Well, after an awesome time working with my good friends at OpenAdvantage, I am moving on and recently handed in my notice to move to a new role at Canonical. On September 4th I start as the Ubuntu Community Manager, and I am raring to go.

I have had a wonderful time at OpenAdvantage, and the team there are fantastic to work with, incredibly supportive and great fun. I will miss each and every one of them, and particularly enjoyed the impromptu discussions, debates and demos in and around all manner of subjects. At OpenAdvantage we have made huge strides in developing the West Midlands as a hotbed of activity for Open Source, and it has been great to be part of the ride. As the project nears its completion, I really hope OpenAdvantage can continue to do such sterling work across the West Midlands and hopefully across the UK. My departure from OpenAdvantage is entirely amicable and I look forward to staying in touch with all my friends there.

So, onto the Ubuntu role. Some of you may have seen Mark’s blog post about the position. It is an interesting and challenging role, and one I am ready for. For the last eight years I have worked in a number of different communities, developing community relations and working to understand, rationalise and manage the different aspects of community effectively. Most recently I have been doing this with the Jokosher project, and we have an awesome community with a strong culture and direction.

As Ubuntu Community Manager, my energy will be focused in a number of different areas, each a foundation for a strong Ubuntu community. This includes:

• Ensuring the wheels of the community are well oiled, and the different teams (Documentation, Art, LoCo, Marketing, Press, Accessibility etc.) can effectively work together, resolve conflict, source resources and more.
• Refine and explore methods to make the Ubuntu community as approachable as possible. I want to ensure potential contributors can get started quickly and know when, where and how to get involved easily.
• Develop processes and practises to ensure we get the most out of contributor time. Many contributors only have limited time they can dedicate to a project – we want to make sure they get the most out of that time and there are as few obstacles and red tape in the way. Happy contributors get things done and achieve doable goals – lets make this rock even more.
• To foster innovation at every level. We have so much potential to think outside the box, develop better ways of working together and new ways of delivering in each of the different teams.
• Making the Ubuntu community as inclusive as possible. The ever-growing Ubuntu community spreads across many countries, cultures and communication mediums – lets make sure that we always retain community feel and spirit.
• Measure and explore patterns in the community so we can understand it better and ensure all aspects of the community get the attention they need.

This is just a small subset of the work I will be doing as part of the Ubuntu project, and the job will bend, twist and move in the same direction that the community moves. Importantly, I am here to be a point of contact for the Ubuntu community. If you want to discuss something, have a concern, are unsure about something, do get in touch.

So, where now? Well, in the meantime I need to get the usual new-job related things set up, wrap up a book and finish up some OpenAdvantage projects. This should take me up till the end of the month and then I get started.

While I am doing this I want to know what you think about how the Ubuntu community could be improved, where is excels, what you would like to see happen and where you see the Ubuntu community in two years. I will be asking the same question to the different Ubuntu teams when my company email is set up, but I am interested in readers of jonobacon.org’s comments too. So, share with me your thoughts…