If you are involved in a Loco Team this post, might interest you !

Following a work that has been lead by the LoCo Council, Canonical agreed to provide some gifts to each approved teams, including a banner. This is detailed on the Wiki.

We (the LoCo Council) have setup an email address to gather all the needed informations. If you are in an approved LoCo Team, please ask of one your point of Contact to send and email to bannerrequest@reponses.net with the following informations:

   - Loco name
   - Contact person
   - Full postal address including post/zip code
   - Telephone number of contact
   - Any other relevant shipping info (e.g. CPF number for Brazil)

Please also keep in mind that this process will be quite long (may be a couple of months), so be patient once you have sent your request !

This blog blog is taken from Kinouchou's blog. And since she wanted to reach as many people as possible, she asked me to relay it here. So please if you have any comments, post them on the original blog post.

Handicap accessibility meeting for open communities webmasters

Accessibility and free software are two very important issues for me, that's why I didn't hesitate to join the accessibility and free software workgroup of the APRIL association in December 2009, in order to combine both aspects of these issues. I am also involved in the French-speaking Ubuntu community, who works actively on redesigning the website. A lighter, more aesthetic version of the website is a good thing, but improved accessibility is better. Given that many different tools are used to operate the website, it is rather difficult to know the different rules to make them accessible.

The idea is to organise a one-day meeting with webmasters from the different free software communities and with a specialist in digital accessibility. Armony Altinier, in charge of the accessibility and free software workgroup, accepted to join the meeting as a specialist. So, this is a great pleasure for me to announce that the meeting will be held in Paris on Saturday, the 20th of November 2010 at the Fondation pour le Progrès de l'Homme. The goal of this meeting is to help "free software developers who act as volunteers to improve the accessibility of the community websites they are in charge of". This free meeting will be the opportunity for participants to establish or widen their knowledge of the stakes related to digital accessibility, to learn to grasp its rules and to think on concrete cases, i.e. their websites.

Any community promoting free software is entitled to participate. the only conditions are to be the webmaster in charge of the community's website, to master HTML/CSS, to know how scripts work and to commit to improve the accessibility of their website. All information is available on handicap accessibility and free software wiki page.

Some of you might know that I seat in the LoCo Council. For those of you who are not really aware of the LoCo Council it is a group of people who are elected to govern Ubuntu LoCo teams, and utilize their past experiences, to provide guidance and help when needed to these teams and lead them by example.

Even if you have the opinion that the LoCo Council is only the compulsory stage before being approved or reapproved, we are doing way much more since we are here to help you when you are facing any issue in your team. Of course we are meeting every 3rd Tuesday of the month on #ubuntu-meeting (as you might see on our Agenda), but I think that the easiest way to contact us is to use our email address : loco-council@lists.ubuntu.com.

On the other hand, we think to many teams might face the same issue, or have the same needs. This is the reason why we have created (following an idea of Laura Czajkowski) a set of Best Practices and Guidelines. Please give it a look even if your team is already existing, since you might find some ideas in order to improve the way you act.

Finally I'd like to tell some little story about thoses pages. During our last meeting, I have noticed that they were not translated in French, which is as you have clearly guessed my mother tongue. I decided to send an email the the French Translators list right after the meeting (after 23:00). And by the very next morning, before 10:00 everything was translated and verified by at least 2 people. Woaw ! It is only terrific. It is just another reason of why I am really proud and happy of being part of that community. Thanks !

As many of you might know, in France we have a tradition to wish the best in early january, so I will use that time frame to write a letter to my community. Those who know me will have understood that I am refering to the Ubuntu community and in particular the Ubuntu-fr team.

I am talking of MY community, not as a possession note from a leader, but because I belong to it. One usually refers to MY family, so I choose to refer to MY community.

This letter (or in fact this blog post) has only one goal : to thank everyone who made 2009 the great year we had, with so many good moments. The end of the year was fantastic : about 30 Ubuntu Party happened all around France to celebrate the new release (Karmic Koala), and it has only been possible due to the participation and the work of everyone. And the sucess was there. If I should only consider 2 figures : 5000 people (including Mark Shuttleworth) during the WE in Paris and more than 700 in Toulouse (my hometown) for a single afternoon. If I mentionned MY community at the beginning it was because this is the achievement of a whole fabulous community, where I am just of the visible faces. Each members deserve their share in that success, I'd like to use that letter to thank them...

The starting year is already full of new actions, new challenges and I am sure that we will all together be able to face them. I wish you all the best, and more generally to all of you who day after day are interested in Free Softwares.

The history of FOSS can be traced back to academic origins: distributing source code under a permissive license was the de facto rule in academia in the 70's. Since then, FOSS became a wide spread paradigm throughout the software industry, and its alignment with academic goals tended to be forgotten.

The fOSSa (Free/Open Source Software Academia) Conference is mainly focused on academia and research centres needs but it's open to industry as well, since in many cases academia needs industrials and vice versa. The conference reviews Open Source fundamentals (Business models, licenses, collaboration, communities, promotion, exploitation, sustainability, european projects) and presents innovating Open Source projects as well as communities experiences.

Confirmed speakers include Clement Escoffier (Apache Community), Ralph Mueller (Director of Eclipse Foundation Europe), HP Fossology, INRIA (Luc Grateau and Jean Bernard Stefani), Arnaud Laprévote (Director R&D Mandriva), Roberto Di Cosmo, and many more.

The fOSSa Conference (where Open Source meets Academia) is co-organised by INRIA and OW2 Europe Local Chapter and takes place in the World Trade Center building in Grenoble, France (Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Grenoble) on 17th and 18th November 2009. Registration is free. Details about the Conference is available http://www.ow2.org/fossaconference

Gather almost 20 people around 2 Ubuntu developpers in order to work on Ubuntu and you will end up with a nice global jam !

So far (at 13:35) we are all heading to eat, but we have already explain them the basic usage of launchpad... And the afternoon will rock ! As always in Tououse, this is done thanks to the cooperation of Toulibre (Toulouse LUG), and ubuntu-fr...

... Than you will be thrilled by the approaching Ubuntu Global Jam !!

Most of you will remember the "old" Global Bug Jam times, where every where around the globe people gather at the same time (well over a week end) to tackle bugs... The main idea was to help/introduce new people (and mostly beginners) to work with bugs... It was really a good thing, many new faces appeared in the community after that...

The thing is that it was quite focused on development, and we really wanted to give the possibility for anyone to participate even if they don't care about bugs or development ! So here comes the next Ubuntu Global Jam between the 2nd and the 4th of October 2009 ! a time where you'll be able to come and join the Ubuntu community and deal with bugs for sure, but also testing, translations, documentation, and what ever you want ! The only limit is you... I am sure you be able to find out a place near you to participats... There is a page that list all the events, but this page will continue to be filled in the next few days...

For instance if you happen to be in France you'll have at least the chance to participate in Paris and Toulouse... More details will be announced soon about those events. So stay tune :)

... and I am really enjoying to see Lucas Nussbaum give a talk about the relationships between Debian and Ubuntu wearing an Ubuntu-fr tshirt :)

... please help me finding a great book that deals with Apache and in particular its security aspects.

Please leave your ideas in the comments.

I had the chance to met during the Solution Linux event a lot of very nice people, amongst them many persons from the team that build the Linutop, who are strong Open Source supporters.

And for those of you, who wonders : "What is a Linutop ?", it is a small PC with very low power consumption (around 8W in comparison to the 60W of a classical PC), which has the main advantagesof being completly silent, and of a very little dimension (about the box of a CD). It runs by default the Linutop OS (a derivated from Xubuntu), on a 1Go comptact flash, which is completly adapted for a desktop usage, but you can clearly change that and plug inside the box a 2,5 IDE hard drive.

And if I add that for quite a long time, I have the strong idea to change my current home server (the one that hosts that site but also quite a lot of others sites/services), in order to get a way cheaper solution in power consumption, but also litlle noise since it is in our office/TV room :) So you can clearly understand the whole interest I have to that PC. And all that without even knowing how nice were the makers !

Well I left the conference with a one in my bag :) And then I've started the migration of my "old" server, which is running Ubuntu Server Hardy (8.04.2).

I can say it right now, everything went very smooth... Here is the procedure I followed :

• Plugin of the Hard Drive of the new server to the old one.
• Creation of the partitions on the new HD.
• Copy of the content of the old server to the new one (using rsync and with great care to put the data in the correct partition).
• Start of the new server using Ubuntu running on an usb stick to properly set grub.
• Restart of the new server with the old system on it
• That is all !

All the hardware was well discovered. And all the services were up.... And it is so nice to have that lovely tiny noiseless object instead of my old server. I have to admit that it is not the same performances (on a pure power scale), but for a classical home server usage (with quite a lot of hits at the end), even with a need for performances (my hosting provides many different technologies as demanding as Zope/Plone), the result is really really good.

Well to sum up, my Ubuntu Server runs on a Linutop and it is great! And who knows, it might be your case too soon since there will be a linutop to win at the Tombola of the next Ubuntu Party in Paris the 16th and 17th of May...

To say it in a word, it was great !!! Around 20 people were gathered following the announces on our local lug Toulibre or the one we have put on ubuntu-fr.

The session was mainly lead by lionel and myself was the opportunity for some new faces in the Ubuntu development, but also some more advanced contributors. This allowed us to deal many types of bugs from the one who haven't an associated package to a few bitesize. It was a really nice afternoon, the place (the clic cool café), was really great for that, and they even support Free software :)

Well I think that we can say that the goal was achieved, some of the participants will continue with going to Toulibre, some other will participate more actively in ubuntu-fr, and even one who might join the MOTU Mentoring program :) !!! So when is the next one ?

It is all I can say right now after some people/blogs have just pointed out to me that I am the Hall of Famer of the moment on http://hall-of-fame.ubuntu.com/ .

But I really want to emphasize that this award, is clearly something for the whole ubuntu-fr team, since our activites is a large part of what might have been taken in consideration...So congrats to the whole team guys !

Well for the first time, I think it went very well (well if you keep asides some little material pbs such as a few ethernet cables...)

More than fifteen people gathered for the event. After doing some launchpad registering, we have started to speak of some themes that we faced in the Ubuntu development and managing bugs in particular.

I think the idea has been , and most are even interested to go a step further... It rocks !!! and since according the very first feedbacks I have the participants liked the evening too :) It is true that it was very nice and friendly... in the ubuntu community way :)

It is now official, since I have updated all the paper of our legal entity, that I am the new leader of the french Loco (http://www.ubuntu-fr.org). But I am not alone, and quite a renew of the team happened (and is still going on)... Of course I'd like to thanks all the guys who has worked hard to make ubuntu-fr what it is today. Thus trying to improve it, will be a greater challenge...

One of our the first decision has been to move our local entity address, to my private one, since we had some problems with the previous address... It should help us a lot...

But expect more to come : indeed we have lots of ongoing work, since we had already started the transition for some months : new website (the transition to drupal should be done within weeks..), new projects, rework of some existing procedures with the permanent will to include more and more people in the decision process... To sum up, lots of stuffs that I'll be glad to detail here :)

It's been a long long time that I have not blogged...more than 2 months. I know it is bad.

Well to sum up I've been really busy with many stuffs : the Hardy release, some marvellous holidays all accross Mexico, lots of activities around ubuntu-fr and quite a lot of work for my company.

But I have to blog on the upcoming event : thanks to my company I am heading to the Ubuntu Developper Submit in Prague. It will be really great to meet all the guys with who I, try, to work dialy :) So if you see my face (and my 2 meters that might be with it) come and talk to me !