17:02 #startmeeting 17:02 Meeting started Thu Jun 5 17:02:11 2014 UTC. The chair is dholbach. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/meetingology. 17:02 17:02 Available commands: action commands idea info link nick 17:02 Hi, I'm here :) 17:02 #chairs pleia2 elfy YokoZar czajkowski 17:02 ok, let's start with the Ubuntu GNOME team then :) 17:02 #topic Catching up with the Ubuntu GNOME team 17:03 amjjawad, how are you doing? 17:03 #chair pleia2 elfy YokoZar czajkowski 17:03 Current chairs: YokoZar czajkowski dholbach elfy pleia2 17:03 dholbach, hi, thanks for asking I'm trying to be in good shape ... hope all is okay at your end :) 17:04 amjjawad, yep, all's good - thanks... did you bring anyone else from the Ubuntu GNOME team? :) 17:04 how are things going with Ubuntu GNOME? how was the 14.04 release? 17:05 Sadly, I did not. Tim is our head of developers but he is +10 GMT so he is sleeping right now 17:05 ah yes, that makes a lot of sense :) 17:05 Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS was a huge success. At first, it was not yet confirmed whether we should go for an LTS release or not. But we didn't give up and we have done all what we could to gain the title. 17:06 well done :) 17:06 Ubuntu GNOME was showing a huge improvement lately. I joined the team in July 2013 coming from 2-years with Lubuntu Team. 17:06 Brilliant... did that leave you with any work for 14.10 or are things nice and easy now? :-) 17:07 My first challenge was to create a Wiki Area for Ubuntu GNOME which wasn't there. There was only one page. Now, we do have a full Wiki System. 17:07 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGNOME/OneStopPage 17:07 elfy, thanks :) 17:07 I just wanted to say that there's been a bit of a rift between upstream Gnome and Ubuntu since Unity, and you are one of our best hopes for bridging that and bringing the best software to users. Thank you. 17:08 dholbach, we have put so much effort into 14.10 and I'm planning now as the other leader of Ubuntu GNOME to focus on the look and feel this cycle. 17:08 YokoZar, thanks :) 17:08 by the way, we do have a bit of problem with our users. Not all are happy :( 17:08 it is due to the fact that Ubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME can't use the latest GNOME version by default. It seems most of the users are looking for the latest release. 17:10 amjjawad, I noticed for example that gnome-settings-daemon could now be updated again since many unity-related changes could be dropped (standard Ubuntu uses a forked version now) 17:10 I wrote this to clear things up: http://ubuntugnome.org/gnome-3-12/ 17:10 amjjawad, do you know of any other modules which can't be updated? 17:10 dholbach, if truth to be told, I handle everything within Ubuntu GNOME team except Artwork and Technical stuff 17:10 so I can't state anything unless I'm 100% sure 17:11 amjjawad, ok... I was just wondering if these are issues which are worked out with the Desktop team 17:11 sure, I didn't want you to start speculating :) 17:11 Yes, I'm particularly interested in cases where we basically forked gnome but still kept the package as "gnome-whatever" rather than splitting it off into a separate unity-specific one, as such things basically aren't Gnome but are blocking us from having a newer Gnome :) 17:11 Tim is the best one to answer this and sadly, he's not here 17:11 in any case, I'm sure Tim knows the relevant desktop team members, but I'm happy to liaise if necessary 17:12 We don't need to discuss technical details too much, but it's a sort of thing that happened mainly because we as a distro were being a bit careless 17:12 Yes, I'll send him the log so if there is anything, he will contact the correct team for that :) thanks a lot for offering your help and support 17:12 YokoZar, well... things like that happen if you have tight deadlines, etc. 17:12 dholbach, I agree 17:12 the 6-month cycle is a burden if truth to be told. 17:13 at first, you think you have the whole time and suddenly, you find out that you don't have enough time so things at the last month will be really crazy 17:13 but I guess that is the fun part of it :) 17:13 I merely asked the question to see if there are known problems and if the CC can help with anything 17:13 yeah, that's right :) 17:14 what also worth to mention that a year ago, Ubuntu GNOME had no sub-teams but now, we have full set of sub-teams :) 17:14 amjjawad, did you see any enthusiasts in your user community who were interested in helping out in any way? 17:14 amjjawad: I enjoy Ubuntu gnome and want to that you and your team for putting the flavor together 17:14 dholbach, the CC people are doing an outstanding job so I'm 100& sure if there is anything, you won't be late :D 17:15 dholbach, one of my tasks is recruiting :D just like I did with Lubuntu 17:15 please see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGNOME/GettingInvolved 17:16 Has Ubuntu's (or Gnome's) release cadence crept slightly to make basing off newest Gnome in the future too difficult? 17:16 I keep this area as simple as possible and I always invite people to join and we're having many interested people to join and help :D 17:16 cprofitt, thanks a lot :) glad you like our system :D 17:16 that looks very nice 17:16 are you going to have a session at Ubuntu Open Summit next week? :) 17:16 by the way, I also applied for GNOME membership and got it :D 17:17 * mhall119 hugs dholbach for asking that :) 17:17 mhall119, ^ I thought you'd plug this much earlier :-) 17:17 Sure, that would be a pleasure. Is this going to be on Google hangout? 17:17 dholbach: I was being patient ;) 17:17 haha 17:17 mhall119, that'd be a first 17:17 amjjawad: yes, Google+ on-air hangout with questions over IRC 17:17 Nice :D 17:17 I always enjoy that with balloons 17:17 amjjawad: there are 3 tracks that might be of interest to you guys: 17:17 amjjawad, yes, all sessions are hangouts and you can either (or both) do a demo session or a planning session - as you like it - http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2014/05/28/calling-for-ubuntu-online-summit-sessions/ has all the details 17:17 and it's been awhile since I have done one 17:18 1) Ubuntu Development: where you can talk about how Ubuntu GNOME is put together, make plans for the 14.10 release, etc 17:18 2) Community: Where you can tell people how and where to get involved 17:18 I've been sick lately and so weak so didn't catch up with all my emails. However, I'm charing now so should be back to my full power again hopefully soon :D 17:18 amjjawad: glad you're on the mend 17:18 3) Users: Where you can show off your work, tell people the benefits of it, share tips and tricks to make using it easier/more productive, etc 17:19 we would very much like to get more Users track sessions in 17:19 pleia2, hi and thanks :) I'm trying to be back to action asap :D 17:19 amjjawad, excellent - good to hear your well again 17:20 maybe a demo session and some public planning at UOS will attract some more helpers to the team :) 17:20 mhall119, I'm not 100% sure about #1 but #2 and #3 look very interesting :) 17:20 dholbach, thanks a lot :) you have been a great help before with something related to Lubuntu 17:20 and all of you are great people if truth to be told 17:21 amjjawad: we would love to have them, UOS is next week though so we'll need to get them confirmed quickly, do you think you can pull some strings within the Ubuntu GNOME developers and community to see who could run them? 17:21 dholbach, yes, we're planning to change our website, and focus on the look and feel this release and also carry on with inviting more people to join us 17:21 amjjawad: http://uds.ubuntu.com/getinvolved/propose-a-session/ has instructions for proposing the session, or you can ask dholbach, pleia2 or myself for help if you need it 17:21 mhall119, sure thing, how much time do I have? 2-3 days? 17:21 amjjawad: first day is June 10, next Tuesday 17:22 sessions are 1 hour long, you can have as many as you need 17:22 I'm sorry, I mean when should I get back to you about who will be in beside me 17:22 amjjawad: today or tomorrow if at all possible, so we can get the schedule finished 17:22 I'll make sure to confirm with my team and get back to you but where should I send the email? or just contact anyone of you? 17:23 Okay, I will set my turbo mode then :D 17:23 amjjawad: if you follow the instructions I linked to above we'll see it when it comes into summit.ubuntu.com 17:23 thanks amjjawad :) 17:23 mhall119, I will bookmark the link and you're more than welcome :D 17:23 amjjawad, do you have regular meetings within the team? 17:24 dholbach, I just sent today a proposal to have weekly meeting. This is the only thing that we so far failed to do :( 17:24 mainly, because Tim's time zone. 17:24 of course, that makes sense 17:24 While I handle the non-dev stuff, it is highly important for him to cover the dev stuff 17:25 so, we mainly focus on the mailing list 17:25 I hope you get around to organising it still, somehow 17:25 Yes, I'll put so much effort into this until I find a way to have a weekly meetings 17:25 this will reduce the time of waiting for a reply. 17:25 Does anyone still have questions for Ali? 17:25 But I must say that Tim is the best developer that I have ever worked with for my 3-4 years within Ubuntu Communities 17:25 Speaking from a weekly meeter, I will definitely say it helps 17:25 He is always there when I need anything from him 17:26 thanks a lot for putting Ubuntu GNOME together, so thanks a bunch for your hard work on it 17:26 YokoZar, big time yes 17:26 I'm also trying to get Ubuntu GNOME involves more with StartUbuntu 17:26 dholbach: not from me - I'm fine 17:26 dholbach, thanks a lot for all your support 17:27 amjjawad: you guys are doing great work, I'm so glad to see GNOME getting this much attention and support again 17:27 all in all, Ubuntu GNOME is doing great but we need a lot more ... I can't stay still :D 17:27 glad to hear it 17:27 mhall119, thanks a lot, appreciate that. We have small but active and great community 17:27 pleia2, thanks a lot and you have been a great support for StartUbuntu too 17:27 we hope to carry on with the good work 17:28 and above all, make our users as happy as possible 17:28 indeed! 17:28 we can't make them all happy :D that's not possible as you know but if we could make the most of them happy, that is the target. 17:30 amjjawad, all right... thanks a lot for coming to the meeting - keep up the good work! :) 17:30 I also enjoyed now and in the past to work with some of you and it is all great experience. Such experience is doing wonders in real life and with different other projects related to FOSS 17:30 * balloons waves to amjjawad 17:30 #topic Catching up with the Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Core Apps folks 17:30 dholbach, thanks a million for you and everyone else for reading and for your time - much appreciated 17:30 mhall119, do you have a list of people we could ping? :-) 17:30 popey 17:30 :) 17:30 balloons, hey, will catch up with you very soon hopefully 17:30 oh hai 17:30 hey popey 17:31 popey: CC meeting to check in on the new app dev community and see how things are going 17:31 amjjawad, I've been following along.. Stay focused on yourself.. get healthy! 17:31 Hello popey 17:31 Hi all. 17:31 hi popey 17:31 balloons, will sure do, thanks a lot 17:31 How much pre-amble do you want? ☻ 17:31 popey: do you want to invite anybody in #ubuntu-app-devel in to this channel? 17:32 I'm sure there's a lot of other phone/*-apps folks in here who are currently lurking and who have an opinion 17:32 s/anybody/everybody/ 17:32 what is everyone's feeling about how things are going for a community which doesn't have an official device out there yet? :) 17:32 We certainly can. I didn't put a call out because I didn't realise it was open to all. 17:32 Wow, there's a setup. 17:33 hehe 17:33 Ok, so we started with zero developers and a call for people to contribute to core apps 17:34 Core apps being some of the things we ship on the developer phone image, but which may or may not end up on a "real" phone image later in the year 17:34 nik90: is one of our developers, welcome nik90 17:34 We put a call out and lots of people replied 17:34 popey: hi everyone 17:34 hi nik90 17:34 We have a small but focussed team working on the core apps 17:34 hi nik90 17:34 some of them were recently invited to a canonical sprint in malta 17:35 which went very well, for numerous reasons. They all got to meet eachother, us, other teams (sdk, design, online services) etc 17:35 And really sparked memories of UDS of yore. 17:35 Everyone in a room together collaborating on getting stuff done. 17:35 I think it helped to bring everyone together like that. 17:35 so the Core Apps project is a new kind of collaboration between Canonical and Community, it's very much directed and integrated with the internal teams and objectives, but it's also entirely done in the open and almost entirely by community contributors 17:36 The malta sprint was amazing. Got to meet all the people you have been working with for more than a year. 17:36 Indeed, it's very different from anything we've done before. 17:36 Previously Ubuntu would pull together apps from the free software world and package it together. 17:36 it's great to see that some community members were able to make it to a sprint, I know a lot of folks are really missing that face time 17:36 Now we're making our own apps 17:36 I think we (Canonical's Community team here) have learned a lot from the Core Apps, that we can apply to future collaborations with the community 17:37 The only negative thing I have to say (which could be spun positively if I were that way inclined) would be that I wish we had more people like nik90 ☻ 17:37 lol 17:37 We just don't have enough resources. Finding great self-directed qml / js developers and designers is _hard_ 17:37 mhall119, popey, nik90: do you see things which could have gone better? ie being aware of upcoming design / platform changes or stuff like that? 17:38 who wasn't even one of the original core apps devs, if I recall, he picked up the Clock when it didn't have any active developers anymore and then become one of the top leaders of the Core Apps project itself 17:38 I'm particularly interested in things we might be able to fix due to communication 17:38 dholbach: recruitment was hard, and still is, we've had a lot of the initial developers leave before the apps were done and have had to keep recruiting more 17:39 The top 3 things on my wishlist are:- More (excellent) designers to design beautiful apps. More developers to implement the apps. Improvements to the SDK to make the previous one easier to do. 17:39 I'd +1 that 17:39 YokoZar: In terms of communication... 17:39 YokoZar: I think the recent engineering ubuntu-on-air hangouts really help the community members know what's going on. Thats quite a improvement from before 17:39 We have weekly IRC meetings with the team, although more recently we switched to hangouts. 17:39 having a bigger/stronger/active-er(?) design community would have helped many times over the past year 17:40 and as nik90 says we have also a cross-app hangout on air regularly to collaborate, sync up, announce, call for help etc 17:40 nice... the cross-app hangout sounds like a good idea 17:40 Yeah, nik90 was mainly behind that and has been driving it. 17:40 having the core apps devs in Malta to sit down at the same table as the Canonical designers seemed to really help open up that communication channel too 17:40 Same with SDK! 17:40 mhall119: +1 17:41 nik90 brought a list of topics to discuss with the SDK guys. 17:41 well, we won't mention "The List" 17:41 or, maybe we will.... 17:41 The core apps developers are really the first users of the SDK 17:41 I think all the members who attended the sprint can now comfortably ping the SDK, platform canonical employees on IRC and discuss stuff freely. 17:41 They are finding all kinds of issues, and reporting them professionally to the SDk team. 17:41 at any rate, I think the communication channels there will remain much improved because of that face time 17:41 without them using the SDK on a daily basis we wouldn't be where we are. That feedback has been invaluable. 17:41 +1000 on that 17:41 Also welcome ahayzen_ who is one of the developer on our awesome Music app. 17:42 o/ 17:42 hey andrew 17:42 ahayzen_: I realise you've only just arrived, we're just saying how awesome you are, no biggie ㋛ 17:42 and in general... what do you feel are the things which could be improved from an organisational point of view? where do you feel it's still hard for somebody to join the community? 17:42 popey, heh thanks you guys are more awesome though :) 17:43 One thing we have tried to do is increase the velocity of getting merges landed in trunk 17:43 all sounds very good popey 17:43 We have had some lounge around for weeks, and not get landed. That is being addressed. We're constantly on top of them to make sure blockers are unblocked, and fixes land in the phone image 17:44 dholbach: I think it's just a general case now of motivating people do contribute to these projects, maybe focusing on providing some low-hanging fruit for the casual contributor to get started on 17:44 We have also had some drive-by contributions 17:44 It's great to see new people come by and fix bitesize bugs 17:44 the hardest thing for somebody joining is trying to find where to start within a coreapp 17:44 and we try to encourage them to continue to contribute 17:44 but it's difficult to do that without pouncing on them and scaring them away 17:44 (we have done that) 17:45 do we have drive-by contributions to Ubuntu phone (apart from the core apps) as well? 17:45 I don't know the answer to that. 17:45 I did a drive by contribution to the SDK recently after someone mentioned to me on irc that something was broken, if that counts ㋛ 17:46 We also lose some people. 17:46 We don't do "exit interviews" so it's hard to know exactly why people leave 17:46 dholbach: getting things into the SDK proper is more challenging, because any additions need to go through design and approval 17:46 specifically any new APIs 17:46 Sometimes it's the usual family reasons, people getting busy with real life, which is of course perfectly acceptable. 17:46 Other times it's more serious - one of the core apps developers is in Ukraine, where things are "tense" right now. 17:47 oh... not only into the SDK - I was more wondering about other parts of what "make the phone" 17:47 I honestly don't know. I don't look at the merges for parts of the stack I am not responsible for really. 17:47 dholbach: I think those are just more technically challenging, there's a lot of pieces that all have to work together 17:48 What I have encouraged people to do is just test the apps out and email me directly when they have a problem 17:48 drive-by contributions are fantastic, yet surprisingly rare in a lot of open source 17:48 to overcome the friction barrier of bug filing 17:48 dholbach: I'd like to improve the onramp to contributing to Unity 8,but that's out of scope for this topic 17:48 Sometimes people don't know if a problem is a bug or a design feature. 17:48 The hackathons were awesome in getting drive-by contributions 17:49 Yes! 17:49 we should keep continuing that tradition 17:49 Hackathons were good for identifying and fixing bitesize bugs 17:49 I'd like us to have an in-person hackathon at some point too, maybe in London. 17:49 the thing with contributing to unity 8 or other "system apps" is that the designs are not out there like the core apps designs for instance 17:50 True. 17:50 They are there if you ask. 17:50 But you have to go and ask for them. 17:50 nik90, i started contributing the music-app from one of those hackweeks ... otherwise i wouldn't be here 17:50 ahayzen_: ooh I didnt know that..I believe riccardo also started like that 17:51 +1 to hackathons 17:51 Ok, thats good feedback, I'll get another one organised! 17:51 nik90: I think it more a case of the designs not existing at all, not just not being public 17:51 We also want to reach out at other non-ubuntu events to try and recruit people to help on core apps. 17:52 mhall119: true 17:52 Thing is, design are very approachable, and if they have stuff they share it. 17:52 But because they work differently from the rest of ubuntu (mostly in one office) their work patterns differ from ours 17:52 yeah, we just need more of them 17:52 Where we share stuff over bzr with our friends in the community, they get up from their desk and walk over to another designer. 17:53 do you have people helping out with testing of system and core apps regularly? 17:53 We did find our regular hangouts with design team people were very helpful for the core apps developers 17:53 dholbach: not formally. 17:53 Well, that's not true 17:53 We have a small team of "dogfooders" 17:53 That's mostly me, davmor2 and toykeeper 17:53 We test a bunch of the apps every day. 17:53 dholbach: by "testing" do you mean using, or running autopilot tests? 17:53 I just thought that if I was interested, and had no idea what to do, I would probably say "I can test stuff and file bugs" 17:54 But we don't cover every use case, we don't have people being monkeys, smacking things with hammers. 17:54 One of the problems is that of hardware 17:54 Testing Ubuntu desktop is easy, you can find a pc (or vm) to install it on 17:55 With Ubuntu for phones, we really need on-device testing 17:55 actually popey I am sure there are people out there who might not be able to code but might be interested in just testing stuff. We could help get started with the emulator and test core apps on that. 17:55 so testing on an emulator is not much help? 17:55 real world stuff like walking down the street picking up a call while listening to music and taking notes ☻ 17:55 dholbach: not really. 17:55 I mean, there's some testing you can do. 17:55 But the real world stuff really needs a device 17:55 and we are short on those internally, let alone externally 17:56 dholbach: I think that for the things we can write down for people to do, we can write an autopilot test to do automatically 17:56 I frequently take my phone to the pub and hand it to people and ask them to play with it 17:56 I also take a notebook and later file bugs on their behalf 17:56 I give it to kids :) 17:56 some would say I do the same ㋛ 17:56 heh 17:57 haha, great :-) 17:57 But again it's hard if I have a phone logged in as me 17:57 I dont want to hand a phone to someone which is signed into fb / twitter / gmail on my accounts 17:57 so there's a bit of preparation required to anonymise the phone first 17:57 sounds like we need a guest session for the phone ;-) 17:57 so it's quite a bit of effort. 17:57 haha! 17:57 having that Guest session on the phone would be helpful 17:57 I thought u had more than 1 device popey 17:57 i do 17:57 among the lucky ones 17:57 and thats still not enough! :D 17:58 :) 17:58 good work everyone :-) 17:58 Any other questions from the cc? 17:58 is there anything you feel the CC could generally help with? 17:58 help us get more developers ☻ 17:58 does anybody else still have any more questions? I'm all set 17:59 Oh, another thing I didn't make clear... 17:59 popey, do you have enough sessions at UOS which might attract new team members? :) 17:59 none from me 17:59 dholbach: he just got another email about that :) 17:59 oh, nvm actually. 17:59 I'm good - was nice to be reading all that - thanks popey nik90 ahayzen_ 17:59 dholbach: good idea. 17:59 * dholbach hugs you all 18:00 or is about to, I havne't hit "send" yet 18:00 Thanks ☻ 18:01 excellent! thanks a lot everyone :-) 18:01 Thanks. 18:01 #topic Any other business 18:01 looks like we don't have anything else on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityCouncilAgenda 18:01 does anyone else have a topic to discuss? 18:01 we're putting out a renewed call for membership board members who can attend meetings at 12:00 for nominees in APAC (and Europe) 18:02 will publish on fridge soon :) 18:02 we're pretty Americas heavy, so if you're in other regions, please consider it :) 18:02 * mhall119 will re-post on social media 18:02 +1 to that :) 18:03 yeah, if you're living in any other timezone which can easily make meetings at 12 UTC, consider and/or mail your loco team :) 18:03 I think that's all I had 18:03 Anyone else? :) 18:04 nope 18:04 nope 18:04 thanks dholbach 18:04 #endmeeting