The next meeting for the Ubuntu Desktop Training team is taking place this Thursday 6th March at 16:00 UTC on #ubuntu-training (@ freenode.net).

If you are interested in getting involved, this Thursday’s meeting will be a perfect opportunity as there will be a tutorial by Torsten Spindler on how to contribute using blueprint in Launchpad. More details about the meeting and project can be found on their wiki page.

With the help of community members who slogged over writing, reviewing, editing, proof reading and fixing the layout, the Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop Course is finally available. The 400 page book provides a thorough overview of the Ubuntu Desktop and is a great resource for Linux and Ubuntu newcomers.

This is just the beginning of the project, which will live and evolve with each new Ubuntu release. The community has the power to develop, enhance and branch off as they see fit. The latest version can always be retrieved from the Bazaar repositories.

Mark Shuttleworth also has an interesting post about this release, and where it’s headed.

In #ubuntu-training on Freenode.

In #ubuntu-training on Freenode.

At the end of November 2007, Canonical will launch the first official Ubuntu desktop training courses.

There will be two courses - one instructor led, two days in a classroom and the other will be a web based e-learning format, following the same contents as the instructor led. The material for the instructor led course will be freely available on the Ubuntu wiki for all to use, share, improve and translate.

The e-learning format will be a paid-for service. The focus of both courses will be very much to comfort and reassure people (new users) that moving from MS to Ubuntu is no big deal; this will be a ‘comfort blanket’ course.

We really really want community involvement to make this course as fantastic as can be. As such, we are setting up a new Ubuntu training community team. What we were thinking of is basically a working model whereby:

1. We have a training content company write the content.
2. Community and Canonical provide input at various stages of development.
3. Content people implement changes.
4. Once courses are finished, they’re loaded onto the wiki for general use and abuse.
5. Three months before next Ubuntu release, we review the content and decide which elements need to be included in the next version etc.

We will be using DocBook to design and write the content. One word of caution is that this project will be deadline driven - cut off points for feedback will be absolute in order for us to be able to meet the November target date.

How does that sound? If you are interested in being a member of this team, as the first kick off point, please head over to http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Training/DesktopCourseFeedback and follow the instructions to offer your feedback on the proposed Table Of Contents.

See you there!