OStatic

How do you manage, grow, and foster active involvement in a community? One way might incorporate planning several events at approximately the same time and venue. This is why you can rest assured that the organizers behind the Community Leadership Summit can help you learn to manage your project's community in the most effective way possible.

Jono Bacon, Ubuntu's community manager, officially announced the unconference (an event so focused on discussion that an open, organic schedule is required) on Sunday. The event itself takes place the 18th and 19th of July in San Jose, California. The summit is mere hours before OSCON 2009 kicks off -- in the very same convention center.

Monday evening, the Linux Foundation's Amanda McPherson revealed the identities of the lucky finalists in the We're Linux video competition . The contest, launched in January, received over 90 submissions from Penguinistas worldwide. Finalists were determined based on community voting and input from a panel of open source and media personalities.

The winner and two runners-up will be announced tomorrow at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. The overall winner will be traveling, courtesy of the Linux Foundation, to Tokyo, Japan in October to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium (which is co-located with the Linux Kernel Summit this year).

If you happened to be perusing the recent commits to the upcoming 2.6.29 Linux kernel release (and why wouldn't you be?) you probably noticed Linus Torvalds' stamp of approval that cleared Tux to go on walkabout this release cycle, and welcomed Tuz as Linux's substitute mascot.

Tuz is a Tasmanian Devil cleverly disguised as a penguin. Assurances abound that Tux is on sabbatical, and the screeching, meat-eating endangered marsupial from Australia hasn't devoured him. How did Tuz get from the forests of Tasmania to the Linux kernel tree? It started at a conference...

This week, the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit began accepting proposals for its upcoming event. The event, aimed at encouraging interaction between KDE's Akademy and GNOME's GUADEC developer conference attendees, gives prospective speakers the opportunity to bring their passion to a more diverse audience.

At the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) late last month, Ubuntu community manager, Jono Bacon, spoke to attendees about community, and why it means so much to open source projects. Ryan Paul at Ars Technica put together a concise, informative overview of Bacon's SCaLE talk.

Bacon says that community -- and building a sense of belonging -- are crucial to growing and maintaining any open source project. No doubt this is due to the heavy element of voluntary participation in the open source world, but the belonging concept is one that any project or company -- open or closed, with paid employees or non-compensated volunteers (or any mix of the two) -- would benefit from applying to its management techniques. It is, without argument, one of open source's strongest traits.

Are you interested in open source software? Do you use Ubuntu at all? Will you be passing through the Los Angeles area later today or tomorrow? Think you'll be spending any time over the next two days near a computer with an internet connection? Are your weekend plans peppered with a few small gaps (or wide open expanses) of free time?

Yes? I've got some good news, then. This weekend is shaping up to be a lively one for open source enthusiasts, whether they're in sunny southern California or Tokyo, Japan.

For those in the vicinity of Southern California, SCaLE (the SoCal Linux Expo) is taking place this weekend. Lisa spoke with SCaLE organizer Gareth Greenaway a while back about how the event was shaping up, and the event schedule is packed with talks, tutorials and demonstrations for open source fans of any skill level.

If you'll notice, SCaLE is hosting a number of sessions for the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam. Not in California? Not to worry. The weekend-long Bug Jam is global in the truest sense -- and if you're unable to attend a real world meeting, the #ubuntu-bugs IRC channel can get you in on the action.

In late December, the Linux Foundation announced its I'm Linux promotional video contest. Though early submissions were welcomed, today is the day the contest officially gets under way, sporting a new name and a panel of judges hailing from all over the open source and media industries.

The Ubuntu team has revealed the schedule and events for its next Developer Week. Ubuntu Developer Week events are traditionally held online to introduce new developers (or new to Ubuntu developers) to the Ubuntu development process.

The next Developer Week is slated for January 19th through the 23rd. Events start daily at 16:00 UTC, and occur hourly until 20:00 UTC. The first two scheduled events for Monday (at 16:00-18:00 UTC) are introductory events that will be conducted in several languages.

The Southern California Linux Expo opened registration for its 2009 event on December 30th. The event will take place February 20-22nd, 2009, in Los Angeles, California.

The SCaLE organizers have filled the available speaker tracks, and this year's events include co-hosted mini-conferences, such as the Women in Open Source Conference (a continuation of last year's discussions to encourage women of all ages to become involved in FOSS), and the Open Source Software in Education Conference (focusing on FOSS in the K-12 setting).

Are you an Ubuntu developer/Launchpad member who had fate conspire against you, keeping you from the the Ubuntu Developer Summit this week at the clandestine Google Crittenden Campus in Mountain View?

It's not quite the same, but Mike Basinger has the details on how to be there without actually attending. For Launchpad registered developers, the UDS schedule page has links to live streams (video and audio) for the talks and presentations, as well as instructions on how to use VOIP to participate.

Not registered with Launchpad? More of an interested onlooker than a developer? The Jaunty Jackalope UDS attendees have rigged a number of virtual postcards for the event featuring more than the local weather and obligatory wish you were here.