[HLUG] Fwd: Ubuntu Open Week

[Mark Broadbent]

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Once again Ubuntu are running an Open Week on IRC.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek

Each day during the week is split into one-hour segment on a given
topic. The schedule is on the above page, note that times are given in
UTC - so add one hour to the times if you're in the UK. Some sessions
are duplicated to help people to work these in around their own
schedules.

Most of the sessions consist of a section where the speaker talks on a
subject, and then moves on to a Q&A session. With some the Q&A is only a
few minutes, others it lasts most of the hour.

There are opportunities to learn about general Ubuntu & Launchpad stuff
of course. However there are also some sessions about specific things
like MythTV on Ubuntu, Ubuntu Servers and also interesting developer
info like packaging and quality assurance.

I'm giving two sessions this year, one about the Ubuntu Screencasting
Team (and of course screencasting in general), and one about the
Launchpad Answers system and troubleshooting problems.

There's also a few opportunities to put your own questions to Mark
Shuttleworth, who as you probably know started the Ubuntu project and
the company and foundation that finance its development.

Every session is logged and summarised on the wiki (linked from the page
above), so if you aren't able to join in, you can still keep up with
what was discussed.

For those who don't use IRC, it's a great way to get into it. For those
that don't know or like Ubuntu, it's a ideal way to put your
questions/points to those that can do something about it.

There are two main IRC channels used, one for the actual session, and
another where people post their questions and generally discuss the
session. A moderator picks up the questions (and generally there's
little or no censorship when it comes to picking the questions - it's
all pretty transparent), and then pastes them into the main channel,
where they get answered by the speaker. It works very well, and means
that people can ignore discussion channel and just follow the session,
but also leads to some interesting off-topic discussions too.