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UDS Copenhagen and people

After four days of UDS and one day of tourist activities in the city of Copenhagen, I was very tired of the influx of new information and interesting discussions. Now I’m starting to be back on track, and it’s time for one more article.

The UDS in Copenhagen has tought me that the community in Ubuntu is in constant state of change, and not all of it is improving the community. On the other hand, I’ve seen fantastic people who have brought the community to the good state it now is in. Those people include, but are not limited to:

Elizabeth Krumbach, the Xubuntu Marketing lead as well as keeper of many hats in the Ubuntu community. I spent a lot of time with Elizabeth on UDS because of a common project and vision. In addition, I learned many new things lurking in sessions she helped running. My conclusion is that she seems to be able to work on a huge amount of teams and at the same time keep up a really high set of standards. To read more about her work and see the baffling list of teams, visit her wikipage or go read her blog.

Kate Stewart, who did wonders working as the Ubuntu release manager. I simply can’t praise her enough for constantly helping Xubuntu with release management related issues. The Ubuntu release team is one of the best Canonical teams communicating with flavors generally, but her way of taking care of flavors made the release team step up to an even higher level. Her interest in the community and the passion, tireless attitude and attention to details when needed got me amazed in UDS, too.  I’m very excited that regardless of the changes made in Canonical she will continue working with the release team as a community member.

Micah Gersten, one of the driving forces behind Xubuntu. Regardless of our continuous requests, he keeps working on to improve both Xubuntu and Ubuntu Studio from the technical and packaging point of view. (I also need to thank Lionel Le Folgoc here: thanks!) Micah is very friendly and humble but also a good negotiator and always seems to find the sensible compromises for all the parties.

Scott Kitterman, another release team member as well as a Kubuntu contributor. I can’t thank Scott enough for taking the time and effort to come to me and offer his help with pretty much any community or release-related thing I might need help with. Scott is an experienced contributor and both Canonical and the community should be happy that they have such people in the release team.

Jussi Kekkonen, a member of the IRC council, another Kubuntu contributor (and more) as well as a tireless worker. I had the pleasure to meet Jussi already on my way to Copenhagen. Jussi is truly and sincerely interested in improving the community in any way he can, regardless of team boundaries. While being relatively young, I can see why he is as respected as he is as one of the “old and wise”.

The list above is definitely not an exhaustive list of people who are worth mentioning, it’s just a selection of people I used work or talk with in UDS. Others include, but are not limited to: Kaj Ailomaa, Jonahtan Carter, Christian Dywan, Stephané Graber, Pedro Perez Grande (my roommate!), Emmet Hikory, Christoffer Holmstedt, Timo Jyrinki, Antti Kaijanmäki, Julien Lavergne and pretty much everybody else I met in sessions, hallway talks, elevators or elsewhere.

Thanks for making UDS what it is!

This article is part of the article series .