Introduction to QA / Testing class

Next week, on Tuesday, January 15th at 19:00 UTC the Classroom welcomes Nicholas Skaggs (balloons) of the Quality Assurance (QA) team who will be presenting “an introduction to QA, the quality team, the tools and what we do” including signing up for a launchpad account and the ubuntu-quality email list, using the wiki, IRC, getting connected, and an overview of testing areas.

This is the first in what will be several classes by the QA team, visit their wiki page to learn more about upcoming proposed sessions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/Activities/Classroom

This event will be held in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net (#ubuntu-classroom-chat for questions).

Call for Instructors: Ubuntu User Days on Feb 9th – 10th 2013

We’ll be hosting our next Ubuntu User Days on Saturday February 9th, 14:30 UTC – Sunday the 10th 2013, 3:00 UTC.

“User Days was created to be a set of courses offered during a one day period to teach the beginning or intermediate Ubuntu user the basics to get them started with Ubuntu”

In order for this event to be a success, we need instructors to lead sessions.

To volunteer to lead a session, you can contact a member of the Ubuntu User Days Team by sending an email to myself (lyz at ubuntu.com), the ubuntu-classroom at lists.ubuntu.com mailing list or by contacting us on IRC by stopping by #ubuntu-classroom-backstage on irc.freenode.net.

If you are unsure of a topic for your session, you can visit the Course Suggestions page:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDaysTeam/CourseSuggestions

If you are unsure about expectations for class instructors, please ask! You may also visit the logs from past Ubuntu User Days:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDaysTeam/precise
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDaysTeam/oneiric
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDaysTeam/natty
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDaysTeam/maverick
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDaysTeam/lucid

Please be sure to pass this announcement along to any of your friends who might be interested in leading a session.

Thanks everyone!

LoCos, now it’s your time to take the stage!

So, yes, as you read it in the title. We want LoCo teams to run Classroom sessions. But, what is all of this about?

Many LoCo teams have vast experience hosting events, collaborating with other groups and events to promote Ubuntu and even marketing Ubuntu. But, there are new LoCo teams that would like to know all the tips and tricks on how to make this work successful. So, we’re asking you, as part of a LoCo team, to help the Classroom team give sessions about everything from how to run a booth to giving some tips for people doing conferences, marketing Ubuntu, getting more people into your LoCo, and more.

We have created this wiki page for you to add your ideas. You can request an slot by adding the session to the wiki page and then contacting us by sending an email to ubuntu-classroom@lists.ubuntu.com or by dropping by #ubuntu-classroom-backstage, and one of the team members will get to it as soon as possible.

Make sure you also encourage other members of your LoCo team to help us get this helpful advice to other LoCos!

Ubuntu Quantal OpenWeek and Ask Mark!: October 24th-26th

In just eight years, Ubuntu has become one of the most popular Linux distributions in the world with millions of users and a thriving community. Ever wondered what all the fuss is about? How have we achieved such a great feat in such a short space of time? Here’s where you can find out. Ubuntu Open Week is a week of IRC and On Air! tuition and Q+A sessions all about getting involved in the rock-and-roll world that is the Ubuntu community. We organise this week for the beginning of a new release cycle to help new contributors get involved.

Ubuntu Open Week takes place in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net (#ubuntu-classroom-chat for questions) for IRC, and www.ubuntuonair.com for On Air!.

This cycle it will start on October 24th, and finish October 26th each day with sessions from 13 to 18 UTC, having a special Ask Mark! session on Thursday, at 10 UTC. All sessions on Wednesday and Thursday will run as usual, on IRC (links above), and on Friday, we’ll close up with some Ubuntu on Air! sessions, so you can actually see the instructors.

During the “Ask Mark” session, community members are invited to ask Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl) questions about the Ubuntu project. You will ask your questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat with the prefix QUESTION: and JoseeAntonioR or philipballew will be selecting specific questions to pass along to Mark in the main #ubuntu-classroom channel.

Then, from October 24-26th from 13:00 through 18:00 UTC, we will be hosting several sessions from different teams, including the Development, News, Flavors (including Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Ubuntu Studio), Translations, QA, LoCo, Women, Accomplishments, IRC, App Development, Desktop, Manual and MOTU teams.

To check out the full schedule and learn more about the event, visit the Ubuntu Open Week page on the Ubuntu wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek

We hope to see you there! But if not, as always, logs will be available after each session, and linked to the schedule at the end of each day.

Ubuntu Open Week for Quantal: Call for Instructors

The Ubuntu Open Week is one of the big Classroom events we have each cycle. This time, it will be taking place from the 24th to the 26th of October, and sessions will last from 13 to 18 UTC. For those of you who do not know what this is all about, it is a community-oriented and community-driven event where people from different teams explain what work they do in the community, so you can choose the areas you like the most, and help us grow as a strong community. You can find more information about it in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek.

Now, we are looking for instructors. But before explaining anything, let me remind you that for this cycle, as accorded during UDS, we will be having 2 days of lovely-IRC sessions (Wednesday and Thursday), and we’ll be wrapping up with a day full of On Air! sessions (Friday). So, based on that, we are looking for people who have been involved with a team for a long time, and would like to explain clearly how things work on it. That way, people around the world would be encouraged to join in what they like the most.

If you want to take a slot, just grab it, but make sure to let me (JoseeAntonioR on #ubuntu-classroom-backstage on freenode, joseeantonior at ubuntu dot com) or Philip Ballew (philballew on #ubuntu-classroom-backstage on freenode, philipballew at ubuntu dot com) know, by pinging us on IRC, or sending us an email. Please make sure to pass on this announcement to anyone who can be interested on being part of this event. Thanks for your interest!

Ubuntu Developer Week is over – thanks everyone

Thanks a lot to all the presenters at Ubuntu Developer Week! Thanks a lot also to everyone who joined the sessions and who helped set them up. This UDW was another great success. We had up to 300 people sessions around at peak times, lots of great questions and lots of excitement. It’s events like this where you can get a better sense how Ubuntu development works, can see Open Source development in action and get to know the people.

All the logs of the sessions are now available from the Ubuntu Developer Week page. Thanks again everyone!

Here’s a run through the sessions of the last day:

• Getting started with app development and Intro to translations in Ubuntu – David Planella talked about two topics very close to his heart, Apps in Ubuntu and Translations in Ubuntu. Within 30 minutes each, he managed to give a nice overview and also to address all incoming questions.
• Adding test cases with UTAH and Q&A about test automation  – UTAH is the Ubuntu Test Automation Harness and Gema Gomez-Solano explained in quite some detail how it works and why this changes how we put Ubuntu together a lot. She also explained how to get involved by adding new test-cases. Please have a look at the logs and help out!
• Getting started with Ubuntu WebApps – Alex Launi and Alex Abreu did a great job explaining how Ubuntu WebApps works and how to get started implementing your own. It’s great to see how easily the Desktop and the Web can get closer. Be sure to check it out.
• u1db: synced data for your apps on many platforms – The Ubuntu One team has been cooking something really nice for us and Stuart Langridge showed trivial it is to get up and running with your own databases. It’s a great and very natural way to use, store and sync data, in any application.
• Developers Roundtable – Benjamin Drung and Scott Kitterman were around to answer all kinds of development-related questions and did a nice job of easing everyone into a comfortable atmosphere. Particularly talking from their own experience is nice to read.

Ubuntu Developer Week always flies by much too quickly, but there will be more events related to Ubuntu development, so stay tuned.

Ubuntu Developer Week – last day ahead, summary of day 2

Day 2 is over and what a fantastic day it was! Without further ado here’s the summary of day 2:

• Introduction to Quickly – Michael Terry rocked it. As he is one of the maintainers of Quickly it was easy for him to give a nice overview of our favourite app development tool and answer all questions which came up.
• Getting help to start with Ubuntu Development The developer advisory team and beyond – As member of the MOTU team and the Developer Advisory Team, Bhavani Shankar knows what kind of questions and concerns new contributors have. He did a great job explaining how the DAT tries to help newcomers and explain what to watch out for when getting involved with Ubuntu Development.
• Fixing small bugs and forwarding the patches upstream – Stefano Rivera filled multiple pages with content during his session and explained very nicely where to find easy tasks to work on and which typical bug fixing initiatives are going on in Ubuntu and Debian.
• libmessagingmenu – As a new member of the Desktop infrastructure it was great to see libmessagingmenu explained by somebody who put lots of work into it. Thanks Lars Uebernickel – now it should be easier to integrate with libmessagingmenu for interested developers.
• Ubuntu Juju Tips and Tricks – With Ubuntu’s focus on the Cloud world, we had to have a session about Juju. Read the log and see how Mark Mims went into detail about how to get the most out of it.

I’m sure you’re as sad as everybody else, but today is the last day of Ubuntu Developer Week. Don’t despair though, there’ll be many many more. Here’s what’s up on the schedule for today:

1. 15:00 UTC: Getting started with app development – David Planella has been working with the App Developer community for quite a while, so he knows the pitfalls and problems you might run into when writing your first app.
2. 15:30 UTC: Intro to translations in Ubuntu – David has also worked with the Translations community a lot, so stay tuned for a great session on making software speak all kinds of languages.
3. 16:00 UTC: Adding test cases with UTAH – Quick introduction to Ubuntu Test Automation Harness. How to get involved, and how to get support from the development team or contribute.
4. 16:30 UTC: Q&A about test automation – Answers for anyone with questions about starting a new automated suite, where to start with automation (with or without UTAH) of package testing, feel free to come over and ask. If there are no questions there won’t be any answers either!
5. 17:00 UTC: Getting started with Ubuntu WebApps – Getting the Ubuntu Desktop closer to the web was a huge undertaking, but totally worth it. Ubuntu is just so much better with all the goodness being closely integrated. Alex Launi and Alex Abreu are experts on the topic.
6. 18:00 UTC: u1db: synced data for your apps on many platforms – If your app deal with any kind of data, you might be interested in hooking it up with Ubuntu One DB. Stuart Langridge will tell you exactly ho.
7. 19:00 UTC: Developers Roundtable – Do you have questions about Ubuntu development? Here you have the best opportunity to ask everything you want to know, because we will have a number of developers there who can answer your questions for you.

We hope to see many of you around today as it’s the last day. Tell your friends and bring them and your questions. Join in!