EricHammond
Contact Info
Eric Hammond
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Email: <ehammond AT thinksome DOT com>
Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~esh
Contributions to Ubuntu
Since November 2007 I have been building, maintaining, documenting, promoting, and supporting public virtual machine images for running Ubuntu on Amazon EC2 (elastic compute cloud). I have documented how the images (AMIs) are built and have published a build script which others can (and have) use to build their own custom Ubuntu images.
These Ubuntu AMIs quickly became popular enough that I started a support group for folks using Ubuntu on EC2. Hundreds have joined the the community and quite a few folks have been joining in the support effort and in submitting ideas and even patches for the Ubuntu AMI build tool.
I provide support on the general Amazon EC2 forum and on irc.freenode.net #ec2 for both Ubuntu and non-Ubuntu questions. I find that answers to EC2 users' questions can often start with "If you switch to an Ubuntu AMI, you can do this simply with ..." And, it appears that many do try Ubuntu and love it.
I have been working with Canonical testing vmbuilder with the new EC2 plugin including bug reports and submitting patches as well as providing guidance and background on how customers use EC2 in practice.
I selected Ubuntu as the platform for building the technology of the most recent startups I've been involved with: ThisNext.com, CampusExplorer.com. I run dozens of personal and community service websites on Ubuntu including a popular URL shortener, notlong.com
I have been running Ubuntu on my personal desktops and servers since Breezy and used various other Linux distributions prior to that and Unix flavors prior to that all the way back to 1985.
Plans for the Future
I plan to continue supporting and promoting the use of Ubuntu on EC2. It's a beautiful combination that just makes life easier and lets me focus on developing my product instead of on hardware and operating system issues.
Testimonials
MarkShuttleworth provided a testimonial for sharing directly with the regional board.
Eric is a dedicated individual who has brought Ubuntu to many through his hard work creating and supporting Ubuntu on EC2. His advocacy and support for Ubuntu on EC2 have made him a valuable asset to the Ubuntu community, and I appreciate his work to make Ubuntu deployment as effortless as possible. -- nhaines 2008-12-14 08:26:55
Eric has created, maintained and supported some of the first images images of Ubuntu on EC2 and has, in the process, built a community of more than 650 people almost all by himself in about a year (judging by the number of subscribers to his Google group dedicated to it). His advices to the Ubuntu Server Team have been key to understand how to prepare our first official images (currently in beta). Thanks a lot Eric! -- NicolasBarcet 2008-12-18 05:42:33
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