March 8, 2010 - 1st Annual Ubuntu Women Project "How I discovered Ubuntu." International Women’s Day Competition

The Competition which was announced back in January, asked women and girls who use Ubuntu to submit their "How I discovered Ubuntu" stories. We as a Project acknowledge that there is no one definite answer to "How do you get women to use Ubuntu?", but wanted a way to highlight some of the various ways that women become Ubuntu users, contributors, and developers and at the same time not only have those stories as examples but also as a growing gift of encouragement and inspiration to women.

In order for events/competitions to be successful it takes community participation, and a heart felt thank you to all those who participated by submitting their personal "How I discovered Ubuntu." stories, those who took the time to vote, those who helped promote, and those who supported this initiative as well as offer encouragement to those might not have submitted their stories otherwise. I am grateful for everyone involved in the Ubuntu Women Project and greater Ubuntu Community as a whole who are continually helping to provide both the platform and encouragement for women to contribute to Ubuntu.

The winners of an awesome prize pack are: Elvira Martinez and Karen Y. Perez with honorable mention going to Jen Phillips as well. CONGRATULATIONS!!!! Here are there stories:

***Elvira Martinez "tatica1" ***

Today my Honduran team mate Diego Turcios shared with me this link to Amber’s blog that excited me to finally write about how I met Ubuntu. I wanted to share this a while ago but I feel motivated about doing it through Ubuntu-women and not just for the sole interest in participating in the contest. I think it will be very interesting to hear how other women became interested in Ubuntu and others may be interested in my experience, specially considering that I am not the “computer girl” precisely.

After nearly 20 years after my high school graduation in Colombia Lycée Français Paul Valery, I found again one of my classmates through Facebook (I guess) Fabian Rodriguez known as MagicFab who after asking him what he was doing today, he mentioned Ubuntu as part of his activities. And I say activities, because Ubuntu is much more than an operating system.

I’ve always liked the world of computer science and unfortunately that was not what I studied, but I learned on my own how to manage, fix, clean my home machines. I could say that the world of computers is my passion and when Fabian told me about this, I knew it was no fluke.

I remember the first thing I said was: Ubuntu what?? How do you eat that?? And then after a brief speach about it and some information he sent to me to read on the subject, dropped his usual phrase, “If you want to install it, I can help you do it now”. Well, two days later, I was harrassing Fabian to help me install Ubuntu after a bunch of questions I had.

Some of my concerns were:

1. If I would be able to use MSN and Skype with camera and audio included.
2. My biggest question was if I could run iTunes on the computer (tool my daughters and my husband use).
3. If Windows had to be removed to use Ubuntu.
4. If I’ll have Office, PowerPoint or Excel with Ubuntu also and if so, would be so easy to use as those.
5. If I was going to be able to install Ubuntu alone, long distance with Fabian’s instructions.

Well, the day I gave a YES myself to Ubuntu, began with a phone call from Fabian from Canada. After downloading into my own computer some files, we start by checking whether they were good and then install it. I remember Fabian told me, don’t install it yet first test it. Then after his explanations that I could partition the computer and leave Windows intact but also have Ubuntu too I said “Let’s do it and install it now”. And so it was, on the phone, with his help, that I installed for the first time in one of my computers Hardy 8.04 and some months later in another Ubuntu 8.10.

When he finally said, “Take a last click and you’re done, finished,” I could not believe it!! First, I had allowed to risk to install another operating system on my computer and two, that I had done through instructions by telephone. That meant that it could be do so easily! That’s how my story began with Ubuntu in June 2008 : D

Months later I bought an Acer Aspire One that came with Linpus and my next challenge was to install Ubuntu on it. It was a laptop (and not a desktop) and needed a version for netbooks so I tried first to fight with LPIA platform with which I ended up frustrated because after installing it did not work and gave me error. Then it was new to me to download an ISO file to my laptop and also install it throught a USB. I think it was two weeks without my computer, sweating and suffering, but with some help of several friends of the Honduran community I finally had Ubuntu on my Acer. I remember I installed 8.10 version which gave me enough slow problems on my laptop, but when I upgraded to 9.10, I was sooo happy;)

From Ubuntu, I further research, looking and learning how to move in the Ubuntu world. As part of that and then again by MagicFab’s suggestions I learned how to participate via IRC in different communities, to tell my experiences with applications in Ubuntu, I dared to start my own blog for the first time telling my experience with the Ubuntu Desktop Course (elearning), learned to use my blog as a tool through which I can inform others about Ubuntu, participating in lists of the communities I belong and learned how to handle wiki, blueprint and documentation pages to share information to others.

Today I am part of the community and am in several team where I hope to be able to support as I learn from everyone’s experiences too. I am a member in the communities of Ubuntu Honduras, Colombia, Women, Guatemala and El Salvador. Almost daily I am present in IRC channels of Honduras, Colombia and Women getting feedback and contributing wherever I can. I still can not work actively participate in all these media but try to do when I feel more confident about the subject. English is my third language, so I am kind of shy in the ubuntu-women channel.

Today I know that there is Free Software and Ubuntu exists there with all its benefits over other systems. I also know that although I did not study computers, I can handle and learn thousands of things about it and help knowing others that will benefit too.

Today I belong and work hand by hand with others in the Honduras Ubuntu community, promoting Ubuntu in the country, mostly in San Pedro Sula where I currently reside. With the support Fabian gave me, I revived the group that was practically abandoned and we are trying again today to show people of Honduras that Ubuntu is the best choice when it comes to choosing an operating system. Every day I try to learn more and see how I can support other Ubuntu users here and elsewhere. I am very excited to be part of this team and I love to learn and collaborate with this good cause;)

Since I started being part of this community, I had the opportunity to share with others from other distros like Fedora or Debian. There is little that I have experienced them, but for now I’m only interested in Ubuntu.

My name is Elvira Martinez or tatica1 as I I’m known in the community and my main challenge is to convince my daughters and my husband that Ubuntu is the best choice when we talk about operating systems.

***Karen Y. Perez***

When I was a little girl i saw my dad studying computer science to eventually working on projects. Like most little girls I admire my dad more than anyone in the world and I always tried to be just like him. I read many books like him, I begged for my own laptop and fell in love with space. Since then my passion for science, math and technology developed. There were moments where I loved chemistry more than physics and times where math was better than astronomy. But, my passion for computers never faded once. Each year I pleaded my dad to teach me how to program because his code was like a puzzle i need to understand. So, every so often he would teach me bits and pieces but only enough to keep my curiosity afloat and have me do my own research. One day I stumbled across one of my dad’s Unix books in his library. I didn’t really understand much at the time so I tried my very best to read it and eventually I did some research on-line. While doing my research I read about Linux and I saw what the open source revolution was all about. I taught myself as much as I could and I decided to convert my laptop to Linux for the first time in ‘09. Ubuntu has helped me with my studies in computer science and helped me stay open to new things of course including technologies. The last thing a geek needs is to not want to explore outside of the box. I guess you can say I’m a self pro-claimed fem-geek and I couldn’t imagine life any other way. Although, I am no professional yet I do try to talk to other girls and show them how great of an experience using Linux Ubuntu is as well as many other great “geeky” technologies. I hope to one day show young girls that there is more to life than fashion. That you can be as “fashionable” as Barbie and yet be an astronaut.

***Jen Phillips***

Learning to Fly

Some years ago, I used to travel everywhere by bus. The company that ran it was called Microsoft, and I used the Number 3.1. It generally got me where I needed to be, but it took a bit of an odd route to get there, and it would often stop at seemingly random points. If I fancied a change, I could take my walkman, or a book. It wasn’t the most comfortable ride, but it did ok, and I was used to it. After a while, the company decided to upgrade all their busses and change all the routes - and put the fares up. I went onto the Number 95, and everything looked nice and shiny, although I missed my stop a couple of times because I wasn’t used to the route. After a while I realised that although the route didn’t take the same detours, it took new ones, so I didn’t really get where I was going any faster. The busses all seemed to get a bit dingy after a while, too. Still, I had my CD walkman, and it became familiar again.

Eventually, I took the plunge, and got a car. I loved the freedom - I could go where I wanted to go, when I wanted to go. I wasn’t constrained by having to have the right money, and I didn’t have to stop for the sake of everyone else. It was a SuSE, and it was mine and I loved it. Except, any time anything went wrong I had to ask for help. When the radio stopped working, I had to get someone else to fix it. If i couldn’t find a particular stick or button, I had to get someone to show me where it was. It also wouldn’t play any of my old CDs. In short, it was frustrating. I tried a couple of other cars, but they weren’t any better. I took ages getting my Debian to even start, and somehow had a knack for stalling it before I got to the end of the street. Eventually, I gave up and went back to the bus - the XP route now had air conditioning and contoured seats, and I could cope with the delays (and occasional breakdowns) because it did tend to get me there in the end.

Then one day, something quite miraculous happened: someone gave me a pair of wings. In only a couple of lessons, I was flying! I no longer have to wait for the bus, and I don’t need a mechanic to come and rescue me any more. If I want different music, I can just pick up a media player and set it going. If I want to dye my wings a different colour, that’s easy too. I decide which route to take - I’m not even limited by roads any more. The best thing is that flying feels so natural - like walking only better. I call these wings “Ubuntu”.

These story submissions along with all the others are available on the Ubuntu Women Project wiki pages.

Without the efforts of Ubuntu Women Project team member, Melissa Draper, the competition may have never made it to the community, the time and talent she personally put into this competition by drafting the competition as well as writing the voting submission application was awesome! - Thanks Melissa!

It is also important to say thank you to the sponsors of this competition, Rikki Kite, Associate Publisher, Linux Pro and Ubuntu User Magazines, for donating Linux Pro or Ubuntu User Magazine subscriptions (choice of one per winner), to Canonical for donating the Ubuntu Backpacks, notebooks, pens, lanyards, pins and T-shirts, at last but not least to Jono Bacon for making the announcement of the winners as well as for copies of Art of Community.

Again, Congratulations to the winners of the prize packs as well as all those who submitted your person Ubuntu discovery stories. I can’t wait to read the submissions for the 2nd Annual Ubuntu Women Project “How I discovered Ubuntu.” International Women’s Day Competition, so mark your calendars and work on YOUR personal discovery of Ubuntu to help celebrate 100 years of International Women’s Day.

REMINDER: If you or someone you know would like to find out more information about the Ubuntu Women Project there are several ways to do so - website, mailing list, IRC channel(s), and Ubuntu Women Forums

[Discuss the International Women’s Day Competition Winners on the Forum]

Originally sent to the ubuntu-news-team mailing list by Amber Graner on Tue Mar 9 04:46:28 GMT 2010

Did you ever have to deal with source packages and found the variety of patch systems simply mind-boggling? I certainly have.

Enter: the unstoppable Michael Vogt.

If you are running lucid and don’t have ubuntu-dev-tools installed, install it now. Forget about all the crazy stuff and incantations you might need for random patch system X, Y or Z (it supports cdbs, dpatch and quilt at the moment), just type:

edit-patch <name-of-patch>

and it will do the rest for you, even remind you do make use of the patch tagging guidelines.

Michael simply rocks! Give him a hug and if you find bugs in edit-patch, file them.

For those unfamiliar with the title of this blog post, let me introduce you to one of the most important tags in Launchpad: regression-potential.

What bugs tagged as regression-potential mean? Basically, they mean that a regression has been found in the development release of Ubuntu (Lucid Lynx, at the moment of writing).

Why are they so important? Because it means that a regression has been found but, good news, we still can do something about it.

These bugs are specially important in the kernel. Nobody likes to see hardware, working in previous versions of Ubuntu, failing once upgraded to the new one.
Jeremy Foshee, a QA member of the Kernel team, is trying to avoid as many regressions in the kernel as possible. As announced in several mailing lists, he is going to be organizing a weekly bug day of kernel bugs marked as regression-potential from today and until the release of Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). If you want to help avoiding regressions in Lucid, every Tuesday, you can check the Kernel Bug Day page, which includes a list of bugs that need some love. If you have doubts on how to help, please, join the kernel team on #ubuntu-kernel at freenode IRC, and feel free to ask any question.

The more people helping triaging regression-potential bugs, the fewer regression-release bugs Lucid will have.

Well this will be a short and sweet one, I have generated a simple wallpaper for Lucid for my laptop. (1920x1200), thought I would share it with all of you. Hope you everyone likes it.

Download

I’ve finally soldered on the LEDs for the Cylon DorkShield I designed and got built in a recent DorkBotPDX PCB run. I’m having trouble with the programmer, but I got the shield mostly working:

Which is more powerful?

Say we have a software project in the FOSS community and say it needs to have 5 developers work on it, spending a total of 90 developer days between them in order to get it to a usable state. That’s a fairly large amount of work and most people will dismiss the project, as it’s not in a usable state.

This is the FOSS bootstrapping problem. If you can’t find a way to boot your project, then you’ll be toiling on it for years. Slowly becoming more behind with the technology. Most programmers don’t want to do that.

To solve this you can inject money into the problem. Get a decent amount of investment at the start a simply pay programmers to make the thing work. This is a good way to do it as I like it when programmers get paid.

Otherwise your going to have to drum up some community support and it’s going to need an awful lot of faith in the leader, the project idea and the prospects of it succeeding. Telling a bunch of people that it will succeed with their help is rather hard if you need a bunch of people to all believe it in order for it not to be a lie.

But, isn’t money just faith too? sure your not investing your time any more, but your investing your money and in some quarts that may be worse. Does this mean that we should be able to start interesting projects or does this mean that we have to gradually, very slowly work our way up to the goal with small pieces, evolve them forward with what we have to prove their worth first?

Your thoughts?

A few weeks ago, the GNOME Foundation has been contacted by the organizers of the Idlelo conference in order to get a GNOME presence during the event. Quoting the website of the event:

IDLELO is one event for FOSS practitioners, developers and advocates as well as governments to showcase results, share experiences and challenges, review progress on the continent in diverse domains and chart a way forward for an African future grounded in true ownership of technology. IDLELO is therefore a premier international forum for the presentation of research results in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Africa.

The event will occur in May, in Accra, Ghana.

There have been many discussions in the past about how to get more community involvement in Africa, and there's no magical solution. But a good first step is, for sure, to be present at events that are being organized on the african continent. We're already sending Luis de Bethencourt to FOSS Nigeria, and we want to be at Idlelo too.

If everything goes well, the amazing Fernando will go deliver training sessions before the conference itself; but we need one more person to man a booth during the conference. While this is not a hard requirement, we'd still like to have a GNOME Foundation member who feels empowered to talk in the name of the Foundation. If you're interested in representing GNOME at Idlelo, please get in touch with the board. I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Amber Graner: Today we talk to Emma Jane Hogbin, Technical Author, HiCKTech creator, Drupal Guru, Ubuntu Member and the list goes on. Before I want to say thank you for taking the time to tell us about your journey into the Ubuntu Project. Emma can you tell us a little about when and how you got involved in FOSS? Also, How and when did you get involved with the Ubuntu Project?

Emma Jane Hogbin: When I first graduated from university I chatted with various companies to find out what kind of work I wanted to do. (My degree is in Environmental Science, but I took a job as a project manager for a Web design company that specialized in web sites for environmental groups.) One of the companies that I met with had an entire shelf of Adobe software boxes. I made a comment about warez sites, and the owner of the company responded by saying that carpenters don't steal their hammers. My father is a wood worker, so this hit home in exactly the right way for me. From that point on I started looking into free and open source tools.

I spent a year using only FOSS software on Windows before making the final switch to the Linux desktop (Debian). I immediately had problems with my laptop and had to patch and recompile my kernel. The Debian mailing list encouraged me to write up the steps I'd taken to fix my problem. Werner Heuser (tuxmobil.org) encouraged me to publish them with the Linux Documentation Project. From that point on I have been at least peripherally involved in the desktop communities for the distro that I use.

AG: Emma you are involved in so many wonderful projects; you took part in Ubuntu Open Week (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek) with a session on "Writing a Book" (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/openweekKarmic/WriteBook). Can you tell us about your Drupal Book and other technical writings you have done.

EJH: Front End Drupal, my first book with a Real Publisher, has been a fantastic journey. I love teaching. It isn't so much about being the authority though. I love it when my students leap beyond what I've said and make their own predictions about how things work. Front End Drupal isn't your typical computer book. It has lots of little bits to keep the reader interested. From ponies, kittens, and ducks to pirates, orks and hobbits, Front End Drupal is actually a "readable" book.

I don't always inject my sense of humour into my technical writing though. When I'm contributing to a collected work (such as a documentation project) I tend to be more "straight" in my writing style. This makes it easier for other contributors, and also for the reader who may be jumping in and out of the documentation at various points. To date I've contributed documentation to a number of open source projects including Bazaar, Drupal, The Linux Documentation Project, and Ubuntu.

AG: Your HiCK Tech site is full of amazing classes? First what is HiCK Tech the conference? What is HiCK Tech the Company? How did you come up with the idea behind it? And What Classes are offered there.

EJH: HICK Tech the conference is a one-day rural technology forum that addresses How the Internet Connects Knowledge. The goal is to highlight the amazing achievements in rural technology (including bovine breeding, and linking remote hospitals to track disease); but also to share some of the innovative "high tech" things that happen in the big city. I live in a rural community and felt isolated from all of the conferences that were happening in big cities. Instead of being upset about what I didn't have, I decided to throw myself a conference that had all the elements that were important to me.

From the one-day conference an entire consulting company has emerged (HICK Tech the company). The things that I deal with as a small business in rural Canada are not unique. Open source software can solve nearly all of the problems that are presented to me by my clients. HICK Tech tries to figure out how to pool resources to make technology even more affordable. I've given several talks on my 100 Mile Client Roster and have started to collect this information at www.100mileclientroster.com in an attempt to help other small businesses earn a living in their communities.

The classes that HICK Tech offers all help small businesses get more from technology. The students are small business owners who need to learn specific skills to keep their own Web presence up-to-date. I've also had interest from designers who want to learn open source tools; and entrepreneurs who want to learn how to launch their own Web design business.

AG: The first time I spoke with you was in the Ubuntu Women IRC Channel on Freenode, so I know you are involved in this Project, can you tell us about your involvement with this Project and also are there any other teams/groups/projects that focus on Women in Open Source you are involved in or could recommend.

EJH: My initial involvements with the UW project were focused on moving beyond a gendered social space. While I think these spaces are incredibly important, we are at risk of never moving beyond them to participation in the broader community. Within the UW project I have mostly worked on community advocacy. I encourage other women to step up to their passions and take part in the larger FOSS community. I have actively encouraged women to present at conferences, and to apply for sponsorship to events. I help squash the "I'm not good enough" bug and empower women to feel confident about their abilities, and to ask questions when they need help.

Women should feel welcome in any community they want to be a part of. The reality is that not every community welcomes newcomers with grace. Every contributor to open source projects needs to be able to feel their time and opinions are going to matter. Sometimes it can take a couple of attempts to find someone in a project who will be a good mentor. I encourage everyone to be persistent when they are passionate; but to move on when the fit doesn't feel good.

AG: Are there any other FOSS projects, such as your documentation work, that you are involved in that you would like to take the time to share with everyone?

EJH: I'm really excited about all of the great work that's been happening in the world of documentation. This year I hosted what I believe is the first ever open source documentation conference. We had contributors from many different open source projects and participants from four different countries. Usability is getting a lot of attention these days, and I think it's only a matter of time before people realize how important user help and documentation are to the user experience. The conference will be running again in 2010. People who are passionate about user help and documentation are encouraged to create an account at www.writingopensource.com.

AG: When I read about how you released the pattern for you one of your knitting projects a bell went off for me anyway: GPL can be used for many things only one of which is Operation Systems and Code. I have seen first hand the brilliant and complex knitting projects you work on, and I have seen pictures of the now famous Drupal Socks you have knitted as well. Any plans for some Ubuntu socks, other items? Can you tell us about the GPL license you released the pattern for the socks under?

EJH: Not all community contributions have to be made in front of a computer. It's true, I did knit the Drupal socks. A friend of mine had given me countless hours of free tech support to help me with some Drupal problems I was having. As thanks, I knit him a pair of Drupal socks.

Druplicon, the mascot, is licensed under the GPL. I felt it was only fair to release my "code" back into the commons under the same license that made it legally possible for me to knit the socks. The pattern is available from http://www.emmajane.net/craft/drupal. It has been featured at many DrupalCon conferences as well as in CRAFTzine (http://craftzine.com/). I don't have any plans to knit other logo items, and if I did it would only have to be an open source image that I was replicating. Crafters who are interested in creating logoed items may find knitPro (http://www.microrevolt.org/knitPro/) useful. This software was definitely part of my toolkit when I first created the sock pattern.

Crazy things like socks are a great way to show people that it's not just the code that matters, the part that really matters is the passion to volunteering in whatever way suits you best. Knitting the socks has given the Drupal project far more exposure than if I'd contributed the same amount of time in code patches. We need to embrace all positive contributions—no matter how wacky they seem.

AG: Also can you tell folks about the award you created and the process in creating the award.

EJH: This fall I created a tech award at my local high school. It was remarkably easy. This year's recipient, Sadie Hewgill, is now enrolled in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She was granted the award for demonstrating creative use of technology. I created the award because I wanted a simple way to make one girl feel proud of her technology-related accomplishments. The only way to affect real change is when each person you reach out to feels personally connected to the change you are seeking.

The award I created isn't about having the best marks or winning buckets of cash. It's about being excited about technology; creating award winning technologists; and about having an entire gymnasium of people clap because you did something special. On my blog I wrote up the steps I took to create the award (www.emmajane.net/howto/create-award). I hope it will inspire others to find creative ways to encourage even more girls to stay interested in the skilled trades and IT.

AG: FOSS contributor, Author, Conference Planner, Mentor, Savvy Businesswoman, to Community Contributor both in your hometown and the FOSS communities, is there anything I have left off of forgotten to mention that you would like to tell people about?

EJH: I think you've covered everything. As always, you've asked great questions. Thanks, Amber!

AG: Emma thank you so much for taking the time to wear yet another hat in the roll of interviewee and spend some time sharing a little about you and your adventures in, and around the Ubuntu and FOSS Communities. I always walk away having learned something from every conversation we have. It is my hope that others will be inspired by the things that you do and are involved in, just as I continue to be. Thank you for all you do and thank you again for your time with this interview series.

[Discuss Emma Jane Hogbin’s Interview on the Forum]

Originally posted by Amber Graner in Full Circle Magazine Issue #32 on January 1, 2010

Amber Graner: Today we talk to Emma Jane Hogbin, Technical Author, HiCKTech creator, Drupal Guru, Ubuntu Member and the list goes on. Before I want to say thank you for taking the time to tell us about your journey into the Ubuntu Project. Emma can you tell us a little about when and how you got involved in FOSS? Also, How and when did you get involved with the Ubuntu Project?

Emma Jane Hogbin: When I first graduated from university I chatted with various companies to find out what kind of work I wanted to do. (My degree is in Environmental Science, but I took a job as a project manager for a Web design company that specialized in web sites for environmental groups.) One of the companies that I met with had an entire shelf of Adobe software boxes. I made a comment about warez sites, and the owner of the company responded by saying that carpenters don't steal their hammers. My father is a wood worker, so this hit home in exactly the right way for me. From that point on I started looking into free and open source tools.

I spent a year using only FOSS software on Windows before making the final switch to the Linux desktop (Debian). I immediately had problems with my laptop and had to patch and recompile my kernel. The Debian mailing list encouraged me to write up the steps I'd taken to fix my problem. Werner Heuser (tuxmobil.org) encouraged me to publish them with the Linux Documentation Project. From that point on I have been at least peripherally involved in the desktop communities for the distro that I use.

AG: Emma you are involved in so many wonderful projects; you took part in Ubuntu Open Week (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek) with a session on "Writing a Book" (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/openweekKarmic/WriteBook). Can you tell us about your Drupal Book and other technical writings you have done.

EJH: Front End Drupal, my first book with a Real Publisher, has been a fantastic journey. I love teaching. It isn't so much about being the authority though. I love it when my students leap beyond what I've said and make their own predictions about how things work. Front End Drupal isn't your typical computer book. It has lots of little bits to keep the reader interested. From ponies, kittens, and ducks to pirates, orks and hobbits, Front End Drupal is actually a "readable" book.

I don't always inject my sense of humour into my technical writing though. When I'm contributing to a collected work (such as a documentation project) I tend to be more "straight" in my writing style. This makes it easier for other contributors, and also for the reader who may be jumping in and out of the documentation at various points. To date I've contributed documentation to a number of open source projects including Bazaar, Drupal, The Linux Documentation Project, and Ubuntu.

AG: Your HiCK Tech site is full of amazing classes? First what is HiCK Tech the conference? What is HiCK Tech the Company? How did you come up with the idea behind it? And What Classes are offered there.

EJH: HICK Tech the conference is a one-day rural technology forum that addresses How the Internet Connects Knowledge. The goal is to highlight the amazing achievements in rural technology (including bovine breeding, and linking remote hospitals to track disease); but also to share some of the innovative "high tech" things that happen in the big city. I live in a rural community and felt isolated from all of the conferences that were happening in big cities. Instead of being upset about what I didn't have, I decided to throw myself a conference that had all the elements that were important to me.

From the one-day conference an entire consulting company has emerged (HICK Tech the company). The things that I deal with as a small business in rural Canada are not unique. Open source software can solve nearly all of the problems that are presented to me by my clients. HICK Tech tries to figure out how to pool resources to make technology even more affordable. I've given several talks on my 100 Mile Client Roster and have started to collect this information at www.100mileclientroster.com in an attempt to help other small businesses earn a living in their communities.

The classes that HICK Tech offers all help small businesses get more from technology. The students are small business owners who need to learn specific skills to keep their own Web presence up-to-date. I've also had interest from designers who want to learn open source tools; and entrepreneurs who want to learn how to launch their own Web design business.

AG: The first time I spoke with you was in the Ubuntu Women IRC Channel on Freenode, so I know you are involved in this Project, can you tell us about your involvement with this Project and also are there any other teams/groups/projects that focus on Women in Open Source you are involved in or could recommend.

EJH: My initial involvements with the UW project were focused on moving beyond a gendered social space. While I think these spaces are incredibly important, we are at risk of never moving beyond them to participation in the broader community. Within the UW project I have mostly worked on community advocacy. I encourage other women to step up to their passions and take part in the larger FOSS community. I have actively encouraged women to present at conferences, and to apply for sponsorship to events. I help squash the "I'm not good enough" bug and empower women to feel confident about their abilities, and to ask questions when they need help.

Women should feel welcome in any community they want to be a part of. The reality is that not every community welcomes newcomers with grace. Every contributor to open source projects needs to be able to feel their time and opinions are going to matter. Sometimes it can take a couple of attempts to find someone in a project who will be a good mentor. I encourage everyone to be persistent when they are passionate; but to move on when the fit doesn't feel good.

AG: Are there any other FOSS projects, such as your documentation work, that you are involved in that you would like to take the time to share with everyone?

EJH: I'm really excited about all of the great work that's been happening in the world of documentation. This year I hosted what I believe is the first ever open source documentation conference. We had contributors from many different open source projects and participants from four different countries. Usability is getting a lot of attention these days, and I think it's only a matter of time before people realize how important user help and documentation are to the user experience. The conference will be running again in 2010. People who are passionate about user help and documentation are encouraged to create an account at www.writingopensource.com.

AG: When I read about how you released the pattern for you one of your knitting projects a bell went off for me anyway: GPL can be used for many things only one of which is Operation Systems and Code. I have seen first hand the brilliant and complex knitting projects you work on, and I have seen pictures of the now famous Drupal Socks you have knitted as well. Any plans for some Ubuntu socks, other items? Can you tell us about the GPL license you released the pattern for the socks under?

EJH: Not all community contributions have to be made in front of a computer. It's true, I did knit the Drupal socks. A friend of mine had given me countless hours of free tech support to help me with some Drupal problems I was having. As thanks, I knit him a pair of Drupal socks.

Druplicon, the mascot, is licensed under the GPL. I felt it was only fair to release my "code" back into the commons under the same license that made it legally possible for me to knit the socks. The pattern is available from http://www.emmajane.net/craft/drupal. It has been featured at many DrupalCon conferences as well as in CRAFTzine (http://craftzine.com/). I don't have any plans to knit other logo items, and if I did it would only have to be an open source image that I was replicating. Crafters who are interested in creating logoed items may find knitPro (http://www.microrevolt.org/knitPro/) useful. This software was definitely part of my toolkit when I first created the sock pattern.

Crazy things like socks are a great way to show people that it's not just the code that matters, the part that really matters is the passion to volunteering in whatever way suits you best. Knitting the socks has given the Drupal project far more exposure than if I'd contributed the same amount of time in code patches. We need to embrace all positive contributions—no matter how wacky they seem.

AG: Also can you tell folks about the award you created and the process in creating the award.

EJH: This fall I created a tech award at my local high school. It was remarkably easy. This year's recipient, Sadie Hewgill, is now enrolled in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She was granted the award for demonstrating creative use of technology. I created the award because I wanted a simple way to make one girl feel proud of her technology-related accomplishments. The only way to affect real change is when each person you reach out to feels personally connected to the change you are seeking.

The award I created isn't about having the best marks or winning buckets of cash. It's about being excited about technology; creating award winning technologists; and about having an entire gymnasium of people clap because you did something special. On my blog I wrote up the steps I took to create the award (www.emmajane.net/howto/create-award). I hope it will inspire others to find creative ways to encourage even more girls to stay interested in the skilled trades and IT.

AG: FOSS contributor, Author, Conference Planner, Mentor, Savvy Businesswoman, to Community Contributor both in your hometown and the FOSS communities, is there anything I have left off of forgotten to mention that you would like to tell people about?

EJH: I think you've covered everything. As always, you've asked great questions. Thanks, Amber!

AG: Emma thank you so much for taking the time to wear yet another hat in the roll of interviewee and spend some time sharing a little about you and your adventures in, and around the Ubuntu and FOSS Communities. I always walk away having learned something from every conversation we have. It is my hope that others will be inspired by the things that you do and are involved in, just as I continue to be. Thank you for all you do and thank you again for your time with this interview series.

[Discuss Emma Jane Hogbin’s Interview on the Forum]

Originally posted by Amber Graner in Full Circle Magazine Issue #32 on January 1, 2010

Some time ago I bought a Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 laptop. At the time it was the fastest thing I could buy. It was also the heaviest! With a 17″ 1920×1200 screen and all the toys, it’s a bit of a dead weight. It was always intended to be a desktop replacement, so it mostly sat on my desk all of its life so the weight wasn’t an issue. Having nice big screen was lovely for desktop use and playing the odd game.

It has a 1.8GHz Pentium CPU and an nVidia 6800Go video card. Not long after I bought it, the video card failed. I blogged about the issue and the rubbish Dell Support.

Well, it happened again just after the warranty ran out. Convenient, huh? Exactly the same problem as previously happened – corruption on the screen indicating hardware failure. I contacted Dell and they basically said they couldn’t help, but if I wanted they would sell me a new video card for £200. I was torn and frustrated. I could get a cheap entire laptop for not much more than that, but not one with a decent 3D card and 17″ 1920×1200 display. I was irritated that they couldn’t see that this was a recurrent issue with the machine which made me less inclined to pay more money to them.

Whilst on the phone the guy asked me at the end if I was ’satisfied’ with the support. I said ‘no’ of course which he was surprised at and after trying to argue that I should change my mind, he forwarded me on to his manager. The manager then proceeded to argue that I should change my answer to ‘yes’ because the agent had provided me with the correct answer – which was that he couldn’t help me. I was pretty peeved by this point that someone asked for my opinion of whether the transaction was a success and when I voiced displeasure, was badgered for a further 20 minutes to change my mind. I didn’t.

So since then (October last year) my dell laptop has sat in a drawer, unused, wasted. I have jumped on ebay now and then to try and get hold of a 2nd hand video card – it’s a modular MXM 6800Go – but never bought one. They’re quite rare and command similar prices to what Dell quoted me.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a co-worker about his broken Playstation 3. He’d read threads online about how the fault he has may be a common one, where many online suggest slamming the motherboard in the oven for a bit to ‘reflow’ the solder. Many reports online say this works.

I was in one of those moods yesterday, and dug out the laptop and managed to figure out how to take the thing apart and get the video card out. I wound the oven up to 200 degrees C and put the card in for 9 minutes. I figured I had nothing else to lose. If all those posts online were a massive conspiracy to get thick people such as me to put delicate electronics into a hot oven then they succeeded!

30 minutes later the card was cool enough for me to put it back in the machine. I carefully put it all back together and booted it up. It worked! The video corruption had gone. Well, almost. I was left with one vertical purple line about 3 pixels in from the left, which I can totally live with. In the drive was an old Crunchbang CD which booted up just fine.

So now, have I joined the ranks of the internet crazies who say putting electronics in the oven might cure it? Yup. Don’t do it though, because it might all go horribly wrong and I wouldn’t want you to blame me would I?

                          

Thanks to all of you who've made tax-deductible donations so far. We're so close! We still need help to reach and, better yet, push past our fundraising goal. This is the most important time for this project as our deadline is almost upon us. We have a lot we're excited to announce once we finish fundraising, so stay tuned and thank you so much for your generous contributions.

We have a first draft of one side of our tri-fold flyer by Martin Owens and we'd love to hear what you think of it! We want to do the best we can to showcase Ubuntu and promote free culture, software, and content, to people who might not understand the benefits of being able to edit code when they're not coders.

Lastly, we're in need of a couple more volunteers who would like to help us out at the booth. If you're interested, please get in touch.

Today is International Women’s Day, and it provides an opportunity for the world to focus on women’s rights, and society’s attitudes towards women. International Women’s Day has been celebrated since the early 1900’s and has been a key milestone through many key events that have affected women’s rights and is now recognized as a national holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

When I first heard of International Women’s Day, I was unsure of how I can contribute to celebrating the day and raising awareness of women’s rights. On the website one approach it advises is:

The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother’s Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

I think this is wonderful opportunity inside our global communities to do exactly this: to not only celebrate the contributions of women in our projects, campaigns and passions, but to also talk about ways in which we can break down the barriers and attitudinal prejudices that some women still face, particularly in largely male dominated software communities. Today is a great day for equality: let’s all make the most of it.

As part of International Women’s Day, the Ubuntu Women team have been running a competition to gather a collection of stories that share how women discovered Ubuntu and their experiences of joining our community. I thought this was a wonderful initiative: it really speaks to strong experiences of how Ubuntu can enable women to join a collaborative community, and how technology can be a true enabler.

Of the many stories submitted, there were to be two winners: one picked by the community, and I was given the honor of picking the second. Thankyou to the Ubuntu Women team for involving me in the unveiling of the winners, and this morning I announced both winners, read out their stories, and also read out a third that I thought was excellent too. Congratulations to Elvira Martinez and Karen Y. Perez for winning, and to Jen Phillips for getting read out too.

The video from this morning is below:

Can’t see it? Click here!

With today being International Women’s Day, I just want to share a few quick words on the women in my life. I have the privilege of having some incredible women as part of my life. In my family there is my wife, my mum, auntie’s, cousins and other relatives, the many wonderful female friends both online and offline, and every day I have the pleasure of working with some truly remarkable women in the Open Source world, throughout the various communities I am part of. There has been much discussion, particularly in the Open Source community, about how we can encourage more women into our communities, and there has been some friction between different approaches. I don’t see today as a day in which those debates should flourish, but as a day in which we should celebrate the women in our lives who help us flourish. Everyone single one of us has women who contribute so much to our lives and empower us every day, and I am thankful for all the women who bring color to my life, and give me the strength and energy to be who I am.

Fellow Ubuntu Triagers!

This week we're having a special Bug Day on Wednesday 10 March 2010, the target is...! Samba!
Yes! it's time to help our friends on the Ubuntu Server Team so If you have a spare minutes please join us!

* 5 New bugs need a hug
* 35 Incomplete bugs need a status check
* 75 Confirmed bugs need a review

Bookmark it, add it to your calendars, turn over those egg-timers!
* Wednesday 10 March 2010
* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20100310

Are you looking for a way to start giving some love back to your
adorable Ubuntu Project?
Did you ever wonder what Triage is? Want to learn about that?
This is a perfect time!, Everybody can help in a Bug Day!
open your IRC Client and go to #ubuntu-bugs (FreeNode)
the BugSquad will be happy to help you to start contributing!

Wanna be famous? Is easy! remember to use 5-A-day so if you do a good
work your name could be listed at the top 5-A-Day Contributors in the
Ubuntu Hall of Fame page!

We are always looking for new tasks or ideas for the Bug Days, if you have one
add it to the Planning page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/Planning

If you're new to all this, head to
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs

I asked last week if anyone knew of any cool podcasts I should subscribe to. I had a few suggested, one of which I’m now hooked on. Hacker Medley is a fairly new podcast started by Alex Graveley and Nat Friedman.

So far they’ve cranked out 3 episodes and in my opinion they’re all great. They’re all quite short but nicely packed with useful geeky information. Many Supreme Overlord geeks will probably say the content isn’t geeky enough, but it’s pitched at the right level for me. I learned plenty from all three episodes which covered quite different subject matters.

The first went into a little detail about the GSM vulnerability that’s been talked about recently, and how one might exploit it in practice with some amusing and alarming suggestions. The second episode gave an introduction to NoSQL which I’d heard about and roughly knew the basics, but didn’t appreciate why they existed or how widely they were used. In the third Nat and Alex talked about Web Sockets which again I had a slim passing knowledge of, but nothing I’d put on my CV.

I listened to all three episodes on the way to work this morning, and was left ‘wanting more’ which is always a good position for a podcaster to be in. The short duration (10-15 mins) and conversational style make for easy listening. The sound quality is great and the content is nicely paced. The presenters clearly know their stuff so can speak authoritatively on the subjects they discuss, which makes for a refreshing change from some podcasts.

I hope they can find time to crank out more episodes and sustain the quality. I’ll certainly be looking out for more of these and prioritise them accordingly in my player queue.

                          

Last week I was having a conversation with a friend, and while we were discussing some things I mentioned some Ubuntu tools that were completely natural for me since I use them every day in Ubuntu development and for my work, but he was completely amazed by them, so I decided to blog on the subject so more people can know about them.

I’m going to start with the one that impressed him the most: qa-regression-testing branch

The QA and security team maintain a test suite to check for regressions in packages they are updating. These tests are written with python unittest. Most of this test suite can be a little harmful for a production system, so it’s recommended to run it using a chroot environment or a virtual machine and to help with that there is a make-test-tarball script. From the script:

export HOSTS=”sec-intrepid-amd64 sec-hardy-amd64 sec-dapper-amd64″
export TEST=test-glibc-security
./make-test-tarball $TEST.py
for i in $HOSTS; do
scp /tmp/qrt-$TEST.tar.gz $i.local:
done
for i in $HOSTS; do
ssh -t $i.local “hostname; rm -rf qrt-$TEST; tar zxf qrt-$TEST.tar.gz; cd qrt-$TEST && ./$TEST.py -v”
done

As you can imagine HOSTS are the hostnames of the virtual machines where the tests are going to run.

Writing those test isn’t rocket science, you just need a little knowledge of the package and the functionality you want to test and python unittesting, there is even a skeleton script that can help you start writing your test.

Hope this information is useful for you! And as usual, patches are welcome!

I just added apache 2.2.x daily builds to the Ubuntu Server Daily builds project. It is currently pulling the latest tip from Apache’s SVN repository so results may very. You can get it at the PPA. If you have any questions let me know, and please report bugs in launchpad. [...]

A few days ago I released simple-scan 0.9.6. This version is the 1.0 release candidate.

There are two things I'd like to fix before 1.0:

• There may be some issues with scanning from an automatic document feeder (ADF). Please comment on bug 512553 if you are having problems. (I don't have an ADF to test).


• The generated PDF files do not JPEG compress the images. This is because the Cairo renderer does not support it. If you know of a C accessible library that can do this or even how to hard code this (the PDF files are just a single image per page) then please comment on bug 534122.

Take a close look at this beautiful image of the Austin skyline ... Do you see some purple? Maybe some orange? How about a few clouds? Reminds me a bit of the new Ubuntu color scheme...

Well the Texas Linux Fest committee has accepted my proposal to demo the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud!

So if you're interested in seeing a demonstration of the 10.04 LTS Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud in action, join me in Austin, Texas on Saturday, April 10, 2010 at the first ever Texas Linux Fest.

In my presentation, I will use:

• One free Ubuntu Server ISO (10.04 Beta2 64-bit) burned to a USB stick
  
• Two laptops, and
  
• Twenty Minutes
  

And you will witness the ease of deploying an Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), Canonical's open source implementation of an Amazon EC2-compatible cloud that you can run locally, in your own data center and on your own hardware.

In this presentation, you will learn about the UEC, Eucalyptus, Cloud topologies, the installation process, registering nodes, running and terminating instances in the Cloud, and the UEC Image Store.
Bring a blank 1GB+ USB key and I'll even burn you a copy of the same ISO I use in my presentation.Cloud Computing is here, and Ubuntu is a phenomenal platform on which you can construct your private Cloud today. Since 2004, Ubuntu has revolutionized the Linux desktop. Attend this session and learn how Ubuntu is changing the landscape of the Linux server.

:-Dustin

We have entered the Lucid end-game. Which is great. Sadly, there were a whole mess of things for Quickly that I wanted to get done this cycle. I know I won't get to everything, but I can still do a lot. I decided to set out a list of goals, and to work on the list each night, hopefully picking one item off per evening.
I always consider work on Quickly to be related to, but not actually part of, my day job. Thus I enjoy working on it in my free time, but don't typically commit to accomplishing anything specific, because it is my free time, after all. However, let's see how this works.
Here is my tentative list:

1. Finish fixing pygame template indentation and comments.
2. Refactor pygame template to put screen size in the configuration file.
3. Create my own sample sounds for pygtame template.
4. Make pygtame template actually a template (add the string replacement functions and derive from ubuntu-application commands).
5. Remove CameraButton from quickly-widgets.
6. Finish quickly-widgets documentation.
7. Make quickly-widgets tests work (test apps currently work, but some of the tests fail erroneusly).
8. Fix the ubuntu-application template tutorial to use quicky.widgets.couch_grid instead of desktopouch.couch_grid.
9. Add PPA section to ubuntu-application tutorial.
10. Write PyGame template tutorial
11. Make new videos for ubuntu-application.
12. Make videos for PyGame.

Those 10+ things seem like good goals to start. If I missed something, etc... please provide a comment.

I bought lemonade and a granola bar from a sidewalk lemonade stand yesterday. Yes, spring is here. This (hopefully) means less computery time and more outsidery time. Yes, I just made up the word "outsidery." Coining new words should be part of my curiosities this month...

As for actual things I want to explore:

• Jetpack - Last month I switched back to Firefox from Chrome because Chrome just didn't hack it for me as a web developer. One thing that Chrome had that I really liked was the extension mechanism. Basically. it was just some javascript. Jetpack is an extension that provides similar support for Firefox. After diving into Firefox extensions a few times and needing a lifeguard to get out, I thought I'd explore Jetpack to create simpler Firefox extensions.
• Android SDK - I offered to help a friend create an Android App. No pay was involved, but I have been provided a more recent Android phone to replace my Android Dev Phone, so I actually have something of an obligation to complete and app for Android as opposed to just poking around in it.