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2009 GNOME Annual Report Kickoff

It’s that time of year to start thinking about the GNOME Annual report and recapping all the wonderful activities the GNOME community has been involved in over the past year.

Lucas has done an awesome job over the last few years and this year has asked me to help with coordinating the annual report.

The annual report is one of the first things I ever contributed to GNOME (as an editor) and I hope I can do as good a job as Lucas has done.

With that said, we need your help! As I mentioned in the kickoff email, we need help with:

  • Is this the right format? Are these the right sections?
  • Writers! Want to write one of these sections? Grab it! Want to write something not listed? Add it and write it!
  • Editors. Good editing is as important as good writing.
  • Artwork and layout.
  • High res photos of GNOME community members.

If you have ideas for articles that should be included, links and information for the authors, or any new ideas, please let me know or feel free to edit the GNOME Annual Report 2009 wiki page!

And just like Lucas has done in past years, don’t be surprised if I reach out to you individually to help.

An Introduction to GNOME 3.0

(This is the first in a series of blogs posts about Ohio Linux Fest)

I gave a talk this weekend at Ohio Linux Fest titled “An Introduction to GNOME 3.0”. The purpose of my talk was, which I hope to do a few more times this year, is to start introducing the community to the changes coming in GNOME 3.0. Change is hard, especially when we’re talking about a change to the user interface, and I believe the sooner we start engaging and educating the community, the more helpful it will be.

The presentation focuses on three things:

  1. What is GNOME
  2. History of GNOME (up to and including a brief overview of GNOME 2.28)
  3. GNOME 3.0

One thing I hope attendees take away is that GNOME 3.0 is more than just GNOME Shell. I believe the call to action in the GNOME 3.0 community that Vincent and the release team started back in April and that continued at GUADEC really motivated a number of teams to see what they could do to contribute to GNOME 3.0. In the presentation I talk about Accessibility, Documentation, Marketing, the GNOME Developer Platform, the GNOME Activity Journal and Zeitgeist, Tomboy Online and GNOME Shell (including a demo).

I spent a lot of time reading Presentation Zen these last few months and used the concepts the book advocates. In addition to the presentation, I also provided a handout (available as a PDF on my website as well) for attendees to take away that goes into a little more detail and cites and attributes all of my sources.

I’ve uploaded my slides, images, and the handout on the GNOME Marketing wiki, all available in one archive. This material is available under a Creative Commons Share-alike 3.0 license. I’m sure I’ve got a few things wrong here and there, and I look forward to any feedback anyone has.

I’ll be giving this talk in November in St. Paul, MN at the Penguins Unbound LUG, and I’m hoping to reach out to a few more LUGs in the Midwest, as well as submit it as a talk at SCALE next February. If you’d like me to come give a talk somewhere, let me know via email or my blog.

I'm going to Ohio Linux Fest

Ohio Linux Fest

I’ll be in Columbus, Ohio this weekend for Ohio Linux Fest. It will be my first time attending OLF, though I did book a flight last year and had to cancel at the last minute.

I’ll be giving a talk – “An Introduction GNOME 3.0” where I’ll cover what GNOME is, how it started, touch on the recent 2.28 release, and what may be coming in GNOME 3.0. I’ll post my presentation, both the handout and the slides, next week on the GNOME Marketing wiki. (Nothing like procrastinating to get it done).

I’m sure I’ll make a few mistakes, especially as I plan on demoing GNOME Shell, so feedback is welcome. If you’re there, stop by and say hi!

GNOME 2.28 Released!

GNOME 2.28 - Made to Share!

GNOME 2.28 came out right on time yesterday! Improvements include Bluetooth support, tons of feature enhancements in Empathy (and all new documentation using Mallard!), and Webkit in Epiphany. But don’t take my word for it – go read the release notes!

Speaking of release notes, it was the first time I’ve helped write them, and and it was pretty cool to see the GNOME community working together from a front row seat. A special thanks to Dannielle for giving me pointers on how to get started, Frederic and Andre for all my questions during the process in the #docs channel, and everyone who helped review them and gave feedback to make them better. It was also pretty neat to see the translators at work – everytime I’d refresh the website to proofread or do a git pull there were more and more translations available. And one last thank you to Bastien and Guillame for providing quotes in the press release, which is the first time we’ve included quotes from developers as far as I know (or at least in recent memory).

I’ve enjoyed reading the various coverage on the web, but I did want to correct one small point that some are reporting – the decision to make GNOME 2.30 into GNOME 3.0 won’t be made until November, so it’s not a safe assumption that 2.28 is the last 2.x release. The release team will consider a number of factors, and it’s possible 2.32 could be 3.0 instead.

Congrats again to all the GNOME developers, contributors, and translators for a job well done.

Happy Birthday GNOME Journal!

GNOME Journal celebrates it’s 5 year anniversary this month, with the first ever edition released in September 2004.

After taking 2008 off, I’m happy to say that 2009 is turning into a banner year for GNOME Journal, and 2009 has seen more issues published than any year other 2005, and we’re on pace to break 2005’s record of five issues.

Looking back at the first Letter from the Editor from Jim Hodapp, it’s good to see that our mission hasn’t changed:

  • There is a current lack of original written content centered around GNOME – GNOME Journal fulfills this void by creating original content that focuses on the technology, community, philosophy, and general happenings within the GNOME umbrella.
  • A void that is largely unfilled currently is how to effectively market the GNOME desktop to people who either currently use a free operating system and don’t use GNOME, or to attract those people who use another operating system altogether GNOME will not run. GNOME Journal will provide a very tangible and centralized place that people can read to gain original insite into what GNOME is and what they can do with it.
  • Lastly, GNOME Journal is entering into existence simply because it is a cool idea. It is my hope that it will also spur on increased appreciation for GNOME and allow more people to feel like they can get involved in the community.

I whole heartedly agree with the above statements, and they are just as true in 2009 as they were in 2004. There continues to be a lack of original content around GNOME; as a member of the GNOME Marketing team there is no question that it is hard to market GNOME to our existing user base; and there is no question that GNOME Journal is, and continues to be, a cool idea.

One of the things I’m most proud of since becoming the release coordinator for GNOME Journal earlier this year, is the new writers who have (and will have) contributed to GNOME Journal.

In no particular order: Stormy Peters, Les Harris, Jayson Rowe, Og Maciel, Natan Yellin, and Emily Chen.

I’m also thankful to everyone in the GNOME Community who has made time for interviews on interesting projects such as J5 and Laszlo Peter, and those featured in Behind the Scenes, including Stormy, Owen Taylor and Lucas Rocha.

We aren’t done with 2009 either! We have two special editions coming up, the first focused on Multimedia and the second is an edition of GNOME Journal written by the GNOME Women team. We’re hoping to introduce new features in GNOME Journal, including a new article every feature, as well as migrating from our current CMS to blogs.gnome.org, which will also us to do multimedia, publish to PDF, and rate articles. And a big thank you to Dave Neary letting us know our database crashed last week and we weren’t displaying any content. (Jeff Waugh – if you’re reading this, please reply to my emails so we can finish this migration. Thank you!)

We’re always looking for new article ideas, writers and editors – we’re also big on collaboration, so don’t feel that you have to write an entire article by yourself. Interested? Email me, leave a comment on my blog, or best of all, join the GNOME Journal mailing list.

And lastly, thank you to our readers. Our hits have been going up every issue, and I am grateful for all the comments left on my blog after announcing a new issue. I’m hopeful that we can turn these comments into reality, and we’re already working on a suggestion for an interview that was just recently left on my blog.

I hope you enjoy reading GNOME Journal as much as we enjoy writing it.

GNOME Journal Issue 16 Released!

GNOME Journal Issue 16 is out, featuring 3 new articles:

  • Writing Open Source conference recap
  • Putting the Network back into G(N)OME interview with J5 – based on his recent talk at GUADEC.
  • Behind the Scenes with Lucas Rocha – the man who started the Behind the Scenes feature on GNOME Journal

Special thanks to Jim and Shaun for helping edit the articles, and Lucas and J5 for taking the time for the interviews, both at and after GUADEC.

What are you waiting for? Go read it now!

Issue 17 is already being planned as a special edition focused on Multimedia in Linux and GNOME. Have an idea for an article or interview? Let me know, we’d love to have you!

Become a GNOME Ambassador

Become a GNOME Ambassador!

The GNOME Marketing team is pleased to announce the creation of the GNOME Press Team. The Press Team is a subset of the Marketing team, with a focus on tracking GNOME events worldwide, and communicating and engaging with journalists all over the world to help spread GNOME news.

The Press Team is responsible for tracking GNOME events and updating the GNOME calendar, helping write press releases, talking points, and press kits and sending them to press contacts in as many languages as possible, and helping coordinate interviews with GNOME volunteers and journalists.

For more information, please visit the GNOME Press Team’s homepage on the GNOME Wiki or join the mailing list .

You can find upcoming GNOME Events on the GNOME wiki or the GNOME Community calendar.

Short term we have a lot of things we want to accomplish from creating a GNOME Press Kit for the 2.28 release to just keeping up with all the events. Longer term there are lots of ideas, including creating a social news website and more.

Help out and spread the word about GNOME!

  • in General
  • 1 min read

What a week

I’m glad this week is over.

The good:

  • My dad drove up and visited for a few days, spending a day at the PGA championship, which is in my suburb outside of Minneapolis.
  • My dad left, and my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came up to visit with my wife and the kids.

The bad:

  • Alex broke his arm within a couple weeks of buying his first skateboard.
  • The PGA Championship was in town. Lots of lost people driving around, and traffic was terrible in my little suburb.
  • With the in-laws in town Friday morning, I woke up early and went to the coffee shop to do some work. Renewed a domain there, and I’m guessing via the open wifi, my credit card was stolen. Apparently I need to learn more about SSL – the good news is Chase stopped it all. Who signs up for a $2000 sports camp (for their kids?) with a stolen card. Oh, and lots of iTunes purchases – software I never have (and probably never will) use.

With everything going on, I’m feeling behind with some of my work in GNOME. First up, working on the release notes for 2.28!

  • in GNOME
  • 2 min read

One lunch a month

Do you follow news.gnome.org, or subscribe to it in your feedreader? news.gnome.org is similar to Planet GNOME, but is for project’s news feeds, where Planet GNOME is for personal feeds.

Stormy posts to the Foundation blog that updates to news.gnome.org, and she just recently started cross-posting her weekly updates to Planet GNOME as well.

Late yesterday, Stormy posted an update on the Friends of GNOME program. We are very close to our $20,000 goal! Thank you to everyone who has donated in 2009!

If you look at our three month trend:

  • April: 110 donors, $3,316 donations for an average of $30
  • May: 258 donors, $7,341 donations for an average of $28
  • June: 116 donors, $1,585 donations for an average of $14

In May and June, 100 of those donors were Friends of GNOME donors donating $10 month. This highlights why monthly donors are so important – one time donors come and go, and with the call for help that was put out, you can see the effect. But when that ends, it’s the monthly donors that help with consistent donations that give GNOME the ability to forecast incoming revenue that can be used to help the organization.

Stormy’s post contains more information on donations as well as some graphs showing monthly and yearly trends.

Can you help GNOME with $10 a month? For the cost of going out to lunch once a month, you can help one of your favorite free software projects (and get a cool t-shirt and stickers!) Join Friends of GNOME today!

Marketing the Marketing Team

I’m a bit behind in my blogging. After getting home from GCDS, and spending the weekend with the family, and then catching up on work after a week of vacation, I’m way overdue to blog.

The GNOME Marketing BoF was the last session on Thursday at GCDS, and the last I attended before heading home Friday. Even with the room hot and sticky, everyone was engaged, and had lots of great ideas and feedback to share. I’d like to give a great big thank you to those that were in attendance, especially as the annual football match and local tour were going on at the same time.

We’ve got a lot going on – some of the things we discussed that we need to add or update in our release calendar include:

  • GNOME 3.0 Marketing Campaign – Feedback was great, lots of stuff to do! From the campaign itself to writing and presenting at conferences to creating a video campaign, there is a lot of cool stuff we can do to educate GNOME users about the changes GNOME 3.0 will introduce.
  • Case studies. Putting together case studies on the success GNOME and its downstream partners have can be a powerful tool. And a big thank you to Novell offering, and immediately following through, on a great success story.
  • Social Media. Starting with Thomas’ PR talk on Wednesday, and continuing on Thursday, a lot of great ideas were shared that show there is a lot of low hanging fruit we can do in the social marketing space.
  • GNOME Press Team. More to come on this soon! The short story is we have an opportunity to build a team that tracks worldwide events and talk about them to the press. This includes conferences, talks, events and more, and helping put the press releases together and be available as a contact to journalists to answer questions.
  • GNOME website. I’m going to send out an update soon on the content the marketing team is responsible for in writing and editing for the new gnome.org.
  • Friends of GNOME. We’ve had some great success so far this year in raising money to help GNOME. And there is more coming! We need to continue to build on this success through fundraising activity, and we have some cool things planned.

If you’re interested in helping out and spreading the word about GNOME, now is a great time to join the Marketing team!