UDS - Benvinguts, passeu passeu

Empowering LoCo teams at UDS

David Planella — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 15:26:19 GMT

With Ubuntu now running across all form factors and devices and entering the mobile space, a new era begins.

The challenge

While our values remain the same, we've now faced with a unique opportunity to drive adoption of our favourite Free Software OS to a user base that could potentially be one or two orders of magnitude bigger.

We've layed out the foundations of an innovative and scalable platform that provides a stunning experience for regular and power users, and that is a delight for developers to use. Years of experience, user testing and design on the desktop, pioneering work on the cloud and the app development story for the phone are some of the key aspects that have made it possible.

In this new era our community is more important than ever, with LoCo teams and the LoCo Council at the forefront. Ubuntu contributors, enthusiasts, evangelists, advocates... with your events, initiatives across the globe you are all making it happen.

With virtual UDS happening this week, we'd like to kick off a series of discussions to come up with a solid plan on how to re-energize and empower LoCo teams to scale up to these new challenges, and to involve them in the technologies and projects that are driving this new chapter in Ubuntu. The contribution of leaders in our LoCo community and the LoCo Council will be key to our success here.

The sessions

From the 19th to 21th of November, both the Community and the App Development tracks at UDS will be full with LoCo team sessions, and we'd like all advocates and everyone involved in Ubuntu local community teams to participate and contribute to our LoCo plans this cycle. Here are the sessions this week:

LoCo projects

An initiative to work with LoCos to provide projects and outcomes for those teams and individuals looking for ways of contributing to Ubuntu. We'd like to create "LoCo projects", a pool of projects LoCo teams can participate in as a team.

Join this session >

LoCo Portal promotion

The LoCo Portal is the window to the vibrant activity of our Ubuntu teams, and we want to come up with a plan to promote it and use it to highlight the awesome work that's going on in the LoCo world.

Join this session >

LoCo Leadership growth

New challenges require leadership, and we'd like to work with the LoCo Council to grow a team of leaders to drive the global LoCo community.

Join this session >

LoCo community involvement in App Development

App development is an exciting new area that is becoming key to the success of Ubuntu among mobile users. We're at a point where the platform and infrastructure is ripe for LoCo teams to get involved and start spreading the word and running Ubuntu app development events.

Join this session >

Build materials for the App Dev Schools initiative

Growing the number of learning materials to write apps for Ubuntu will be a key focus for next cycle, and it offers a great opportunity to share knowledge and help others getting started creating content for the platform. Join us to discuss the plan to create a set of materials and presentations for the App Dev Schools.

Join this session >

Campaign to grow the number of tutorials videos

As an extension to the App Dev Schools initiative, we'd like to come up with a plan to publish a series of short, topic-based app development tutorial videos.

Join this session ›

Looking forward to seeing you all at UDS this week!

Image 'Photo de groupe' by rocknpol under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

New Translations Videocast: UDS O Translations Highlights

David Planella — Wed, 18 May 2011 14:23:51 GMT

So, new Ubuntu cycle and time for a fresh translations videocast!

Join me tomorrow at the Ustream Ubuntu Translations channel, where I'll give you a summary about the great sessions we had around translations last week at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest, where we discussed the plans for the next cycle: the Oneiric Ocelot. As usual, feel free to come along, ask your questions and have a chat around translating Ubuntu.

WHAT: Videocast - UDS O Translations Highlights
WHEN: Thursday, May. 19th, 15:00 UTC
WHERE: Ustream Ubuntu Translations channel

Talk to you all tomorrow!

Note that if you wish to participate in the online chat, you’ll need to sign up for a ustream account (it doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes), but I’ll also be answering your questions on the #ubuntu-translators IRC channel on Freenode.

Announcing the Natty Narwhal UDS Translations Sessions

David Planella — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:24:44 GMT

It's less than a week before the Ubuntu Developer Summit kicks off in Orlando, Florida, from the 25th-29th Oct, and everyone is getting ready to plan all the sessions and put all of the pieces in place for what will be once more an amazing schedule for an exciting development cycle: Ubuntu 11.04, the Natty Narwhal.

As usual, we're going to have a solid representation of Ubuntu Translations, and I'd like to take the opportunity to let you know bit more about the sessions we've got in store for this UDS.

Main Sessions

These will constitute the roadmap for next cycle, and were based on the great feedback from community members during the call for proposals for the Ubuntu 11.04 Translations Plans.

Everyone should feel welcome to participate in the discussions and collaborate in completing these goals.

Ubuntu Translations Portal

A web portal to unify all the available content on Ubuntu translations such as stories, announcements, language teams, documentation, etc. (read more...)

Language Pack Updates Schedule

A clear policy on language pack updates for stable releases, stating for which releases and when they will be published. (read more...)

Translations Stories

A coordinated effort to publish stories about the work of translation teams throughout the cycle. (read more...)

Introductory Video to Ubuntu Translations

Production of an introductory video on Ubuntu translations, which will ultimately appear on the Translations Portal. (read more...)

Translations Training Sessions

A set of translations training sessions to help new translators getting started using Launchpad Translations and contributing to Ubuntu. (read more...)

Additional Sessions

Translatable Ubuntu Code of Conduct and Leadership Code of Conduct

We want to provide the Code of Conduct (CoC) and the Leadership Code of Conduct (LCoC) in anyone's own language, and we want to enable the community to translate it. (read more...)

Internationalization of Launchpad Answers

We'd like to have an open discussion about the scope of work and the steps involved in enabling internationalization and localization of the Launchpad Answers application's web UI. (read more...)

Roundtables

Ubuntu Translations Community Roundtable

A roundtable to discuss anything related to the Ubuntu Translations community, and to Launchpad Translations as a tool. (read more...)

How to participate

Whether you can attend UDS presentially or remotely, if you see any translation session you're interested in, you can participate or follow the progress by subscribing to the blueprint. And if you are at UDS, just join the session! Here's how you can do it:

Go to the blueprint. Click on the session you're interested in, either in this overview (using the read more.. links) or in the UDS schedule. This will take you to the blueprint in Launchpad.
Subscribe to it. Subscribe to the blueprint, optionally ticking the "Participation essential" checkbox.
Add feedback. If you like, add feedback to the blueprint's whiteboard.
Join in! Remember that if you are participating remotely, there's IRC projected in all rooms and sound is streamed, so you can interact with those in the session. Check out the remote participation documentation for detailed instructions on how to participate from home or anywhere else.

Looking forward to seeing everyone next week!

Maverick UDS Translations Sessions

David Planella — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:02:16 GMT

Engines are warming up for the next Ubuntu Developer Summit next week in Brussels, and on the Community track we've got a rich set of sessions to discuss a lot of topics around Translations. These will help shaping up the roadmap for the next version of Ubuntu, the Maverick Meerkat.

We discussed the sessions in the last translations meeting and they have now all been scheduled. You can also see the overview on the wiki, although they will all be tracked from the linked blueprints. Here they are:

Translations community roundtable
- Unstructured session to discuss and gather feedback on all around the Ubuntu translations community
  - Proposed topic: QA of language packs (GaborKelemen) - asking translators to test each updated package before release may be too much. With on-demand updates, it may be unnecessary to withhold untested updates.
Launchpad Translations roundtable
- Unstructured session to discuss and gather feedback on all around Launchpad Translations as a tool
Desktop and Translations roundtable
- Roundtable with members of the desktop team to discuss everything related to translations. Proposed topics:
  - Overview of Launchpad Translations changes in Maverick: automatic generation of translation templates, import of translations from upstream bzr branches and translation sharing. This will also be explained in a plenary.
  - Implementing gettext support to PolicyKit
  - Firefox and OpenOffice.org translations
  - Common approach for building POT template on non-desktop packages using plain gettext instead of intltool, e.g. mountall, in the same way as CDBS GNOME packages use langpack.mk
  - Could langpack-o-matic build the translated XML files for documentation to be shipped in language packs? Even if we cannot get it to build for all packages, even if only for ubuntu-docs would be a big improvement.
  - Enabling keyboard indicator applet by default on users with a non-Latin alphabet keyboard layout (see bug 550704)?
  - Evaluate the use of mlterm instead of VTE for RTL locales?
Kubuntu Translations roundtable
- Unstructured session to discuss and gather feedback on all around Kubuntu translations.
Translations Community Advocacy
- Session to discuss how to rise awareness on the global Ubuntu Translations community, both within and outside the Ubuntu community.
Translations Community Learning Content
- Session to discuss ways of providing content to ease start contributing to translations.
Translations Community Events
- Discuss a series of events throughout the cycle to help promoting the Ubuntu Translations project and increase participation in translating Ubuntu.
Extend the translations reporting site
- Continuation of the Lucid blueprint on how to improve how we report translation status for Ubuntu
Translation teams health check
- A session on an effort to get in touch with all of the translations teams for a health check. Make sure to understand their needs and if they need help in any area. Raise awareness on the new team policies, especially on having information on the team's communication channel on their Launchpad page, along with info on how to join the team.
Launchpad Translations Reporting API
- Discuss the current status and implementation of the Launchpad Translations reporting API, as per the specification Adi is working on.
Developer education on localization
- Get feedback on the creation of a resource with developer reference on localization, extending the internationalization guide.
Universe is translatable in Launchpad
- Session to assess if it's desirable to make all localized applications from universe also translatable in Launchpad, not only those from the main repository.
- Previous spec
Improve Translations Packaging for Help in Ubuntu Applications
- Development of a strategy to provide translatable documentation for Ubuntu applications.
- This will also allow OEM projects to use documentation and its translations from Ubuntu, installed independently from the monolithic ubuntu-docs package.
- Ideally the translated documentation should be shipped in language packs.
Proactive bug detection
- Discuss the possibilities of proactive bug detection: this would need more and earlier testing of packages for translation problems (lack of i18n infrastructure, untranslatable files/strings, needs-pot-on-build, needs-desktop-entry-i18n...)
- We also need to devote more manpower to fix bugs in time, and reducing the average lifespan of bugs. Goal: 0 translation bugs at release time
- Rejecting string changing uploads that do not close a string exception tagged bug? (TimoJyrinki)
Fixed schedule for translation updates
- Predictable translation updates could help scheduling work
- Not only language packs, but DDTP, (k)ubuntu-docs, and whatnot too
- Perhaps we could introduce on-demand updates, so that a language can get an update when it needs it the most
- "Supported release" should mean not only security fixes, but translation updates too!
Creating a localized help.ubuntu.com
- help.ubuntu.com should detect my browsers locale settings and show the content on my language
- Asking teams to create localized versions of that site makes no sense: we duplicate the infrastructure and the work to maintain it for nothing.
Improving communication with translators in Launchpad
- (From the Ubuntu Manual Team)

How to participate

Go to the blueprint. Click on the session you're interested in, either in this overview or in the UDS schedule. This will take you to the blueprint in Launchpad.
Subscribe to it. Subscribe to the blueprint, optionally ticking the "Participation essential" checkbox.
Add feedback. If you like, add feedback to the blueprint's whiteboard.
Join in! Remember that if you are participating remotely, there's IRC projected in all rooms and sound is streamed, so you can interact with those in the session. Check out Jorge's Ubuntu Open Week IRC session next Friday at 18:00 UTC on #ubuntu-classroom

I'm already looking forward to seeing everyone again in Brussels, it's going to be epic once more!

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