Richard A. Johnson

Ahh, my favorite time of the release, Documentation String Freeze. With every release, us Kubuntu folks seem to struggle a bit, but this time, we have done pretty damn good. We did a complete rewrite of our documentation, getting rid of the old KDE3 documentation. And after doing that, I am just extending the freeze on Kubuntu documentation almost 24 hours. This is going to give us time to have the documentation gone through by Carl, our amazing editor-in-chief who has done a kick ass job.

I am really impressed with the results of this release cycle and the people who helped make the Kubuntu documentation at least a bit better if not a whole lot better. My documentation ninjas include:

• Vikram Dhillon (dhillonv) – forget ninja, this guy is a kamikaze. He pumped out a ton of docs this cycle.
• David Wonderly (DarkwingDuck) – the darkwing duck of a ninja, he pummeled out the Netbook Remix documentation, the Desktop documentation and other topics as well.
• Jonathan Jesse (jjesse) – I’m to sexy for my docs, to sexy for my docs, so sexy they don’t validate! He got them in at the turn of the clock thankfully. I give him hell because I can, and because he does an amazing job with the Kubuntu chapter in the Official Ubuntu Book, which I am no longer a part of
• Carl Symons (kallecarl) – this guy is an editing ninja, so much so, I am giving him the title, Editor-In-Chief. My docs suck as it is, but thankfully he can unsuck them for me (that kind of sounded gross)
• Bhaskar Kandiyal (gastly) – holy smokes, this guy took on graphics and video and totally blew my mind. He actually taught me some Blender with his documentation. Rock on!

If you helped with something and I forgot your name, I truly do apologize. I just went with the list of names on our todo list. Everyone, if you run into any of these people on IRC, Ubuntu Forums, a mailing list, or anywhere, give them a hug, they truly do deserve it!

At the beginning of the Lucid cycle I put out a call-for-help on rewriting Kubuntu Documentation. It seems about 10 people were interested, and out of those 10, 4 or 5 stepped up to the plate and hit home runs. I truly am amazed just how wonderful our community is here. So, if you are interested in documentation (I am looking at you shadeslayer), hop in to #kubuntu-devel and #ubuntu-doc on freenode’s IRC service (see, I spelled it right, so don’t give me grief Nathan Handler!) and let us know. I am expecting to start documentation right around the beginning of Lucid+1, the Mighty Maltese (please use this, so my little Maltese will be happy).

My plans for Lucid+1 documentation, rewrite everything!

Just kidding. Add to what we have, change some formatting and layout stuff. So if you see it missing in Lucid documentation, please, fix it up and propose a merge and we will get it in! Thanks again to everyone who made kubuntu-docs a reality!

help:/kubuntu

AWESOME! This definitely shows that the Kubuntu community has grown over the past couple of years, even among the complaints, we seem to be succeeding, and this makes me super happy. Just over a week ago, I decided that we were going to totally wipe out the current set of Kubuntu documentation and start from scratch. My buddy Jonathan Jesse, the 2nd Kubuntu docs dude, was freaking. He was like, “that sounds like a lot of work!” Oh, it did, but our awesome community has stepped up and is taking control, writing documentation, and good documentation at that. I am really grateful to all of you who are helping, and because of you, there is no doubt in my mind that our docs will finally kick ass again!

That’s right, just like Chicago and their Olympic bid, the Global Jam has been olyminated! We spent the better part of 6 plus hours teaching quite a few new faces how to get involved in the Ubuntu Community. We covered everything from filing a bug to triaging that sucker, and even covered the packaging as well. We went over, in pretty good detail what all is involved with packaging as well as breaking down the files that are required and important for Debian and Ubuntu packaging. Typically our events are a lot of the same faces, however this time we went for a suburban Chicago feel for the get together and this collected a bunch of new faces. Awesome, as Jorge would say. Everyone of them was interested in learning how to contribute too. Hey Matt East, keep your eye out for my buddy Vaughn, he is interested in some Ubuntu docs! I know we will have a few more MOTU, or Ubuntu Developers, or whatever it will be called soon, hailing from Chicago. This rocks! During all of the instructing we actually triaged a bug, one bug! Of course it was a KDE bug too, go figure! Nonetheless, it was very productive and I feel we will have new contributors from Chicago in the near future as well. Anyways, here are just a couple of photos from the ones that I took:

Ubuntu Chicago

 
mr. swoody and ms. swoody

musikgoat

MIDWEST!

Can you hear me now?

OK, if you are reading this post from Planet Ubuntu, more than likely you have noticed the posts about the various teams and their participation in the Global Jam. What you haven’t seen yet is the report from the Ubuntu Chicago Team just yet. Well there is a reason. As it seemed that a great deal of the teams would be hosting their jams on Saturday, aka today, we decided to hold ours on Sunday. Various reasons of course, one being people don’t like geeking out on a Saturday, plus we all realized that all of the teams today would have messed up so much, that the Chicago team can then go in and fix every thing :p

OK, that isn’t the real reason, but anyways, just a heads up. If you are in or around Chicago tomorrow, the team will be meeting up at the Schaumburg Library from 12:00PM until 8:45PM. Here are more details. See you tomorrow!

Where will you be this Sunday, October 4th? If your answer is in or around Chicago, then come join us at the Ubuntu Global Jam.

Who?
Ubuntu Chicago Local Community (LoCo) Team

What?
Ubuntu Global Jam – world wide uniting and collaboration between the various LoCo Teams.

When? Sunday, October 4, 2009 from 12:00 PM until 8:45 PM Chicago time, or Central Standard Time.