Ara Pulido will talk a bit about QA tools. If you’re interested in quality assurance, bug management and making our beloved distro better, this is your opportunity to learn the tricks and help out.
• Stop Screen-Scraping, Use the Launchpad Web Service API — Launchpad Web Service API specialist Leonard Richardson will be there to talk you through using launchpadlib, a fantastic, easy-to-use python module that will make your life a lot lot easier. No more screen-scraping, get the data from Launchpad easily.
• Creating high-quality updates — Ever wondered how the Security team works? What CVEs are, what embargoing is, how security updates are prepared and tested? This is your opportunity to talk to Jamie, Kees and Marc and find out more.
• Debugging program crashes — Ubuntu hacker Martin Pitt is probably in the best position to talk about examining program crashes. He wrote apport which uploads debug information of program crashes to Launchpad, wrote the tool that examines the dump and adds debug info to it and has looked at thousands of crash reports in his life. Start fixing program crashes, Martin tells you how.

Day 3

• Pushing out GNOME releases to millions of users — He never takes a rest, some think he’s actually a team of three people. Right, it’s Sebastien “sebuild” Bacher I’m talking about. He has largely been responsible for keeping large parts of GNOME in shape and he’s doing a fantastic job. Learn how to help out in Desktop land and learn all his tricks.
• Fixing Bugs in Ubuntu — We all want to make Ubuntu better, but where to start? The answer is Harvest, a great tool to find easy tasks. Daniel Holbach will pick a few easy tasks and demonstrate what to do about them. It’s not hard to help out and make Ubuntu better. Really!
• Bazaar for packaging — James “Merge Proposal” Westby is in a very good position to talk about the topic: he wrote bzr-builddeb, a fantastic tool to automate tasks around building packages, he’s involved in the Bazaar community and a very active MOTU. Make things easy: maintain packages in Bazaar.
• Kubuntu Bug Squishing — You love Ubuntu with the big K? So does Jonathan Thomas. He’s unstoppable, he knows his stuff and he knows how to get you started helping out in Kubuntu land! Awesome!
• Using VMBuilder to create tests environments — Søren Hansen and Nicolas Barcet will entertain you with virtual machines and the fantastic vmbuilder. Need a clean test environment for something? Don’t want to run the latest development release on actual hardware yet? These two fine men have the answer for you.

Day 4

• Automated Desktop Testing — Ara Pulido is up again and will talk to you about testing the Desktop in an automated fashion. Write just a few lines of Python code to test your application in an automated way and find regressions quickly. Fantastic!
• Ubuntu Netbook Remix Q&A — Excited about Ubuntu mobile? Heard of great new Netbooks running Ubuntu? Neil Patel (and friends) are going to be there to talk to you about exactly that. Bring questions, get excited, get involved!
• Boot performance — Ubuntu hacker Scott James Remnant will lead this session and give you insights into what’s happening to make Ubuntu boot faster. Find out more about the plumbing, find out how to test things, measure and improve Ubuntu.
• Kubuntu Ninja’s - Packagers in Unicorn mode — This is by far the most melodramatic session title. One hour with Kubuntu hackers to find out what it’s all about! One thing’s for sure: Harald Sitter and Stephen Stalcup and talk to you about Kubuntu Packaging and how best to do it. It’s going to be great!
• Packaging software for Mono, for great justice — Jo Shields and Debian Mono team expert Mirco Bauer are going to be around to talk Mono. How it’s packaged, why it’s so great and how you can help out.

Day 5

• Testing your .deb with piuparts — Lars Wirzenius is back again and will talk to you about piuparts, an awesome tool to test not just the installability of your package, but also if it does it all in a clean way. Keep installations clean, use piuparts!
• Fun with python-apt — The unstoppable Michael Vogt brought a lot of awesome programs to Ubuntu. A lot of them use python-apt. Find out why it’s so great and how it can make your life easier.
• Bazaar and Launchpad - How to do it — There’s a good reason why Bazaar and Launchpad are so tightly integrated: because it’s awesome and because it makes maintaining your open source project really really easy. Paul Hummer and Martin Albisetti spent a lot of time to making this integration as great as it is today and they’ll talk to you about it.
• Packaging Kernel modules with DKMS — Kernel hacker Ben Collins has been around in Ubuntu for a long time and has taken good care of making sure that all hardware runs as seamless as it does today. DKMS is the best thing since sliced bread when it comes to maintaining separate Kernel modules in Ubuntu. He’ll show you how to do it.
• Xubuntu — Cody Somerville and the Xubuntu team invite you to one hour of Xubunturama. Get involved, find out why it’s so great and what you can do to make it better.

Do us a favour and help spread the word everywhere. DIGG THIS.

We are really pleased to announce Ubuntu Open Week!

Ubuntu Open Week is a week of IRC tuition and Q+A sessions all about getting involved in the rock-and-roll world that is the Ubuntu community. We organise this week for the beginning of a new release cycle to help new contributors get involved. Thanks to Jorge for helping to get the week together and for everyone who is helping to run sessions. Its going to be a fun week!

So, the most important details first - Ubuntu Open Week happens from Mon 3 Nov - Fri 7 Nov and takes place in #ubuntu-classroom on the Freenode IRC network. You can use a program such as XChat-GNOME in Ubuntu to connect and get involved.

So which sessions are scheduled? Well, the timetable is available here and the sessions include:

Monday

• Introduction and Welcome - Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community manager, will kick off the week with a short welcome and give you a quick tour of what to expect during OpenWeek.
• Ubuntu behind the Scenes - You have some ideas and want to see them included in Ubuntu but don’t know how or just wondered how the ubuntu developers make this awesome distro, this is the right place to know what happens under the hood.
• Reporting and Fixing Kernel Bugs - Leann Ogasawara will touch on kernel bug reporting best practices and getting fixes incorporated into the Ubuntu kernel.
• Ubuntu on Ultra Mobile PCs - Oliver Grawert will explain the ins and outs of getting Ubuntu on UMPCs
• Version Control with Bazaar - The very basics of using Bazaar. Learn how to take “snapshots” of your most important code and files..and how to roll back time to undo those changes.
• Bazaar: Beyond The Basics - Following on from Emma Jane Hogbin’s Bzr basics, DavidFutcher guides you through some of the more “advanced” Bzr topics.

Tuesday

• Edubuntu - Overview of the Edubuntu project, its purpose, and how you can get involved with this small, but vital community. “Do it for the kids”
• Packaging 101 - Daniel Holbach, who is very interested in the growth of the Ubuntu Development Community, will talk you through the bare bone essentials of Ubuntu’s source packages.
• Debian and Ubuntu - What is Debian? What is the importance of Debian to Ubuntu? How you can contribute to Debian?
• An Intrepid journey in Ubuntu Server land - a retrospective of the features that the Ubuntu Server team worked on during the last release cycle and an outlook on what will follow.
• Media Prodution on Ubuntu - A look at how Ubuntu can be used for all sorts of media, including photo processing and management, video capture and editing and audio recording and processing. This session will include a Q&A.

Wednesday

• Polishing a Package - Lots of packages in Ubuntu have outstanding bugs, and outstanding available patches. Emmet Hikory will demonstrate the process of ensuring that a package is the best it can be, including a review of available resources for package improvements.
• Ubuntu Netbook Remix Overview - Learn about Ubuntu’s offering for netbooks, with UNR Product Manager Pete Goodall and Engineers Bill Filler and Neil Patel.
• Upstreaming Bugs - Ubuntu is a collection of software from a multitude of upstream projects (Like GNOME, KDE, Linux, Xorg) that is put together and released every 6 months. In this talk I will talk about how you can help be a bridge between Ubuntu and these projects by ensuring that bugs, patches, and feedback gets from Ubuntu to them.
• Ubuntu Brainstorm Q+A, becoming moderator - You have some question about Ubuntu Brainstorm? You want to become moderator? This will be the right time to ask!

Thursday

• sabdfl Question and Answer - Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu will take questions from attendees in this two hour block.
• Wine - How to help with Wine, converting Windows applications into packages, Integrating Wine into the desktop.
• Verifying Stable Update (SRU) bugfixes - Walking through the process of verifying an update for released versions of packages.
• Cruft. What is it and why it sucks - An overview of cruft, how its made, how it is handled, what NBS is, how to do a removal
• Cruft Removal 101 Workshop - A crash course in removing cruft with actual packages staged in a PPA. Learn how to do from the pros.

Friday

• Fixing a bug in Ubuntu - it’s easier than you think - You want to get involved in Ubuntu, you’d like to fix a few bugs? Excellent, Daniel Holbach will show you how push the right buttons, talk to the right people and be part of the team.
• REVU Q+A - Open Q&A about http://revu.ubuntuwire.com (the website where new packages are reviewed for inclusion into Ubuntu).
• Translations and Internationalization with Launchpad - MikeRooney - A guide from start (an English-only application) to finish (a translated localized application) using Launchpad to coordinate and gather community translations.
• Kernel: From Intrepid to Jaunty - Ben Collins - A review of what the kernel team did different during intrepid’s development cycle, what we learned and what we plan to change in jaunty.
• Open Week Questions and Feedback - Jorge Castro - In this session we will get feedback from attendees on things you’d like to see in OpenWeek; what types of topics you would like to see next time and recommendations on how to make OpenWeek better.

The second Ubuntu Developer Week will be held from Sep 1st to Sep 5th in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net.

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‘There are Wiki docs, MOTU Videos, MOTU Interviews and we’re seeing more and more contributors each day. This is all good and well, but there’s nothing like talking to real people, asking real questions in a real-time environment.

‘The Ubuntu Developer Week is designed to give you an overview of what’s going on in the Ubuntu Developer world. Speak to the developers, learn, ask questions and finally realise “It’s true, I *can* make a difference by helping out here.”

‘Let’s take a closer look at the sessions we have:

• Packaging 101 - MOTU Daniel Holbach will talk you through the bare-bone structure of an Ubuntu package and how to get there the easiest way.
• Upstream Bug Linkages - In his session Jorge Castro will demonstrate the importance of linking Upstream bugs, acting as a liaison with upstream projects and be an important tie between upstream projects and Ubuntu.
• Introduction to MOTU - Iulian Udrea has been very active in the MOTU team and will share his experiences with you and of course answer all your questions.
• Soyuz and all that Jazz - Celso Providelo is not only going to run one session, he’s going to run two. This is the second one and will get you up to scratch on Launchpad’s Distribution Management.
• Working with Ubuntu<->GNOME QA (tips&tricks) - Pedro Villavicencio is amazing. He’s from Chile, knows GNOME Bug numbers by heart and just generally a great guy. Obviously he’s in touch with the GNOME Bug Squad a lot, he will show you how to contribute to both Ubuntu, and GNOME at the same time.
• How do I fix an Ubuntu bug? - Daniel Holbach will take you on the journey from finding a bug to work on, the process of fixing it and getting it integrated into Ubuntu.
• Introduction to BZR - David Futcher has used bzr in his work on Ubuntu and will guide you on your way of learning one of the most important tools in today’s development ecosystem: distributed revision control.
• Kernel module packaging with DKMS - Mario Limonciello will talk you through state of the art kernel module packaging with DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support).
• Using the Launchpad Web Service API - Leonard Richardson and Barry Warsaw, two of the Launchpad hackers behind the Launchpad Web Service API will demonstrate a few examples and answer questions about the project that is hopefully going to put an end to all Launchpad screen-scraping.
• Launchpad Hacks - Brian Murray, Ubuntu’s bugmaster does bug triage, bug statistics and chearleading on #ubuntu-bugs at day and writes Greasemonkey scripts at night. He’s done a lot of useful little hacks that make Bug Triage quicker and more fun. He will show you how.
• bzr for packaging - After David Futcher’s session and if you’re into packaging, you should be ready to go for James Westby and the magic he will teach you. James is not only author of bzr-builddeb, but also heavily involved in DistributedDevelopment.
• How do I update a package properly - If that’s the question you’ve pondering yourself, MOTU and Mentoring Mastermind Cesare Tirabassi is your man. Updating, Building, Testing, Tips and Tricks all included in the session.
• Introduction to PPAs - Launchpad hacker Celso Providelo has put a lot of work into Soyuz and PPAs. He will explain how to make the best use of Personal Package Archives.
• Introduction to the Server Team - Mathias Gug of the Server Team is a brilliant guy - always around to help you get started in the Ubuntu’s server land, generally helpful and easy to work with. His session will show you where to get involved if you’re into Ubuntu and servers.
• Various ways to patch a package - Two great french contributors in the MOTU team, Christophe Sauthier and Didier Roche, are delivering this session: get ready to patch packages and make your changes fit neatly into existing packages.
• Automated Testing for the Desktop - Ara Pulido has been busy working on automated Desktop tests for Ubuntu and will show how to make best use of them, how to get started and what to bear in mind.
• A WebKit browser in PyKDE - You’re into KDE? Always wanted to start hacking? Jonathan Riddell is definitely your man: he’ll show you how much fun PyKDE is.
• Having fun with the Mozilla Team - Firefox, Extensions, Xulrunner, Thunderbird, etc is right up your alley? Alexander Sack and the Mozilla Team are the people you’re looking for.
• How to avoid making Archive Admins unhappy - Lots of changes Ubuntu Developers upload land directly in the archive admins for extra scrutiny checks. Steve Langasek gives the ultimate session to avoid common pitfalls and make archive admins enjoy their work with you.
• Ask Matt - Matt Zimmerman is not only amazing, he’s also technical leader of the Ubuntu project, CTO of Canonical, chair of the Technical Board and great at playing the guitar. We are happy to have him here to run a Q&A session with him.
• Unit testing Python code, with code coverage measurement - Debian and Ubuntu developer Lars Wirzenius is going to talk about code testing and code coverage measurement. If you want to learn how to write good code, make sure you don’t miss the session.
• Introduction to the Installer Team - Ever wondered how Ubuntu’s installer works? Did you ever think: “I’d really like to get involved there.”? This is your chance, meet Evan Dandrea.
• Introduciton to the Security Team - Kees Cook and Jamie Strandboge are amazing, they work day and night to keep your and your mom’s Ubuntu machine safe and secure. Want to get started in the Security world? Kees and Jamie will show you how.
• Kernel Discussion - We have Ben Collins here who will lead the Kernel discussion. Ever wanted to help out Ubuntu’s Kernel hackers? Ever wanted to know how you can get a foot into the door in the Kernel team? This is your chance.

Check out the timetable, how to join in and the “rules.”

Global Bug Jam, full steam ahead! Some bug jams are scheduled already, but there’s a lot more potential. What about YOU? Don’t you want to have the fun of your life at a Bug Jam nearby?

We have good news for you. We’ll have a bunch of “How to run a Bug Jam” IRC sessions in #ubuntu-meeting in the next few weeks. The main aim of these sessions is going to be to:

• get together
• find out what’s required to make your local Bug Jam kick arse
• coordinate the planning
• come up with great ideas on how to take the Global Bug Jam even further

Excited? Have your calendar ready?

• Friday, June 20th 16:00 UTC with Caspar Clemens Mierau and Daniel Holbach
• Saturday, June 21st 19:00 UTC with Greg Grossmeier and Jorge Castro
• Friday, July 4th 16:00 UTC with Caspar Clemens Mierau and Daniel Holbach
• Saturday, July 5th 19:00 UTC with Wolfger and Greg Grossmeier

We are totally excited and look forward to all the great ideas to make Bug Jams rock even harder. Start planning today and let us know about your plans in the IRC sessions! :-)

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The first Ubuntu Global Bug Jam will take place from Friday 8th August to Sunday 10th August 2008.

So, what is the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam? Put simply, it is a world-wide online and face-to-face event to get people together to fix Ubuntu bugs - we want to get as many people online fixing bugs, having a great time doing so, and putting their brick in the wall for free software. This is not only a great opportunity to really help Ubuntu, but to also get together with other Ubuntu fans to make a difference together, either via your LoCo team, your LUG, other free software group, or just getting people together in your house/apartment to fix bugs and have a great time.

If you are in a LoCo Team, the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam is a great opportunity for LoCo Teams to get together and have a physical bug-jam. To get started there is a Running a Bug Jam guide, which offers some helpful advice for getting your jam organised. If you are in a Linux User Group why not try and organise a bug jam for your LUG too?

If you are planning on organising a jam for your group, just follow these steps:

1. Decide on a venue and dates, and start letting people know about where and when the jam is. You might want to post to other local groups to let them know so they can attend. Take a look at Running a Bug Jam page to help you get started.
2. Update the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam page and add your jam to it. Be sure to add any specific applications your local participants are interested in, in the *Interests* box - we will then try to get upstream specialists to the Jam who can help with debugging on IRC.
3. Blog about it, post to mailing lists, put flyers up in computer shops and other places and otherwise spread the word.
4. On the day we will post more information about getting involved in the jam.

We will be posting more information about how the global bug jam will work closer to the time.

Also, digg this over at http://digg.com/linux_unix/Ubuntu_Global_Bug_Jam_Announced.

Monday 28 April 2008 - Saturday 3 May 2008

The always popular Ubuntu Open Week returns this month and we welcome everyone from all walks of life, distros, skills, opinions and curiosities to come along and get involved. The aim of the week is to help grow the Ubuntu community, and we have an awesome set of topics ready for you to attend. If you’ve considered getting involved in Ubuntu and don’t know where to start, thent his is a great opportunity to jump in.

The Ubuntu Open Week will take place from Monday, 28 April to Saturday 3 May on #ubuntu-classroom on Freenode.

We have sessions on all kinds of subjects including Reporting and Triaging bugs, Building Upstream Kernels, Kubuntu Development (including KDE4!), Bazaar, Packaging 101, Ubuntu Mobile, Merging Packages, Launchpad Personal Packaging Archives, Ubuntu Server, Security, Xubuntu, Community Q+A, Packaging Firefox Extensions, Artwork, Producing Podcasts, Training, Preeseeding d-i/Ubiquity, the Future of Ubuntu Desktop, Community support with the Forums, Python Packaging, Ask Mark, Wubi, Unwinding Stacktraces, Documentation, and much more!

Remember, being part of Ubuntu does not have to be a technical, hardcore, programming or packaging job. You can be involved with artwork, marketing, advocacy, local community teams, documentation, translations and more. If you are interested in being a part of the Ubuntu project, there is sure to be a session for you, take this time to join the Ubuntu Community and become part of the world-class team that puts Ubuntu together. We are keen that everyone with every discipline can be a part of our growing community.

The session schedule can be seen here.

LugRadio Live USA 2008 is taking place on the 12th and 13th April at The Metreon in San Francisco (101, 4th St., San Francisco, 94103), and there will be a strong Ubuntu presence and an opportunity to meet lots of other Ubuntu fans and some well known Ubuntu celebrities.

LugRadio Live USA 2008 is an event that provides a very different atmosphere to most computer conferences. The organisers specifically go out of their way to produce an event that is very social, fun and loose, with an incredibly inclusive, approachable atmosphere. Organised and run by the cult-hit podcast LugRadio, LugRadio Live USA 2008 brings over 35 speakers, 30+ exhibitors and lots of fun sessions, events, prizes and other attractions. In addition to this, a live recording of LugRadio will happen in front of the audience.

Ubuntu is well represented at LugRadio Live USA 2008. Jono Bacon, our community manager, is the co-founder of LugRadio and one of the organisers of the show, so he will be there, but there will also be Ben Collins, leader of the Ubuntu kernel team, Matthew Garret, power management and kernel legend, and Belinda Lopez and Emma Jane Hogbin from Ubuntu Women. In addition to this, Nathan Haines and Neal Bussett from the Ubuntu California LoCo team will be there running a booth and showing off Ubuntu. Jorge Castro, who works for Jono at Canonical, will also be there. We are keen to invite as many Ubuntu users along for a big meet and greet. LugRadio Live USA 2008 is a great opportunity to meet other Ubuntu users and developers.

In addition to Ubuntu speakers and exhibitors the event also includes these speakers:

• Miguel de Icaza (Mono / Novell / Co-Founder Of GNOME)
• Ian Murdoch (OpenSolaris / Founder Of Debian)
• Robert Love (GNOME / Google)
• Aza Raskin (Mozilla / Humanized)
• Benjamin Mako Hill (Ubuntu / Debian / FSF)
• John Buckman (Magnatune)
• Val Henson (Kernel / VAH consulting)
• Christopher Blizzard (Mozilla / GNOME)
• Mike Linksvayer (Creative Commons)
• David Schleef (GStreamer)
• Matthew Garrett (Power Management / Kernel)
• Danese Cooper (Intel / OSI)
• Aaron Bockover (Banshee / Novell)
• Liana Holmberg (Second Life / Linden Lab)
• Emma Jane Hogbin (Hick Tech)
• Joe Zonker Brockmeier (OpenSuSE / Novell)
• Kristen Accardi (Kernel)
• Joe Born (Neuros)
• Selena Deckelmann
• Stewart Smith (MySQL)
• Dan Kegal (Wine)
• Ben Collins (Ubuntu / Kernel)
• Jason Kridner (Texas Instruments)
• Jeremy Allison (Samba / Google)
• Christian Hammond (VMWare)
• Ian McKeller (Songbird)
• Alison Randall (Parrot / Perl / OSCON)
• David Huffman (LVM)
• Brian Will (Pigeon)
• Belinda Lopez (Ubuntu)
• Ilan Rabanovich (SoCal Linux Expo)
• Eddy Mulyono (Packaging)
• Matthew Walster (Demo Scene)

Exhibitors confirmed at present include Ubuntu, Google, Dice, GNOME, PostgreSQL, O’Reilly, OpenSuSE, Linden Labs, Magnatune, Neuros, Sun, Texas Instruments, South California Linux Expo, Komputers 4 R Kids, San Francisco LUG, BytesFree.org, Ontario Linux Fest, Frets on Fire, OpenNMS, One Course Source, Haiku, Hyperic, BitRock, OpenStreetMap, The Digital Tipping Point and FreeBSD.

Because LugRadio Live USA 2008 is organised by and run for the community, the price is incredibly low - $10 for the full weekend. That is two days worth of fun and games. It is recommended that you pre-register your ticket here, although tickets are available on the door. For more details, see the LugRadio Live USA 2008 Website.

If you are going, spread the word, and lets have a great Ubuntu presence at LugRadio Live USA 2008!

Mon 18th Feb - Fri 22nd Feb @ #ubuntu-classroom on Freenode!

We are pleased to announce the first ever Ubuntu Developer Week . What does this mean? We’ll have one week full of action-packed IRC sessions where you can:

• learn about different packaging techniques
• find out more about different development teams
• check out the efforts of the world-wide Development Community
• participate in open Q&A sessions with Ubuntu developers
• and much much more…

All your favourite Ubuntu developers will be there who will introduce you to lots of parts of Ubuntu development including packaging, virtualisation, desktop application testing, development processes, collaboration techniques and lots lots more. This is the perfect time to get started, get up and running and in touch with future team members.

So, what are you waiting for? Go and see the timetable and then see how to attend. Oh, and lets spread the word!

The Sessions:

• Patching packages - Martin Pitt will explain the different techniques of patching packages. His session will help you get started with UbuntuDevelopment as it’s a good entry point to improving the software we use every day.
• Launchpad PPAs - Launchpad Hackers Celso Providelo and Matthew Revell will introduce you to a great feature of Launchpad: Personal Package Archives. Building packages for testing and preview reasons made easy.
• Packaging 101 - Daniel Holbach will talk you through the most important properties of Ubuntu and Debian packaging.
• MOTU School - Working with Debian - We’ll have James Westby around, who is very interested in collaboration between Debian and Ubuntu. His session will showcase tools, initiatives and processes to make this happen.
• Introduction to the ServerTeam - Interested in servers and services in the Ubuntu landscape? Matthias Gug introduces you to the ServerTeam.
• MOTU Processes - Interested in becoming a MOTU? Daniel Holbach will explain the MOTU processes: how to get involved and how to get things done.
• Virtualisation - Virtualisation is definitely one of the hottest topics at the moment. Virtualisation Specialist Søren Hansen will talk you through the state of things and answer all your questions.
• Kubuntu - For those of you interested in development of the big K, we’ll have the Kubuntu developers around.
• Ubuntu Derivatives Team - We have new Derivatives coming up almost every day. The Derivative Team aims to make collaboration seamless and help derivatives to get things done.
• Debdiffs and how to get them submitted - Daniel Holbach will showcase one of the most important entry points to get involved: how to produce good patches and explain how to get them submitted for inclusion.
• First steps on contributing (MOTU/TODO & MOTU/TODO/Bugs) - MOTU contributor Nicolas Valcárcel will talk about his experiences and give you first-hand hints how to get started.
• Desktop Packaging Session - Mastermind of the french Desktop mafia Sébastien Bacher will take you on a tour through Desktop Packaging: your entry point to the Desktop Team
• SRU/Security updates - Two of our MOTUs, William Grant and Luca Falavigna, experienced in doing security and stable release updates will talk about exactly that.
• Firefox 3 Extension Packaging - We’ll have Mozilla hacker Alexander Sack around, who will talk you through packaging of Firefox 3 Extensions.
• Writing Scripts For Automated Desktop Testing - QA developer Lars Wirzenius spent quite some time thinking about testing of applications and will take you on a tour through testing Desktop applications.
• Bughelper - making bug work easier - Bugmaster Brian Murray and bughelper hacker Markus Korn are the de-facto maintainers of python-launchpad-bugs and bughelper. Numerous tools make use of the interface and make working with bugs much much easier.
• BugTriage - Pedro Villavicencio has an incredible record of triaged bugs and even managed to give Sébastien Bacher a run for his money. He’ll get you started doing bug triage which is one of the most important points of development.
• MOTU Q&A session - This session has become an institution and happens every Friday at 13:00 UTC. For once we’ll move this to a later time and invite you all to be there. Prepare your questions and let’s get started together.
• Library Packaging - Long-time MOTU Stefan Potyra will talk about the bread and butter of almost all packages: libraries and how to package them right.

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Mon 22nd Oct - Sat 27th Oct @ #ubuntu-classroom on Freenode

With the up-and-coming release of Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon coming, we’re pleased to announce another Ubuntu Open Week, this time taking place the week following the Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon launch - Mon 22nd Oct - Sat 27th Oct on #ubuntu-classroom on Freenode. The sessions take place from 15.00 UTC to 21.00UTC

Ubuntu Open Week is a week full of 42 IRC tutorial sessions on a range of subjects, designed to help people get involved in the Ubuntu community. It is given by many of the brightest, most capable members of the Ubuntu community, and covers a range of subjects including packaging, bug triage, translations, accessibility, automated testing, loco teams, mentoring, Launchpad, kernel team, desktop team, training team and much more. In addition to this there will be sessions for Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and the newest member of the Ubuntu family, Gobuntu.

There will also be a special Ask Mark session (Wed 24th Oct @ 16.00UTC) in which you have two hours to ask Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, your burning questions. Jono Bacon will also be providing a Community Q+A session (Wed 24th Oct @ 15.00UTC) in which you can ask your questions about the community, Ubuntu, Canonical and anything else.

• Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
• Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/Meeting