It was with great sadness that I read earlier that my friend and colleague Ian Clatworthy passed away after his fight with cancer. Although I never knew Ian that well, whenever I did work and spend time with him I always found him to be a fun, light-hearted, and always pleasant person to be around. Words [...]

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A little while back I blogged about wanting to reconnect with our ethos. In a continuation of that theme I am keen to talk about stories. I have talked about stories quite a bit in my writings on community management (particularly so in my book The Art of Community). Stories are important entities in communities – [...]

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These views are my own, and not necessarily those of Canonical. Some time back the always awesome Earl and Cathy from Zareason loaned me one of their Strata laptops to play with. I met them at an event some time before, and while I had heard of Zareason, I really knew nothing about them. Since then [...]

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Just a quick reminder: as part of our awesome Ubuntu Global Jam I am organizing the Ubuntu California Rockridge Jam at A’cuppa Tea, College Ave, Berkeley. The jam is from 10am – 6pm – I hope to see you there! Don’t live near me? Go and find your nearest jam or organize your own!

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Some time back the Ayatana project introduced the Application Indicator Framework, based upon technology created by the KDE project. We have been shipping this technology in Ubuntu for a few releases now and it makes the top-right part of the desktop a smooth, efficient, and pleasant experience, getting over the inconsistent and limiting notification area [...]

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Today I had a call with Jussi from the Ubuntu IRC Council. We spent some time discussing a range of different topics, but then Jussi raised an important question which I think could benefit from some community discussion. Today we have many methods of providing free support for our users – the Ubuntu Forums, Launchpad Answers, [...]

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When I first heard about Free Software in 1998 I was mesmerized by it’s potential. Sure, back then the software was complex and some would argue ugly, but underneath the rough edges was a thing of beauty — the opportunity for people to come together to make new things, and anyone with the inclination and [...]

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I am just beginning to get into the planning stages for the next cycle for my team, and as part of this cycle we would like to really focus on attracting more developers to participate in Ubuntu. We would like to see more people interested in getting involved in packaging, fixing bugs, and joining our [...]

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Hot on the heels of the announcement of the Natty Narwhal, I am tickled pink to announce the details of the next Ubuntu Developer Summit taking place in Orlando, USA from 25th – 29th October 2010. We also have a brand new Ubuntu Developer Summit website which provides all the details about how to get [...]

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I don’t tend to blog about appeals, but I came across this terribly sad story and I really want to encourage you all too also pledge and support him. Here is what happened, written by a friend of Colin: Colin & I have been close friends for 13 years when we started our MBA [...]

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OK, before I begin, this is going to be a terribly presented ramble. I have written it, proof read it, and proof read it again, and it still sounds like a child with a crayon wrote it. This is because my thoughts are unstructured, but I am keen to share them anyway. Patience is appreciated, [...]

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Debian is awesome. You know that, I know that, we all know that, and 17 years ago Debian entered into our lives. Before I joined the Ubuntu project I was an avid Debian user, and still am. Ubuntu owes a huge amount of thanks to Debian and it’s global family of contributors for all of [...]

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Today I had a great call Penelope Stowe who has been leading some excellent efforts with the Ubuntu Accessibility Team in conjunction with the (quite literally) always rocking Luke ‘The Muso’ Yelavich. The reason for the call was simple: I felt like I didn’t have enough knowledge or visibility of the Ubuntu Accessibility Team and accessibility [...]

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In Belgium at the last Ubuntu Developer Summit, we had a fantastic set of discussions about how we could create a process that empowers application developers to bring their applications into the Ubuntu Software Center much easier. Today our developer and packaging processes are more designed for a contributor who wishes to contribute to the [...]

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Are you good folks aware of what is happening on 27th – 29th August 2010. But of course, it is the Ubuntu Global Jam! In the last few cycles we have organized and run an event called the Ubuntu Global Jam. The idea was simple: encourage our awesome global Ubuntu community to get together in the [...]

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