Fabian Rodriguez

I knew this day was coming… after waiting too long to upgrade my WordPress I had some… “complications”

Everything’s good now, but I am still missing plugins and my theme didn’t make it, as this is a clean install now. Thanks to DreamHost the trial-and-error process was much shorter !!!

I am thrilled to announce El Salvador Ubuntu LoCo Team will be hosting an Ubucon El Salvador next Saturday September 6th!

I’ll be spending next week in San Salvador and I thought it would be nice to meet some Ubunteros there. I wrote to their mailing list, one thing led to another and *boom* ! Having presented at Ubucons in Seville, New York City and San Francisco before I am really happy to add one to my list ! I am trying to think of any sentence in this post I wouldn’t end with an exclamation mark but I can’t !!!

A few emails and IRC chats were enough to settle on having a round table to discuss Ubuntu’s place in free software, Celvin Rivas will also be presenting about the state of Ubuntu in El Salvador. If there’s enough people interested there’s discussion about having some workshops - gotta love last minute things
From “Running an Ubucon“:

An Ubucon is a community driven, community organised event that is all about Ubuntu. These events often include a number of speakers, BOF sessions, demos, social events and more, and they are excellent ways to grow the Ubuntu community in your area, and to build an interesting and fun event. Ubucons are different to large Linux expos and conferences in that they are uniquely community focused and driven, and uniquely Ubuntu.

Today I went to Bureau en Gros, which is the same as Staples stores in the USA. Think of it as the office supplies and electronics / computing store. Although I knew netbooks were coming “sometime soon” I didn’t expect to see them here in Montreal, particularly at a “mainstream” store like BeG!

I took some pictures, but here are direct links to BeG online catalog:

• Hewlett Packard 2133 Mini-Note PC with Windows Vista listed at 699.96 CDN$
• Acer Aspire One with Linpus Linux listed at 349.96 CDN$
• MSI Wind Notebook PC with Windows XP listed at 529.96 CDN$

Update: I am told this guide to install Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire One should be in my post Update 2: The Aspire One has since gone out of stock and is not even in the catalog anymore!

I find it very interesting they were side by side and had clear tech specs, including operating systems right down to the graphics chipset. I took more detailed pictures, although not very high res as I only had my phone camera at the time. I’ve put them all on Flickr in case anyone is curious. Can’t wait to see any Ubuntu netbook remix machines available in Canadian retail stores!

With
Jeff leaving and Ubuntu shipping on Dell computers in UK, France and Germany, there have been a few new positions opened in Canonical’s Montreal office (and elsewhere). Yes, we’re seeking German-speaking support analysts.

I went to Jeff’s this week and saw the mover’s packing after math - I am jealous! It’s always nice to get a new job, city and home all at once! Well, personally I hope I won’t be moving anytime soon but for the next week I am off to Cuba for some non-tech retreat and all-inclusive do-nothing time

It’s 3:21 AM and the hotel lobby is dead quiet. Except for the occasional maintenance and reception staff steps, there’s hardly anything I hear.

I’m really happy to be here after a crazy week ! After a long plane trip from Montreal to Madrid, Etienne and I took the metro, then the AVE high speed train to Sevilla and finally arrived to kick start UDS with a talk at Ubucon. My talk in spanish about Canonical’s support services and how they relate to the community got good comments and went very well. Shouts to my colleagues in Montreal holding the fort!

It’s a great opportunity to meet many people I only know by their IRC nicknames Unfortunately I am still unable to remember most names and I can just hope everyone remembers to have their badges on the right side ! Seriously, the friendly atmosphere, the fantastic location and the great people just make it impossible to feel anything but good.

Sevilla is not only home to an important history and architecture, and an amazing variety of bars and cafes, with excellent food - tapas anyone ? It’s also where Guadalinex rocks. It’s an Ubuntu-derived distribution that has been deployed to several hundred schools, totaling almost 400 thousand users! I had the opportunity to visit the Junta de Andalucía where the Centro de Gestión Avanzado de Centros TIC hosts a call center fielding technical support calls, remotely controls and monitors, but also provides hardware certification for all schools and educational organizations using Guadalinex. Oh, and hackers are officially part of the organization. During a presentation one slide specifically gave credit to student hackers for helping out with this massive deployment. Several local companies and freelancers, and also other coming from the Canary Islands partner with local governments to make all this possible. They are great local guides too
I am working on several specs at UDS, and my job as a support analyst is to attend and contribute to other’s work in easy X configuration tools, Ubuntu server tools, supported packages policy, and many others.

I was particularly both nervous and happy to attend the spec about Ubuntu Planet Editorial Policy. A few minutes after it started Mark Shuttleworth joined us and just as in other sessions it just felt as if he was “just another participant”. It’s nice to see many good things happening from a bad decision on my part when I disclosed information I shouldn’t have. Explaining all the bad consequences of such disclosures on a Planet site is really difficult, but there are many. I think the recent changes and this revised policy will help a lot the Ubuntu members that are Canonical employees (and of course those who are not) have guidelines to prevent futures mishaps.

Tonight we decided to stay close to the hotel, I went out with two colleagues for a good meal and nice walk. It still feels strange to be here and be surrounded by so many people that are working directly or indirectly on almost every piece of software I am using on my computer right now. I guess it’s time to go to bed now that the Bery/Compiz hackers have decided they would stop fine tuning features and building whatever code they were working on all night since I sat here 7 hours ago Stay tuned for another update.

Here’s a few pictures I was able to upload tonight.

I have taken this post down until further notice. If you want to find out more about Ubuntu, please visit ubuntu.com. Thank you!

Since I joined Canonical as a support analyst last November this is going to be my first Ubuntu Developer Summit as an “insider”. We’re going to Spain! I am all excited because this reminds me of Ubuntu Below Zero which took place in Montreal… 2 years ago! Etienne Goyer and I will be representing the brave souls from support, hopefully I’ll be useful in other areas than spanish translation
Here are a few specs we may be participating in:

• WinModem support
• Increase participation in the Ubuntu Hardware Database
• More robust configuration of the X server
• Simple X mode selection
• Provide simple PABX / VOIP capabilities with Asterisk
• Make it easy to use file/partition/disk encryption

I’d be interested in hearing any feedback anyone would have in terms of support for us to bring there and work on. We’ll be primarily attending to share our experience when providing support to actual customers, learn about and contribute to specs related to different aspects of support, and if time permits some other pet peeves Asterisk support is something I’d really love to contribute to, and Etienne’s rapidly improving packaging skills may help a lot in getting this further - he packaged SugarCRM and participated in the review process for VMWare server, Opera and DB2.

Check out the UDS-Sevilla Ubuntu Wiki for more (upcoming) details.

Hello Ubuntu Planet, it seems it was yesterday I joined Canonical’s Global Support Services team in Montreal, Canada. Two months already! (more…)

Depuis maintenant un peu plus d’une semaine j’ai rejoint l’équipe de Global Support Services de Canonical aux bureaux de Montréal en tant que “Senior Support Analyst” pour Ubuntu Linux. Euh, non, le type avec la chemise verte on ne l’a jamais vu ici! (more…)

Cet après-midi je donne une présentation sur l’Appropriation des technologies émergentes : nouveaux contenus, nouveaux services avec Carole Brault, bibliothécaire au Centre de recherche du CHUL dans le cadre du 33e Congrès annuel de l’Association pour l’avancement des sciences et des techniques de la documentation, ASTED, “le Réseau des spécialistes de l’information documentaire”. On sera deux “outsiders”, avec Martin Lessard (ex-BBDO-Montréal) qui parlera de la nouvelle écologie informationnelle. Défi intéressant, compte-rendu à suivre
Voici le résumé officiel de la présentation de Carole Brault:

Les technologies dites émergentes ont leurs adeptes dans plusieurs milieux de travail, dont évidemment les bibliothèques. Ces technologies innovatrices ne sont pas réservées qu’aux bibliothèques académiques, publiques et autres « grandes bibliothèques » ayant un service informatique à leur disposition.

Que l’on compte en mètres carrés ou en nombre d’employés, ou en ressources, les bibliothèques de la santé sont, dans la plupart des cas, de « petites bibliothèques ». Dans ce contexte, il est d’autant plus important que les spécialistes de l’information qui y œuvrent, s’approprient les technologies qui pourraient faciliter, accélérer et même bonifier leur service aux usagers.

Implantation de nouveaux outils (et pas nécessairement de tous les nouveaux outils !), de nouvelles façons de faire et de nouveaux services ? Impact assuré !