Interview with Flavia Weisghizzi

By pleia2 | Published: 2011-03-26

Elizabeth Krumbach: Please tell us a little about yourself.

Flavia Weisghizzi: I’m Flavia Weisghizzi, I’m 34 years old and I live in that wonderful melting pot called Roma, Italy, where I was born, and from where, maybe, I’ll fly away someday. I’m a writer, I write poems and critical essays about literature. I also work as freelance journalist and radio speaker. Recently thanks to Ubuntu, I have become a conference speaker too.

That said, you can argue the story of my involvement with Ubuntu and FLOSS is really original. Everything began in 2001, the first time I wrote for an online magazine. They asked me to write something for IT news about an alternate office suite called StarOffice (yes, it was pre OpenOffice.org age). Here I learned about FLOSS philosophy, and I was definitively attracted by sense its of freedom.

EK: What inspired you to get involved in the Ubuntu community?

FW: On my first attempt I tried to approach the Linux OS as software to use, but it was really hard for a girl who studied had Italian Literature as her main field install it without help. But I continued in reading about open source and Linux. The year 2007 marked a turning point in my life: my Windows XP decided it was its “time to die”… taking a full month of my work with it! My boyfriend brought me a Live CD of Ubuntu 7.04, and so a Feisty Fawn slowly started to run on my PC, allowing me to access again to all my work, and documents!

It has been love at the very first glance!

After the installation of Ubuntu, it seemed obvious to me to take a look at the Italian community, and to take my first steps in IRC channels. I felt at home. Some weeks later I thought it would be nice to give a helping hand to the community, so I asked to join translation team. That time saw the release of the first issue of Full Circle Magazine. I also joined its translation team. Coming from publishing I could share my skills and my working experience.

I initially supposed that simply having communication skills would be useless in a software-oriented community, but I was wrong.

During the release of Ubuntu 8.04, I became the Media Relations Coordinator for the Italian LoCo Team, and I coordinated the Media Relations project, that aims to spread the spirit of Ubuntu beyond trade magazines in Italy.

It was a success for us. In fact, our community has been hosted many times by national broadcasts. To tell my story is important, because I believe too many people are shy, and underestimate the contributions they can give to the Ubuntu community.

EK: What are your roles within the Ubuntu community?

FW: At the moment, I’m member of Italian LoCo Team Community Council. Of course I still take care of Media relations, and recently I started promote, together with Silvia Bindelli, an Italian branch of Ubuntu Women project.

When I landed in Ubuntu (yes, landed) I had heard about this project, but there wasn’t a local branch. At the time there were two main ways to get help with my OS-related issues: connect to the IRC and forum, and chose between asking in the Italian LoCo team support channel in my own language, but in a male-dominated environment, or asking in a women-related channel, but in an “alien” language (not simply English, but English applied to computer science). Here in Italy we have some problems about how women are received in many work environments, and, unfortunately, this pertains also to open source. There are too many prejudices against women, not only from men, but also from many women. With this in mind, I hope to be able to enhance the status of women in the field of open source software.

I’m able to write, and I’m comfortable with public speaking. I published (with Luca Ferretti, member of GNOME Release Team) a couple of books about Ubuntu, and I’m often asked to speak in conferences or round tables about Ubuntu and FLOSS.

EK: Is there anything you haven’t done yet, but would like to get involved with in the Ubuntu community?

FW: Oh many, many things! But first of all, I’d participate in an UDS! I’d like to be face-to-face with people who build Ubuntu and whom I may know by their names or nicknames.

As a Media Relations Coordinator, I think it would be much more useful to spread out a single press-release announce, one shared between all local groups and Canonical. This could give more effectiveness to the news

Finally… I want make a package! Only one, just to say to have done the dirty work!

EK: What other things are you interested in outside of open source and Ubuntu?

FW: I’m interested in poetry. I teach creative writing, and I love reading and writing poems. I’m a curious women, enchanted by everything strange and new. I like observe the small things in the world, because I believe from the small things could come great changes. I like theater. Recently I’ve been studying Yoga Philosophy. You can find more about my ideas and my poems in Italian on my long-time running blog at http://weisghizzi.ilcannocchiale.it or in English at newborn Code Is Poetry http://deindre.wordpress.com.

Originally posted by Elizabeth Krumbach in Full Circle Magazine Issue #47 on March 25, 2011

Interview with CharlesA

By nhandler | Published: 2011-03-20

Today I would like to introduce fellow Ubuntu Forums staff member CharlesA.

1. Tell as much as you’re willing about your “real life” like name, age, gender, location, family, religion, profession, education, hobbies, etc.

My name is Charles Auer, and I’m just a guy from California. I got my Associates degree in Electronic Technology in 2004 and been working as Tech Support since. I usually play RPGs in my spare time.

2. When and how did you become interested in computers? in Linux? in Ubuntu?

I first got into computers back in 1995 or 1996, when I had a teacher who worked to get older PCs usable so they could be used in the classroom. Most of them were 386 or 486 machines running Windows 3.1, but it was better then nothing. I started learning a bit about Linux in a class I took in 2007, after that I decided to redo my home server and have it running *nix. Been using it ever since.

3. When did you become involved in the forums (or the Ubuntu community)? What’s your role there?

I started out on the forums back in October of 2009, when I first started messing around with Ubuntu and ran into a snag that I didn’t understand. I eventually figured it out on my own, but it was nice to put thoughts on “paper” so to speak. I’m now a member of staff, and have been since September of 2010.

4. Are you an Ubuntu member? If so, how do you contribute? If not, do you plan on becoming one?

Not an Ubuntu member yet.

5. What distros do you regularly use? What software? What’s your favorite application? Your least favorite?

I mostly stick to either Debian or Ubuntu, but I have used both CentOS and Fedora at times. I don’t really have a favorite application, per say, but I do use bluefish a lot when I’m working on my website.

6. What’s your fondest memory from the forums, or from Ubuntu overall? What’s your worst?

Being asked to be a member of staff has got to be one of my fondest memories. Not sure if I have a worst memory from the forums, unless you count the  slowness we had due to hardware problems, but that wasn’t anyone’s fault.

7. What luck have you had introducing new computer users to Ubuntu?

Some mixed luck so far, but in the end it didn’t work out so well. My philosophy is to use what works best for the job you are trying to accomplish, and sometimes *nix isn’t the best for the job.

8. What would you like to see happen with Linux in the future? with Ubuntu?

I’m not too sure, to be honest. I can see it growing in popularity, but time will tell which way it’ll go.

9. If there was one thing you could tell all new Ubuntu users, what would it be?

Always have backups of your data – anything you don’t have a backup of is not worth keeping.

Originally Posted here on 2011-03-20

Count down banner design contest

By nhandler | Published: 2011-03-18

Ubuntu 11.04 is just around the corner!

As in the past, we’d like to create a new countdown banner to share across the web. If you would like to make a highly visible contribution to Ubuntu, this is your chance.

Just shortly after the Beta launch we’d like to launch a new countdown banner that says something like "28 more days until Ubuntu 11.04" Each day the banner will decrease by one until the release day, April 28th. On the 28th it will say something like "It’s almost here" (or similar. Then when we do the release the slide will change to "it’s here!"

How can you help?

Create a graphic representing what you think the countdown should look like. It is not necessary to create an entire set of images. Instead, do a couple to demonstrate your idea. The community and Canonical staff will choose the official banners and maybe give some guidance in case a change is needed to polish it up. Lets aim to *get submissions in by Monday, April 4th*. But don’t wait until the end, release early, release often, so they say.

Guidelines

Detailed here, but in essence:

180px wide by 150px high. No PHP or flash. We’d like to make a static, plain image available but if the community would like to make an animated or interactive, iframe based image using js and static content we will gladly consider it. The community seems to have enjoyed the animated banner from the 9.04 release cycle. (I know I did)

Starting at the point of Beta Ubuntu changes from the code name of "Natty Narwhal" to "Ubuntu 11.04" it would probably be inappropriate to over-emphasize narwhal graphics.

We have some other opportunities to contribute. If you would like to make a Facebook app, that would be awesome, ours is now out-dated. We could do more! Also, I think it would be great to design an Android Widget for user’s home screens. We don’t have to do these but we certainly can!

Please attach your suggestions to the wiki page listed above. If you have questions or would like to discuss this, please email the Web Presence Team mailing list or hop onto the IRC chat room, #ubuntu-website on freenode.

I can’t wait to see your ideas!

Originally sent to the ubuntu-website mailing list by Matthew Nuzum on Fri Mar 18 16:28:25 UTC 2011

Ubuntu Cloud Days

By akgraner | Published: 2011-03-17

Welcome to Ubuntu Cloud Days! Welcome to the very first dedicated Ubuntu Cloud Days event from March 23rd 2011 to March 24th 2011!

With faster on-demand resources, and a flexible usage and payment model, Cloud computing is changing the face of IT! Ubuntu Server is arguably the most popular Cloud based Operating System with millions of instances launched a year. Are you interested to know more about using Ubuntu Server on the Cloud ? Find out from March 23rd 2011 to March 24th 2011!

Ubuntu Cloud Days is a series of online sessions where you can learn more about:

  • Answering your questions about Ubuntu and the Cloud
  • Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Images, using Ubuntu with Amazon EC2 cloud
  • Building your private cloud over Ubuntu Server platform
  • New virtualization and container technologies in Ubuntu Server
  • Crunching Big-Data on the cloud with hadoop
  • Scaling your web-apps on the cloud with Ubuntu
  • much more…

The sessions will happen in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net.

Additional links:

 

The timetable

 

If you’re unsure about UTC times: just run date -u in a terminal to find out what the current UTC time is.

 

 

Wed 23rd Mar

Thu 24th Mar

16.00 UTC

Cloud Computing 101, Ask your questions — kim0

rebundling/re-using Ubuntu’s UEC images smoser

17.00 UTC

Scaling shared-storage web apps in the cloud with Ubuntu & GlusterFS — semiosis

UEC persistency — tetet

18.00 UTC

Connecting Organizations with Multiple Availability Zones — ‘zeeshan@pdc’

TBC — Daviey

19.00 UTC

Using Linux Containers in Natty — hallyn

Using hadoop, divide and conquer — edulix

20.00 UTC

What is Ensemble? – Presentation and Demo — SpamapS

 

 

 

 

Joining The Sessions

 

 

 

 

You use an IRC client already

 

Use your IRC client (such as xchat, irssi or mIRC) to connect to the freenode IRC network at irc.freenode.net. You can do this manually by typing:

/server irc.freenode.net

 

Then join #ubuntu-classroom for the time and date of the session you want to attend. You can manually join the channel by typing:

/join #ubuntu-classroom

 

You should also join #ubuntu-classroom-chat which is the general discussion channel for the session. Questions should be posted there. You should prefix your questions with QUESTION: to make them easier to spot.

Most sessions last for around an hour. Contact kim0 on IRC if you have any problems.

For instructions on how to use the various IRC clients, see XChatHowto and Irssi, respectively. General information about IRC is located at InternetRelayChat. For Windows users just getting started finding out about Ubuntu, you can use XChat for Windows from http://silverex.info/download/ or Pidgin from http://www.pidgin.im/download/ For Ubuntu users pidgin is installed from the repositories.

 

Simple Web IRC

For users who cannot or will not use IRC software (corporate policy, blocked IRC ports, etc.) you can click here to join in the discussion, just give yourself a nickname and press connect, you can switch between the classroom and the chat room using the buttons at the top of the page.

Originally posted on the Ubuntu Cloud Days Wiki page.

Ubuntu Global Jam: More Events, More Needed!

By akgraner | Published: 2011-03-16

A great method of building our community up is to get people together face-to-face to work together, develop social bonds, and have fun. We see this at every Ubuntu Developer Summit; when we get contributors together, it helps seal a sense of camaraderie as we work and play together. All of this helps unite us all as we work to bring Free Software to the masses with Ubuntu.

With much of this in mind, in each cycle we organize the Ubuntu Global Jam in which our global LoCo Team Community organizes local events in which Ubuntu fans gets together to work and play together. Many of these events are loose and informal; just a collection of Ubuntu enthusiasts getting together to get to know each other, contribute in different ways (e.g. testing, creating advocacy materials, development, producing art etc), and have fun. I have organized a few events for the Ubuntu Global Jam in the past and it is great fun, and my goal here is to encourage you to do the same. :-)


Picture by alexm

The next Ubuntu Global Jam takes place from 1st – 3rd April 2011 and here are some of the events that are taking place:

Africa

Egypt


Asia

Afghanistan


Europe

Denmark


France


Hungary


Slovenia


Spain


Switzerland


United Kingdom


North America

Canada


United States


South America

Venezuela

Although we have organized Ubuntu Global Jam events before, I believe that this one is even more important than ever. We are working hard to ship Unity in Ubuntu 11.04 and this is a great opportunity for us all to get together, test Natty, provide bug reports and feedback, write documentation, translate, and more! If we come together as a community we can deliver an incredible Ubuntu experience. :-)

Organizing An Event

Everyone is welcome to organize an event! We would like to encourage all of you to put together an event in your area. :-)

If you are not a member of a LoCo team, see the list of teams, pick your nearest team, click on it, and click the Join This Team link to join that team’s Launchpad group (you might need to wait to get approved to join). When you are a member of the team, you can add an event.


Picture by ubuntuvancouver

To add a team just follow these steps:

  1. First, decide a place where you want to hold the event. This can be as simple as a coffee shop that you decide to meet at (you don’t even need to neccessarily let the coffee shop know – just pick a place that everyone shows up to. Other good venues include university/school teaching rooms, local businesses, hotels etc.
  2. Now pick a date to hold the event on between the 1st-3rd April 2011. Most teams pick one day or evening.
  3. Next check the venues list and see if your venue is already in the database. If not, click Add New Venue to add the venue.
  4. Now click here to go and add your event.
  5. Finally, spread the word! Let Ubuntu users and Linux fans in your local area know, promote your event in your LoCo, at LUGs, put up posters in coffee shops, promote it on Twitter/identi.ca/Facebook etc.

When promoting your event or promoting existing events, be sure to use the #ugj hash tag. I look forward to seeing the photos and reports from the various events around the world!

Originally posted here by Jono on March 15, 2011.