Well, Hello

Oi oi folks. Well, hasn’t it been a while? It seems I have been on a little blogging hiatus recently, and I think the simple reason is that I have been writing a lot more than usual recently so my blogging tendencies have suffered from all the writing. Well, as I will share in a few paragraphs, I am largely done with the writing, so the blogging is coming back.

So, before we get back into the normal blogging flow… a quick update with what has been keeping me busy recently.

Ubuntu

It has been a busy time in Ubuntu-land recently. A few weeks back we had our Ubuntu Developer Summit in Spain and the week before that we had our Canonical Allhands conference. The time building up to UDS is hugely intense: weeks of planning the venue, schedule (which had doubled in size to over 450 sessions), merch, social events, plenaries, presentations and more. Thankfully, it was an awesome event and the response was really positive. Many people who had been to UDS before felt it was one of the most productive events we have run. Thanks to Jorge, Claire, James, Maria and the other organizers and thanks to my fellow track-leads for a sterling job!

David Planella also joined my team recently and he is doing a rocking job. David is focused on growing our translations community and I have been learning more about translations by joining the Ubuntu UK Translations Team. At the heart of the Ubuntu ethos is a belief that everyone should have access to high quality software in their local language. While we have an incredible existing community, we have many challenges ahead to refine and smooth our translations workflow and how we can unite our community betwee. We have some exciting plans around translations so stay tuned, and keep an eye on David’s blog.

In the interests of being concise (and not having much time to blog), I won’t go into all the details about what I have been focused on recently but it includes the LoCo directory, initiatives for this cycle (Ubuntu Open Week, Ubuntu Developer Week, Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase, LoCo Docs Days, UDS Planning) as well as some key projects for the cycle such as ArchiveReorg, Ayatana, Upstream Relations, Bug Triage best practise, Design community workflow and structuring the LoCo project. I am also really keen to get back on the ground more in this cycle: the last cycle had me busy with some of the growth inside Canonical, and I am keen to reseat the balance with our wider community. Exciting times!

The Art of Community

As some of you will know, I have been writing a book called The Art of Community to be published by O’Reilly in mid-August. Well, the book is written and has been through the primary edit phase, the review edit phase and is now in copy-editing. As such, the content is complete but we are checking in for little types and grammar issues before it goes off to be typeset. I am really excited about the content: it feels good and I am really hoping the content will be useful for many different types of community. There has also been a fantastic amount of buzz around the book: thanks to everyone for supporting the project!

Last week I also confirmed that Leo Laporte is writing the foreword for the book. I emailed Leo about it a few weeks back and he confirmed live on air shortly before we recorded FLOSSWeekly.

The book will be available under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial ShareAlike license and available to buy in print in all good bookstores. The book is also available to pre-order on Amazon: you can find out more here. If you pre-order it, do stick a button on your website.

Community Leadership Summit

A little while back I announced an annual summit that I have put together for community leaders, managers and organizers called the Community Leadership Summit. The 2009 event takes place the weekend before OSCON in San Jose on the 18th and 19th July 2009. The take-up and pre-registration for the event has been fantastic, and I will be updating the website with all the new attendees soon. It is shaping up to be a hugely exciting event with a massively diverse range of participants.

With the UDS, book and other things keeping me busy I have not updated the website for a few weeks but expect to hear more over the coming week. Stay tuned, folks!

FLOSSWeekly / At Home With Jono Bacon

Recently I have become a semi-regular co-presenter with Leo Laporte and Randal Schwartz on FLOSSWeekly. I have been having a blast doing it, and I am looking forward to doing more shows with the guys. I will be there on the show on Wednesday to interview Tim O’Reilly.

I have also been experimenting with live videocasts and have a show called At Home With Jono Bacon on ustream.tv. On the show on Wed 10th at 6pm UTC I will be talking through the 12 stages of burnout; a presentation I did recently at UDS. Stay tuned!

OK, nuff said. More blogging soon. Also, stay tuned with my microblogging madness on my Twitter and my identi.ca feeds.