Consilience

I am now safely back from the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Mountain View after a long week of planning the next 6 months for Ubuntu.

As I said in an identi.ca message: “I am just now realizing how crazy this past week was. You don’t notice it when you are in the middle.”

But now that I am back and able to reflect on what happened I have this to say: WOW! I am really excited about what will be happening in Jaunty and beyond. I am sure that because this was my first UDS I am, on average, more excited than some. It is always inspiring to be in groups of highly productive and intelligent people all working towards the same (or similar) goals. Now that I have this inspiration it is time to see what I can do with it.

First: My personal/work project (I work for Creative Commons): Content producing/playing applications should be “license aware.” WHAT? By that I mean that applications that play media (songs, videos, images) could display the license for the currently playing item. A good example is Banshee. There could be an additional column that shows which license a song is licensed under. Words don’t describe it well, how about a picture:

The really cool part about the above image is that Gabriel Burt added that functionality after the discussion on Monday at UDS about this very topic. He saw my dent that it was being discussed and decided to code it up for Banshee. It apparently only took him 40 minutes (!) to do it. Gabriel is a rock star, pure and simple.

Gabriel also wrote all of the license detection code himself, which he didn’t need to. Creative Commons provides a LGPL licensed library (liblicense) that can read and write license metadata for a variety of file formats (ogg, mp3, pdf, jpg, png, mov, etc). But, Gabriel would have needed to write Mono bindings for liblicense as it is written in C and only has python and ruby bindings right now.

Second: The Jams that various LoCos have been putting on are always a winner. Whenever you get a group of people together who want to learn something new with each other good things tend to happen. The Michigan Team has done Packaging Jams and Bug Jams. There are even thoughts of expanding the idea to other activities (Answer Jams, Translation Jams [wouldn't work too well for US State teams], and such).

Third: Now that we are getting good at putting on events like Jams and release parties we should let others know how we do it! The various LoCo teams are going to start producing some Best Practices when it comes to hosting events and such. Basically, we want every team to know how Mr. 4k and the French LoCo were able to host a release party for FOUR THOUSAND people. Granted, not every team will be able to do something like that in April, but learning how the French LoCo performed marketing would help us all.

Fourth: The Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase is a great opportunity for artists to get their works on MILLIONS of computers worldwide; how can we get more participation in this contest? This is one project which I will be working on with Jono. Ideas: get the news out to other venues that we didn’t get to last time (ie: ccMixter).

I think that should be enough to keep me busy for the next few months. How about you: what projects/ideas really caught your attention at UDS?

One of the coolest parts of being involved with the Ubuntu community is knowing some really cool people and getting to met up with them.

I went down to Ohio Linux Fest and had a ball! Those people really know how to throw an event: good speakers and a great pre- and post-party. The Ubuntu community came out in force also. There were at least 10 people from the Michigan LoCo and even a few from Chicago (be careful with them). A big thanks goes out to everyone at OLF; I am definitely going back again next year.

Oh, and yes, we all did have a great [1] time [2] at the Dance Off which was so thoughtfully initiated by Jono. I would like personally apologize to everyone who witnessed that event.

And speaking of Jono, I just had the distinct pleasure of listening to the new Severed Fifth album, Denied by Reign. I’ll be completely honest with everyone: I’m not the biggest death metal fan. I even talked about this before briefly on my blog. But, even though I don’t listen to it I can still appreciate it when someone really does put a lot of themselves into their music and make it special. Jono has done that with Denied by Reign. No in-depth musical review from me but I will tell you that my favorite track so far is “Edge of Design.”

When this album comes out, you owe it to yourself to at least download it to show your support of what Jono is trying to do. If you didn’t know he is going to be licensing the album under a Creative Commons license. That isn’t the most radical thing as other bands have done similarly, but he is choosing a more open license than most and there aren’t many others in the Death Metal genre doing anything like this (prove me wrong if you can, please!).

I thought I would pass this along for those of you interested in the Free Culture side of things*.

My coworker, Fred Beneson, has just announced the CC Salon in NYC for July.  A CC Salon is to Free Culture what a LUG Meeting is to Free Software.  At this salon he has lined up some great looking presentations from Wikia Search and Livable Streets Network along with a performance by comedian Max Silvestri (of Gabe + Max’s Internet Thing).

If you are interested it will be taking place on Wednesday July 23rd at The Open Planning Project ( 349 W. 12th St. first floor).

There will also be some free (as in beer) beer sponsored by the Brooklyn Brewery.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to see other Freedom minded folks and have a good time!

You can RSVP on the Facebook event or emailing Fred at creativecommons.org (simply make that an email address).

*Full disclosure: I am employed by Creative Commons this summer

I am pleased to announce that the Michigan LoCo Team is holding a Bug Jam on June 9th at 6:30 pm.

What is a Bug Jam?
Every day people report bugs about Ubuntu in the bug tracker Launchpad [0] but the number of bugs reported is more than the current bug triagers can effectively handle. In short, the Ubuntu community needs more bug triagers. But how do you triage bugs? Bug Jams are events where people who are interested in learning how to triage bugs get together to learn how to do this and answer everyone’s questions. It is a fun learning event.

Also, it is a great way to get started doing your 5-a-day and add your name to this list and increase our team’s ranking:
http://daniel.holba.ch/5-a-day-stats/

When and where is our Bug Jam?
It is Monday June 9th at 6:30pm at the Main branch of the Clinton-Macomb Public Library [1]. We will be in a conference room with free wifi to library card holders. People without local library cards can sign up
for one in 5 minutes, but if you are planning on doing that, please try to show up a little bit early. Directions can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/5rygg3 .

What should I do before the Bug Jam?
Check out some of the bug triaging resources online right now like:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs and
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage

There is a wealth of information linked to from this page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad/KnowledgeBase

What do you do after the Bug Jam?
There are plenty of restaurant/bar options in the area to celebrate a jam well done and eat dinner.

Feel free to email the mailing list[2] for coordinating rides and asking questions before hand.

[0] https://launchpad.net/

[1] http://cmpl.org/

[2] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-mi

The release cycle for Hardy was awesome, and I definitely put more time and effort into it than any other.  But, I want to continue this momentum and increase my effort for Intrepid.  Luckily for me, next week is Ubuntu OpenWeek.

Seriously, I’m not just talking about the OpenWeek because Jorge talked about it last night at our release party.  I have recently triaged a fair number of bugs to a point where I know what needs to be changed and I could probably do it myself.  Simple string fixes are a good examples, or setting correct defaults, adding a dependency, etc.  But, to do this I should learn more about packaging.

One way to do that is to go to a Packaging Jam like what Rick put on for the Michigan LoCo.  I unfortunately was unable to make it (3 year anniversary is a good reason right?).  But, with the OpenWeek I should be able to get some basics out of the way before we do another Packaging Jam.

Also, if you’re interested in just learning how to report bugs, not even think about fixing them, there are events for you too at the OpenWeek (see schedule).  Be sure to remember that the times are in UTC, so that means subtract 4 hours for the eastern time zone (rest of you Americans can do the math from there).

I hope some of the people who attended our Hardy Release Party in Michigan last night can show up.  There was a lot of interest in helping with Ubuntu development in various ways from many people and this is the perfect place to start!

See you there!

–
My 5 today: #223230 (gnome-panel), #214695 (gnome-system-monitor), #223239 (hugin), #223262 (kdebase), #223263 (update-manager)
Do 5 a day – every day! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/5-A-Day

So, we need to change plans for the release party.  Ann Arbor Brewing
Co. has no available room as the University of Michigan has graduation
this weekend.  I tried to get a reservation today, but, no avail.

Instead, we do the next best thing: Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti
http://neotech.net/ABC/?site=cornerbrewery

Sorry for the late notice.

Get the word out to those who might not get this.

Today, as we all know, is the release of the latest and greatest version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron.

However, what you may not know is that today is also the day that the Michigan LoCo team hit 100 members!  Yep, thats right, two momentous occasions on the same day.

For proof, see screenshot.

On behalf of the entire team I would like to welcome Tony to the Michigan LoCo!

Tony, if you are reading this, if you come to the Hardy Release Party on Saturday, you get an Ubuntu Hat for being the 100th member of the team!  Really, no joke.

If you are any where near the South East Corner of Michigan on Satuday, you should come to our Hardy Party.

Details:
Saturday the 26th
Ann Arbor Brewing Co. [0]
7pm – ?
I’ll have stickers (both case badges and those bigger white ones)
Bring your friends.

See you there!

[0] Address:
114 E Washington St
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
googlemap
There is a parking ramp across the street from the pub.

I wasn’t going to post in response to the meme, that is, until I saw my history.

$history|awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’ |sort -rn|head
87 add-5-a-day
54 screen
52 sudo
52 cd
46 ls
22 dpkg
21 cat
20 irssi
13 bzr
10 tail

Can you tell I am a part of the 5-a-day team on Launchpad?

And, again, why isn’t Ohio on the stats page?

–
My 5 today: #213251 (pulseaudio), #215005 (jockey), #212709 (linux-restricted-modules-2.6.24), #213585 (flashplugin-nonfree), #213852 (poppler)
Do 5 a day – every day! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/5-A-Day

I’m just taking a break from writing papers to show you something interesting that proves the fact that Michigan is probably one of the best LoCos out there:

5-a-day Stats

Go past all of the individuals and look at the bottom where the teams are listed. See which team is #1? GO MICHIGAN!

I couldn’t help but notice that Ohio isn’t on the list…..

edit: yes yes, we aren’t number 1 for today, but, we are more of a long term focused group anyways.

–
My 5 today: #205715 (linux), #91498 (gnome-screensaver), #205742 (language-pack-sv), #193617 (gnome-power-manager), #205681 (ubuntu)
Do 5 a day – every day! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/5-A-Day