Ubuntu Developer Summits Now Online and Every Three Months

Steve Langasek steve.langasek at ubuntu.com
Wed Feb 27 23:13:03 UTC 2013


On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 08:21:36AM +0100, Julien Lavergne wrote:
> 2013/2/27 Jonathan Riddell <jriddell at ubuntu.com>:
> > An event with only a week's notice is pretty useless especially if it
> > clashes with significant dates like feature freeze.

> It will be a problem for any community members. How are we suppose to
> organize ourself on a so short notice ? I can't take 2 vacation days 1
> week before them. I organized myself to be free on May, not March. UDS
> is supposed to be the most important event after release day, a period
> when the project (or for example, any derivatives) organize itself.
> How are we suppose to organize anything with only 1 week of
> preparation ?

I think it's important to understand that moving this first virtual UDS up
is a response to the fact that, with the strong focus on the phone and
tablet for the Canonical team over the next year, engineering planning is
*already* happening that would normally be discussed at UDS before
implementing.  By moving UDS up, something that's obviously only possible to
consider with UDS as a virtual event, we're enabling the community to be
part of those discussions which otherwise might not happen publically (or at
least wouldn't be systematically public and visible).

So yeah, it's going to be hard for the community to participate to the same
degree on such short notice, and that's not good.  But bear in mind that the
plan is to have another virtual UDS in three months, around the usual time
of year.  Even if this UDS winds up being completely dominated by topics
driven by Canonical engineering, it's still better for Ubuntu to have those
discussions in public instead of in private; and for community members who
have been caught off-guard and aren't able to participate this time, they'll
still be able to get the videos of the discussions online, and three months
from now be in a position to participate on an even footing just like they
would have otherwise.  I think that makes having this vUDS preferable to the
alternative.

On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 06:49:14PM +0530, Bhavani Shankar R wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 6:24 AM, Jonathan Riddell <jriddell at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > An event with only a week's notice is pretty useless especially if it
> > clashes with significant dates like feature freeze.

> +1 here too as it makes planning totally difficult for any contributor
> (as gilir said and on a personal note I would take time off during May
> and November to plan down on my views that I thought to say during the
> uds.

> Secondly, The timezone in which this uds is planned for just puts me
> virtually out of participation on the sessions I intend to attend as
> it will be at the stroke of midnight at the place where I live (and
> holds good for most of the eastern parts I guess) and waking up coming
> back from work would be difficult.

This isn't going to be a perfect, drop-in replacement for our previous
approach to UDS; there are certainly some trade-offs.  But I'm not convinced
that participation from Asia is actually one of them.  Setting aside the
fact that in this case there's very short notice, why would it be any easier
to take off a week, hop on a plane, deal with jet lag and attend UDS in
person, than to take off two days, have a couple of late nights, and attend
sessions remotely?  The latter option scales a lot better, takes /less/ time
out of people's lives, and I'm sure it gets a lot fewer people sick with the
UbuFlu.

> Thirdly, contributors (like myself) can be living in some places where
> internet connectivity would be not that great to support HD video
> streaming and can cause distortion when trying to speak.

I know that Google Hangouts include various "low bandwidth" tweaks.  Do you
happen to have any experience with these, to know how well they work / what
the real minimum bandwidth requirements are for participating?  I suspect
that, in practice, it's not so different from what's required in order to be
able to participate effectively in other aspects of Ubuntu development, but
possibly it would be worth testing this before next week.

Cheers,
-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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