Ubuntu Developer Summits Now Online and Every Three Months

[Jono Bacon]

Hi All,

>From the beginning of the Ubuntu project the Ubuntu community has
discussed, designed, and planned each release of Ubuntu at the <a href="
http://uds.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu Developer Summit</a> (UDS), which happens
every six months at the beginning of a new release cycle.

The event, organized and funded by Canonical, is designed to get the
brightest minds in the Ubuntu community together and develop a rigorous set
of blueprints and work items for the forthcoming release of Ubuntu. These
blueprints are tracked openly in
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/and work items tracked openly
at
http://status.ubuntu.com.

UDS has had a long culture of openness and transparency, including remote
participation features, but Canonical wants to continue improving and
refining the openness and accessibility of the event. Furthermore, we also
want to open the opportunity for those to participate who cannot travel
physically to the event, particularly those who can bring specialist
experience and expertise across the convergent goals of Ubuntu across the
client and cloud orchestration in the server. Finally with the change and
evolution of Ubuntu and the increasing diversity of experience joining the
Ubuntu community, we want to be able to have community-wide discussions
more often than every six months.

With these goals in mind the Ubuntu Developer Summit is transitioning over
to an online event that takes place for two days every three months, and
driven by live video discussion sessions, complete with integrated
discussion, note-taking, and harnessing social media. This online event
will replace future physical UDSs, including the event originally planned
in Oakland, California in May 2013.

In the new online format the event will make extensive use of Google+
Hangouts On Air split across four channels, Client, Server & Cloud,
Community, and App Developers, with each channel having two video streams
totalling 8 potential concurrent UDS topics. UDS sessions will be spread
across these channels with integrated IRC, Etherpad, Social Media sharing,
and links to blueprints and specs.

As with the physical UDS, the event will also include keynotes, plenary
sessions and lightning talks; providing a great online venue for planning
the future of Ubuntu as well as delivering news, education, demos and other
related material. As with the physical UDS, the new online format is open
to all to participate as a contributor or viewer, and we are confident that
the online format will open up UDS to more and more people around the world.

The new format of UDS provides an enhanced level of openness and
transparency that is optimized for online participants. Unlike the physical
UDS where a portion of the agenda is recorded in video form, *every*
session in the new UDS format will be recorded and available from the
schedule. Likewise, with the format of the event being online, the audio
and video quality of the online experience should be much improved compared
to recording a physical room of people with a single microphone and camera
and variable sound levels. The full set of recordings will also make
reviewing past sessions easier and make it easier for the press,
enthusiasts, partners and others to review the details of the discussions.

The event will continue to be scheduled at http://summit.ubuntu.com and due
to the lighter nature of organizing an online event as opposed to a
physical event, the new UDS format will be scheduled approximately every
three months (as opposed to every six months). This will provide an
increased level of participation and discussion around how we create and
build Ubuntu across the desktop, devices and cloud.

With the fantastic level of interest in the recent phone and tablet
announcements, we decided that we couldn’t wait until May to run this new
format for UDS, so the first online UDS will be taking place next week from
5th - 6th March 2013 from 4pm UTC - 10pm UTC and the next event will take
place around the same time as the originally scheduled physical UDS in
Oakland; we will confirm the dates soon. Canonical will review the success
of the next two online events and then then assess whether to continue the
online format. We look forward to seeing you at the inaugural online UDS
next week!

Thanks!

   Jono

-- 
Jono Bacon
Ubuntu Community Manager
www.ubuntu.com / www.jonobacon.org
www.identi.ca/jonobacon www.twitter.com/jonobacon
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