Just in case anyone here doesn't know the Ubuntu Open Week, Popey put this out ont he LugMaster mailing list - it might be of interest to some of you guys.<br><br><br>Once again Ubuntu are running an Open Week on IRC.<br>
<br><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek</a><br><br>Each day during the week is split into one-hour segment on a given
<br>topic. The schedule is on the above page, note that times are given in<br>UTC - so add one hour to the times if you're in the UK. Some sessions<br>are duplicated to help people to work these in around their own<br>
schedules.<br><br>Most of the sessions consist of a section where the speaker talks on a<br>subject, and then moves on to a Q&A session. With some the Q&A is only a<br>few minutes, others it lasts most of the hour.
<br><br>There are opportunities to learn about general Ubuntu & Launchpad stuff<br>of course. However there are also some sessions about specific things<br>like MythTV on Ubuntu, Ubuntu Servers and also interesting developer
<br>info like packaging and quality assurance.<br><br>I'm giving two sessions this year, one about the Ubuntu Screencasting<br>Team (and of course screencasting in general), and one about the<br>Launchpad Answers system and troubleshooting problems.
<br><br>There's also a few opportunities to put your own questions to Mark<br>Shuttleworth, who as you probably know started the Ubuntu project and<br>the company and foundation that finance its development.<br><br>Every session is logged and summarised on the wiki (linked from the page
<br>above), so if you aren't able to join in, you can still keep up with<br>what was discussed.<br><br>For those who don't use IRC, it's a great way to get into it. For those<br>that don't know or like Ubuntu, it's a ideal way to put your
<br>questions/points to those that can do something about it.<br><br>There are two main IRC channels used, one for the actual session, and<br>another where people post their questions and generally discuss the<br>session. A moderator picks up the questions (and generally there's
<br>little or no censorship when it comes to picking the questions - it's<br>all pretty transparent), and then pastes them into the main channel,<br>where they get answered by the speaker. It works very well, and means
<br>that people can ignore discussion channel and just follow the session,<br>but also leads to some interesting off-topic discussions too.<br><br>Hope to see you there.<br><br>Cheers,<br>Al.