Ubuntu Marketing resurrection and SpreadUbuntu, Karmic Release in Norway, Ubuntu Open Week in Spanish – Update

Ubuntu Marketing Team revival and SpreadUbuntu

The Ubuntu Marketing team has existed for ages but has been a little unstructured, lacked a vision with a path of action and thus its potential has not been reached this far. Some good project have been created there (The Fridge and the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter being the greatest examples) but it’s been a long time since some palpable progress has been made. And that’s just sad, because we can make this team suck less and produce more.

Now, as the Ubuntu Community matures, the team seems to be gaining traction again and people, oldies and newcomers, are all excited about it! As a person that has been part of the team exactly since one year after its creation (October th 20th, 2005)  I have to add myself to the excitement!

As a sign of frustration with the lack of productivity of the team I decided to put my time, sweat and tears where my mouth is and took upon myself making a reality one of the oldest projects the Marketing team has had in mind: Spread Ubuntu. But in this, as with everything in life, wishes are not enough and my lack of time, technical know-how and Drupal/PHP knowledge could not take me that far. I had to get some hardcore web guru to join me. And lucky, and sometimes too vocal and loud, as I am I got some people interested. One of them, my man echowarp, aka now Ubuntu Member Evan Boldt, got really into the idea of Spread Ubuntu. His Drupal ability, technical insight and innovative self made in the end the Spread Ubuntu site a reality. Evan, you really are my Ubuntu Community Hero®! I will never get tired of saying that!

With the raise of SpreadUbuntu as a Marketing Team project and its potential as a central marketing tool for LoCos and newcomers alike the marketing team seems to finally have aligned itself with the spirit of the global Ubuntu community and has now gained a place in its awareness Things are moving along fast this time and ideas, contributions and initiatives are flourishing like they never before have!

So, if you are interested in fixing Ubuntu’s bug #1 reported by Mark Shuttleworth or have a deep desire to see the whole planet (as in Earth and the SpreadUbuntu logo) Ubuntized here and now is the time to get yourself involved and get things rolling!

To stay updated join the Marketing Team list and the SpreadUbuntu team and mailist. You can read more about the team reorganization (sign yourself up to the list) and come to our meeting starting the 12th of November at 2400 UTC (1900 EST), follow the Marketing Team Round Table under the Lucid UDS and join the meeting the week after (Date and time TBD).

These are exciting times!

Karmic Release in Norway

The Ubuntu 9.10 release got so much attention in the Norwegian IT media that I must say the phenomenon is unprecedented!

See a compilation of media links in the wiki of the Norwegian LoCo team.

As if that was not enough: Ubunter@s in Norway are starting to get involved in the development of the team like never before and we are right now working on a reorganization of the Team itself and also revamping our web presence! Which really is for me a dream that comes true! We are talking about an Ubuntu Jam before Christhmas and what not!

To follow the development of these discussions join the Norwegina LoCo forum, our mailing list and/or our chat on #ubuntu-no @ the FreeNode IRC network.

Besides those new I have to say that I am impressed by the speed of the CD delivery to our LoCo team this time around. We received the Ubuntu 9.10 – Karmic Koala CDs 5 days after the release! Thanks Canonical!

Ubuntu Open Week in Spanish

Just to round up the Spanish-speaking Ubuntu community has managed to keep an alternative UOW for those that can’t speaking English but still want to learn more about our favorite distro and its community.

Many people have stepped up and held sessions all week. I, for one, have talked about Launchpad (Wednesday), Gnome (Thursday) and will hold a talk on SpreadUbuntu today for the Spanish community!

If you want to join please come to our chat rooms @ FreeNode or visit our page on the Ubuntu Wiki.

Special thanks go to Leandro Gómez and the whole Ubuntu CentroAmérica gang. Thanks for taking a hands on approach to this and just making it happen!

I Am Happy

I am so happy and excited about being involved in all of this that I just had to share it with the world! Thank you everyone for being part of this great Ubuntu Community.

We rock!®

And besides that I am very happy and excited about my new job too. It’s just great working with nice and competent people!

It’s Friday! Life couldn’t be better!

Ubuntu-no on the (video) news + 4 release Parties in Norway

The Norwegian Ubuntu LoCo Team @ digiTV (Norway’s most populat IT news site).

So today we managed to get Ubuntu Norge been featured in 3 videos introducing GNU/Linux to a wider audience and having an ubuntu walkthrough on the desktop and the server. With a special look at Karmic and its new features

See the videos (audio in Norwegian only) here.

The total footage is about 50 minutes (19, 20, 10) so grab a cup and enjoy!

Come today and party with us in Bergen, Oslo, Trondheim and Tromsø.

This is a new record (previous was 2 parties):

 

Wiki page for coordination and the program can be seen here.

Forum threads for Ubuntu-no activities here.

In Oslo the party is @ Redpill-Linpro (thanks for the facilities). Pizza and beverages sponsored by FreeCode. Workshop, installhelp and talks. Everyone is welcomed to Vitaminveien 1A in Storo. We start @ 17.00. For more info click here.

For information on the parties in Bergen (UiB v/BLUG), Trondheim (NTNU v/PVV) and Tromsø (Driv v/Tromsø Dataklubb + TOSLUG) visit www.ubuntu.no

Have a nice release everyone!

Ubuntu = Hope! Let’s get our voice to space :)

I came across this today: http://involveyourself.com/

For me you people mean hope:
* Yes, we “only” make an OS.
* Yes, we are “only” a great DoOcracy as a community
* Yes, we do it because we mean it

So, let’s join that appeal and get a new disc to space. This time let’s send the real deal, not just a harmonic face of humanity:
* Naked bodies (instead of silhouettes as the discs in the Voyagers)
* Misery
* War
* Hunger
* Slavery
* Any-other-non-politcally-correct-thing-in-the-70’s
* Add-here-what-bothers-about-our-sick-world

But let’s also send a message of cooperation, collaboration, inclusion and hope: Let’s make something representing us, the Ubuntu and Free Software community, as a picture of a world that want real change in our lifetime!

Let’s send our face. Maybe a collage of everyone?

December 10th starts the rally to get our voice into space. Let us make Ubuntu be part of that!

Mark, are you in? You would like to get your voice or face back in space, wouldn’t you?

Anyone else?

Ubuntu and other FLOSS events/conferences in Norway – Sep-Oct-Nov ‘09

Giving you an update on FLOSS activities in Norway:

1. Software Freedom Day – Oslo team @ IFI ved UiO – 15-09-2009 kl 16.15
   • As I was on my way to a meeting with a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor, Magnus of Cybernetisk Selskab and Ubuntu Norge fame gave me a call and asked if I could come up to the Ubuntu install party/Software Freedom Day celebration  in one hour. I spoke GNU/Linux those hours, but did no installs
   • Of course, I tried earlier to organize the event myself, but did not get palpable response from PING at the Uni of Oslo. What I did not know was that Cybernetisk Selskab were working on the same too. It’s hard to cooperate when you talk with the wrong people. Anyway… This time around they got a nice Installfest rolling and helped students and the general public with installation of Ubuntu and other FLOSS goodness!
   • See pictures in Gallery, the original pictures and the “report” [Norwegian only].
2. NUUGs prize for promoting Free Software 2009 (Individuals/organizations and a special prize for municipalities) @ HiO 12-10-2009
   • Norwegian UNIX User Group gives out the prize for Free Software promotion in Norway. see the nominees here. There’s people from local libraries to the Nokia QT software and Skolelinux Community manager. MOre information and registration for the event can be seen here [Norwegian only].
   • This year there’s a prize for a municipality as well. This I see as a good incentive for the public sector to get to know Free Software and work hard to apply it in their IT infrastructure. Which is good!
3. NOKIOS – IT Conference for the Norwegian Public sector @ NTNU in Trondheim 13- to 15-10-2009
   • Not Really a FLOSS conference, but the Norwegian Open Source Competence Center will be holding a course on Free Software directed towards the Public Sector. I am sure that that course by Christer and Martin alone makes the whole conference worthwhile.
     
4. Ubuntu Release Parties in Norway – Karmic Koala@ October/November 2009
   
   • Time and place has not been defined yet, but this far we have people from Bergen, Oslo and Tromsø interested in getting some kind of event going, which rocks!
   • We are talking with other Free Software groups (Fedora, OpenBSD) in order to see if we can coordinate our efforts to make a FLOSS Release Party, so it does not have to be only Karmic centric, but include other distros and thus make an even better and greater celebration!
   • There’s a thread in the Norwegian forum, a planning page in our wiki for people interested in the participation of these events. YOu can also send an email to our mailist. Registration and archives here
   • If YOU want to be part of the event in any form, please follow up the forum thread, add your information to the wiki page or write an email to the mailing list. We need YOU!

There are other events around but these activities seem the most relevant right now. Thanks for reading!

Update – SpreadUbuntu, Nordic cooperation, New job

First things first:

• SpreadUbuntu is done! Really. Let’s just get the www.spreadubuntu.com domain pointing at the production site @ Neomenlo and get done with it. Motivation needs drivers and our motivation is to get official status before the Karmic release.
• Evan, our SpreadUbuntu  hero, is now an Ubuntu member! Yeah!
• The Nordic teams have for a while been talking about doing some cooperation work so we can together align our goals on raising awareness of Ubuntu in an even greater manner. So I have:

1. Asked the Norwegian team to explore the idea of going to a conference in order to have an Ubuntu meeting with other enthusiasts assisting while I invited people to participate on the celebration (and the planning) of the 9.10 release and hopefully a Jam too! (Norwegian only)
2. Urged our Nordic colleagues to get things rolling so we can coordinate the release parties regionally with things like similar marketing materials and probably even have (or join) a campaign running, i.e. @ SpreadUbuntu. It seems to be interest to get some action out of our cooperation wishes

More in the personal side I’ve been busy lately as the wind has moved me from one place to another lately:

• Moved on June. Now I am living even closer to the center of Oslo which opens up for more and greater access to the city life (culture, night&day life and all kinds of activities)
• I left FreeCode after an awesome year there and started as a Sales Specialist @ Redpill-Linpro, which is by far the biggest FLOSS company in the Nordic region. It’s even an Ubuntu (Training) Partner which really is just great!
• Retaken lots of *lost* interests: Climbing, studying French, reading lots and lots, writing even more, dancing & partying

Well that’s it for now. Thanks for your precious time!

Nokia… What is my next phone going to use?

I made a promise I didn’t keep… So instead of blogging about my Nokia N810 Internet tablet this time around I think I’m going to give you some insight into what I think is Nokia’s plan for the future:

• 1980 – Psion is founded. This company will make EPOC, the OS that in time wll evolve to what we know as the Symbian OS
• 2001 – The “Open” Symbian OS is released in a Nokia Communicator (Series 80)
• 2002 – Nokia 7650 exhibits the first Series 60 device, running Symbian. Ericsson, Siemens, Samsung, Panasonic and others (mainly in Japan) release Symbian based devices as well
• 2003 – The Smart Phone market explodes
• 2004 – Nokia 7710 gets released as the only Series 90 device. It’s Nokia first device to resemble a Tablet
• 2004 -. Rumour has it that Nokia is working on an device that is to run GNU/Linux
• 2005 – I tell a friend (now working for Nokia) that Symbian should not only be an “Open platform” but also an Open OS. I tell him that it will happen, sooner or later, but it’s going to take time. The more they wait, the less impact it will have in the mobile device software landscape
• 2005 – Nokia 770 is released exhibit the Maemo platform based in, please rise, Debian GNU/Linux
• 2006 – This year marks the dead of Series 80 and the rise of Series 60 for all Nokia Symbian models (including the Communicator, now called Nokia E90)
• 2006 – I know people @ Trolltech (Now part og Nokia R&D – Qt Software) telling me that Nokia is testing Qt in their Nokia devices, but they ask me to keep it secret
• 2007 – Nokia N800 is released with a new Maemo. Nokia drops Opera and includes Mozilla’s MicroB
• 2007 – Nokia N810 is annouced. Maemo 4.0 is the bomb! No Firmware updates, pure APT magic now by default!
• 2008 – Nokia N810 Wimax edition hits the streets. A version of Ubuntu can run in this and the previous N810 devices. Go baby!
• 2009 – Rumour has it that Nokia N900 comes with the whole package: Phone, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, even FM radio! No MMS support as it only has one Access Point (like the iPhone used to be. Please start hacking on this so we can all enjoy sending those nifty 5 MegaPixel pictures). The OS exhibits fantastic features: implemented the telepathy framework and integration to online services works like a breeze. It really does!
• 2009 – Nokia releases Symbian with a GPL compatible license. Linux devs rip off/port/fork the goods of the system (if anything…) and Symbian dies a slow death as effort moves towards a better Linux Mobile kernel
• 2009 – Nokia rides the C++ horse all the way on top of Qt and their Web standards based platform WRT! Code once, Create more and Release everywhere!
• 2010 – As Symbian is POSIX all possible apps get ported to it (supports Python, C, C++), but who cares? We all want our apps delivered easily through APT and integrated to stores supporting similar approaches. This gets integrated into Symbian but they do it wrong: They bet on Ovi being a success… Sorry, but it won’t be one
• 2010 – My fellow geeks and me go around with the Maemo aka nice-Debian-GNU/Linux driven N900 blowing away all those clueless apple lovers that have never heard of gravity! Even those robotic humanoid users will be impressed. this is as good as it gets:
  • It’s a bird!
  • No, but it does fly!
  • It’s a plane!
  • No, but it takes you anywhere and it’s faster than one!
  • Is it superman?
  • No, but he would have one if he existed!
• 2010 – Nokia keeps a good market share in the growing Mobile Internet market. They do  supports several FLOSS development frameworks and their devices can run almost anything created with them. The OS the devices run has become an irrelevant commodity
• 2010 – Web developers turn into application developers for the mobile market driven by Web supporting runtimes (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
• 2011 – Qt is one of the most used platform for mobile development. KDE still not the perfect DE, but it’s irrelevant by now since the user base of Qt apps has changed its epicenter to the mobile market. Something similar is true for GNOME related frameworks. Web runtimes are far more popular than both of these combined!
• 2011 – Nokia is known as one of the biggest contributors to the Free Software ecosystem in history
• 2011 – Ovi dies. Non-centralized application repositories for mobile platforms (Maemo, Symbian, Android) become standard and Free Software get a decent market share (20% or more) of all user applications
• 2012 – Internet in your hand is the driven force for the mobile market worldwide. Nokia still be the innovation driver here by creating new interfaces to address market challenges (i.e. for analphabet users) and offering a big spectrum of devices for all users (still keeping the high-end market for itself)

I can’t see the future, but I think this is what is going to happen. So this renders the question in this post irrelevant: My next phone is going to use Free Software more and more. That’s the real answer!

The API war was won by HTML, CSS and JavaScript on top of TCP/IP: the web API is the future people. Remember these words!

Please comment on these predictions and tell me what you think

Go baby!

Ubuntu Developer Week Website buttons @ SpreadUbuntu

*** Update ***

Evan and I have kickstarted a campaign to promote the Ubuntu Developer Week (through the Website buttons) in the SpreadUbuntu site. To get your 5 minutes of fame you have to do the following:

1. Head to the SpreadUbuntu site (the campaign is in the front page)
2. Log in with the button on the top-right (you do have a Launchpad Account, right? If not get it here)
3. Pick the number of buttons you have put in a site/blog/wall/boulevard (it’s trust based, do not exagerate, please ) and submit. You are automagically part of the campaign!
4. Wait until the poll finishes and see all participants (those at the top are the winners) of the campaign
5. Enjoy the spotlight while it shines on you (not too much, it has been proven it could give you skin cancer)

Hopefully the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter guys like this and we can get a column there for SpreadUbuntu campaigners that do an outstanding job promoting Ubuntu. we’ll see how this goes…

I have also corrected the HTML snippets that had some weird tags. It should be good to use now. thanks Evan for bringing it up! Daniel, you should probably update the snippets too

*** Update ***

Our Venezuelan hero Efraín always taking initiative while others are asleep, kindly asked the LoCo’s to step up and make a website button to spread the news about the Ubuntu Developer Week coming up at the end of August/beginning of September so we all can put it somewhere and let people know.

Byron Corrales, of Ubuntu Nicaragua fame (now I see why their site looks awesome) used some hours of his life and gave us a nice couple of buttons.

I couldn’t, of course, let the occasion pass me by so I asked Byron to re-license the buttons in CC-BY-SA (instead of NC) and upon his yes I uploaded both his buttons to the SpreadUbuntu site.

You can see them here (the link points at the SpreadUbuntu page of each of them):

Now If you are lazy, like me, you might as well just get the HTML code to add the buttons with the link directed to the UDW wiki page, right?

Well, here is the Orange button:

<a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek">
<img src="http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org/files/huge/botonorange_0.png"
width="200" height="117" alt="Ubuntu Developer Week – Fall 2009" border="0" />
</a>

And here is the Brown one:

<a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek">
<img src="http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org/files/huge/botonbrown.png"
width="200" height="117" alt="Ubuntu Developer Week – Fall 2009" border="0" />
</a>

Remind you that the size of the images can easily be modified. Just change the width in pixels and erase the height attribute and it should be fine! Comments are there to correct my statement if it’s wrong.

If you are the cool type you can change the wiki URL with the URL to the awesome PDF brochure we have, thanks to the unstoppable Daniel Holbach (just change the “https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek” with “http://people.canonical.com/~dholbach/Ubuntu_Developer_Week4.pdf ” in the HTML above. Mind you that the PDF is 539KB)

A screenshot of the button (orange) in my blog

Now you have no excuse at all not to put it in your website, blog, wall… and help us spreading the word of the coming up Ubuntu Developer Week.

Go UbuSpreaders, you do not have to be a developer to put the button in your website you know. Go!

Thanks for reading!

Are we a fraternity? Or: I believe we change the world everyday! Or even better: Thank you!

This might seem provocative to many, but I do have a point so please read before you precipitate into any conclusions. Still have something to say? Please leave a comment

The Ubuntu community is huge and visible! Really, it is. We are thousands of people around the world committed to see Free Software everywhere by giving it freely to other human beings. And our community is just a reflection of that feeling, there are many other communities doing the same.

For some people this sounds like a joke. I kid you not: I have been laughed at many times (it’s ok, really, I am difficult to offend) when I tell people about the Ubuntu and FLOSS thingy of ours.

But we love it. ubunter@s really do. And so do debianistas and fedora ambassadors and other FLOSS and Free Culture enthusiasts. We all have our own reasons of course. But more often than not our goals, and thus our paths, are very much aligned.

So I want to show some thankfulness to every single individual that in one way or another is, or has been, part of this big family in the whole free software ecosystem and in the free culture movement! We are one community, one fraternity.

This time around I, specially, want to thank JuanJo (Fedora ambassador in Valencia),  Joergen Ramskov (K+Ubuntu enthusiast & SmukFest lover) and Mi Compadre Søren (Part of Ubuntu Denmark’s “styregruppen” and Ubuntu-Nordic partner in crime)! Thank you for making my vacation a lot more interesting!

Thank you not just for the beer, the talks, the bus ticket printing, recommendations for visit-sites, clubs or restaurants, but mostly for showing me in real life that I am not on my own in this Ubuntu/FLOSS/Free Culture journey of mine.

Together, we all are powerful individuals and can make changes, real and palpable changes in our near environment and through our cooperation we can make it in a global scale!

• Like en smukk dansk pige I met put it:
  - You mean that you can go around and meet people just like that. Like the masons?
• I answered:
  - Well. not quite like the masons, but yes we meet and talk. But relax, we are not taking over the world… At least not yet!

People I was either visiting, traveling with or that I met in the journey were just amazed about that being at all possible.

I want to encourage everyone to do it more often when we are on holiday or just for a short visit somewhere. I for one I’m willing to meet anyone wanting to talk FLOSS/Free Culture/Ubuntu  that come by Oslo. Just drop me a line or make a blog post like I did. I’ll meet up with you if I have the possibility and the time.

Meeting new people is just great!

Some pictures from the journey:

Oh, and thanks for reading!

SpreadUbuntu did not take summer vacation… Now it’s time for you to step up and make it better too!

Unlike most people, our always übermenschly Evan did not only manage to take some vacation but did as well port the whole SpreadUbuntu Marketing Material repository from Drupal5 to Drupal6 and created an even better site!

So I am now proud to half-announce a whole lot of new features… But this is not the announcement. that will come in time before the Karmic release. In the meanwhile I let you know this:

1. All of you UbuSpreaders will now be able to let everyone know the news of your favorite distro arriving again after 6 months. People never get tired, you know!
2. All designers with non-stop-designing fingers can now upload their Ubuntu and other FLOSS related material to the site so our Local Communitites and Marketing team worldwide can use them. We all know you want us to use it!
3. The best part is, of course, that YOU decide how you want to spread the news as the material being offered comes in many flavours: Posters, website buttons, t-shirts logoes, stickers and more… Take what you want!
4. Gain your 5 minutes of fame by working with the Karmic Koala launching campaign. Now we have a module integrated with individual contributions. Just admit it, humans are fueled by recognition!
5. It’s all integrated with Launchpad baby! Just press the login button in the top right and you are ready to start translating, uploading material, making comments or contributing to the site in any way you may find.
6. There’s more but you will have to wait for the announcement. Can’t give away all the goods in the first round

For now I can tell you that Evan, in behalf of the team (which is for the most part him doing the job ), has asked Canonical to redirect the www.spreadubuntu.com and www.spreadubuntu.org domains to our server which is running the site.

So everyome: Please go to the site and use it. test it, translate it, check its speed and make it more awesome by filling bugs if you find errors. Now it’s easier than ever to contribute!

And in case your RSS gets in the way the URL of the site as of now is http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org/

For bugs, questions, code or anything else see the project page in launchpad: https://launchpad.net/spreadubuntu

We all love screenshots, don’t we? So here we go:

Vacationating in Valencia & Copenhagen + SpreadUbuntu update

As vacations have taken me out of Norway I am up to meet some Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora and other FLOSS people around where I am hanging.

So:

1. Spain: I would like to have a meet up with Ubuntu lovers here in Valencia as I am in here until the beginning of next week visiting family.
   I would really like to have a beer and talk ubuntu with people in the area (Si, hablo Castellano también ). Work with Free Software in Valencia has been unprecedential and I would like to know more about this experience.
2. Denmark: Next weekend (not this weekend) I will be hanging in Denmark (first Aarhus for the Skanderborg festival). In Copenhagen I’ll be for Saturday and Sunday. I am to meet up with people from the Ubuntu Denmark team and others that might want to meet up and have a beer/talk/walk.
3. Meeting up? Contact me by email: huayra _@t_ ubuntu _d0t_ com

The SpreadUbuntu team (aka Evan Boldt + others) is working hard to bring to you the Spread Ubuntu Do-It-Yourself Marketing material site officially within the releasze of Karmic. Have a look at the last changes and give us feedback:

• Site: http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org/
• Feedback here: https://launchpad.net/~spreadubuntu (see mailing list details use the Q&A systrem in Launchpad)

Have a nice summer everyone!