Contributions of Non-Technical People

First, congratulations to Bambi, Romain Perier for his new Kubuntu Developer status. He's one of our wonderful packagers who create the new KDE packages we need to run the latest Kubuntu. Bambi does some development, and this is important. And we need non-technical contributions too!

In fact, if you run and love Kubuntu, we want and need your creativity, your testing, your bug reports, your corrections on the wiki, your help on artwork, documentation, promotion (like this blog!), your helpful voice in IRC, identica, twitter, Google+ -- the sky is the limit! Community work is as important as the code, because people create the love, create the community, create the software.

As a non-technical person, I wanted to give back to Free and Open Source software, which I've been using for about 10 years. My process was to think beyond Linuxchix, which had been my homebase for those 10 years. I thought about my favorite application, which is Amarok. I looked around in the documentation, to see how I could help out. I noticed that the user documentation was outdated and not well-maintained. So after reading the mail list for a few months, I got my courage up, and asked about helping on the list. I was immediately greeted, and asked to join the IRC channel to talk about my ideas. Once I connected to Freenode and set up my identity there, I was made most welcome in #amarok, which made me feel wonderful, and more confident that I could contribute. It ended up that I headed up the Documentation team, and have been writing and editing the newsletter as well as the Userbase documentation. Through this process, I worked with the KDE WWW team, and learned more about how both Kubuntu and KDE work. Basically, I became part of the community team, even before joining the Community Working Group.

In Kubuntu, I haven't done as much as I would like, but I plan to get more active in the documentation team; editing if nothing else. The Kubuntu Council granted me membership, which is also Ubuntu Membership, based on my work with the LoCo, my help in #kubuntu, and work with the Ubuntu-Women. And Canonical sponsored a trip to Orlando, Florida to Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) last year.

I'm writing this blog post from Desktop Summit in Berlin; my lodging and travel sponsored by the KDE e.V. In June, they sent me to Randa, Switzerland for a sprint. Some of the wonderful rewards for contributing. If I can do it, you can do it!

Google Summer of Code, and Season of KDE: Past the mid-point

We have now passed the mid-term evaluations for both GSoC, and SoK. Our students are doing a wonderful job in GSoC -- all 51 students passed! We've had a couple of disappointing reports from SoK, which I would like to follow up on. Please, students and mentors, if you are having difficulties with research, coding, or support, contact us administrators. Lydia isn't alone; we are all here to help you.

This past week I was at the Community Leadership Summit and OSCON. A meeting of GSoC mentors and admins during lunch one day was fun, and I'm looking forward to the Mentor Summit in October. I'm so pleased with the creative support that Google is providing to KDE and the rest of the FOSS projects. This last year, they added the spectacular Google Code-In, and it seems likely they will offer that contest again this fall. New in 2011 is the Documentation Sprint, which I've applied to attend. If accepted, I'll be in Mountainview for a week, for the Sprint then the Mentor Summit.

Thank you Google, thank you KDE mentors, thank you wonderful students, and thank you to Lydia, Jeff and Ingo, my fellow administrators. This has been a great ride.

PS:

Teamwork!

Kudos to the Kubuntu packaging team, who are doing so much with so little! By so much, I mean that they are not only packaging all of KDE 4.7 release candidate, but also the 4.6 updates. With JR Riddell off working on Bazaar for Canonical, it's been a tremendous job for an all-volunteer crew. Many of these folks are in school, doing a Google Summer of Code project, or have summer jobs too.

I've seen them really challenged not only to get the software packaged so it builds and runs, but also running down licensing information, which is sometimes difficult to find or confusing to provide. Yet they have been so fun to watch, as they joke back and forth in IRC while working at top speed, and checking one another's work.

If you've ever thought about learning to package, or know how but have been taking a break, stop by #kubuntu-devel and offer your help. You will find work waiting for you.

Thanks again, Kubuntu team. You totally rock!

Cool Summer Stuff

First,

I'm so happy to be headed to Europe again, especially for this huge event. I look forward to meeting more of my KDE team, but also many Gnome developers. Next month, I'll head down to Portland again and attend both CLS and OSCON. Looking forward to that as well. I'm thinking of doing a lightning talk at CLS, and hope that that springs me forward to start public speaking again.

Finally, I've Joined the Game, and am now supporting KDE quarterly. If you are using a KDE-provided platform and applications, you might join too! See Join the Game for more information.

Table of Contents is DONE! and other Sprint News

In spite of spotty internet connections and wiki timeouts, the Amarok Handbook Table of Contents is done! Eternal thanks to Myriam for her help learning how to move the pages, and to the rest of the team for working out the best order for the pages. Moving the pages is a bit complicated, so if you are using Userbase, try to get your pages in the order you will want them! The Kdenlive team has already posted their QuickStart Guide, so they are well on the way to documenting their excellent application. KMix is next. Right, Christian?

Of course I still need to check the Amarok pages for the proper progress information. That shouldn't take long, and I should have it done within the week -- maybe sooner.

In non-documentation news, we had a good community-building meeting. Unfortunately none of us were quite ready, but we covered all the ground anyway, I think.

My Pictures, and Trever's pictures.

Also, the biscotti were a huge hit! Most were gone the first day. Well worth the space in my luggage. :-)

Greetings from Randa, Switzerland

Thanks to KDE e.V. sponsorship, I was able to come here to attend the Amarok and Multimedia Sprints, and mix with other sprint teams too, such as the KDE Platform, who have taken over the entire attic!, and Nepomuk, KDevelop-Kate. Find our linked notes and such from http://community.kde.org/Amarok/RandaSprint2011. I'm sure that all Amarok, Phonon, PulseAudio, and Kdenlive users will find much to celebrate about as the commits roll in!

Harald Sitter is now lord president of #kde multimedia! He has the vision to create from the disparate KDE multimedia applications and teams, a more unified experience for KDE users, and cooperation and coordination between application teams.

We are living in an 150 year-old hotel this week, hosted by Mario Fux and seemingly his entire family and friends from the entire valley! The food and fellowship have both been great! Especially the raclette for dinner. And getting to know people who've not met -- including some Gnome people! See some pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cosmokramer/sets/72157626882307128/show/.

UDS-O Wrapup

No, I didn't GO to UDS, but I did attend -- remotely. If you didn't have time to do that, here are some ways to catch up.

Watch: lots of the plenaries and some of the sessions, along with many interviews are here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ubuntudevelopers#p/u/1/4wZd77h6aUg

Listen: http://mirrors.tumbleweed.org.za/uds-o/

Look: Excellent photos of the event: http://www.pixoulphotography.com/2011/05/18/official-uds-o-group-photo-and-personal-photo-set/. And for those who are interested, excellent photos of the setup. http://photos.pixoulphotography.com/Events.

Please add more suggestions in the comments!