Ubuntu Wiki

About Me

I am Jo-Erlend Schinstad, a 32 year old man who lives in Oslo, Norway. My professional life has centered around sales and coaching. I have a passion for communication, music (guitar and vocals) and computing.

I started using computers at a very early age, about 1986 when I was six years old. My first experience with computer networking was with a 300Baud modem connected to various BBSes, and my first WIMP system was GEM on MS-DOS. My father taught me to program in QB45 when I was about nine, I think. I later moved onto Visual Basic, a little Delphi and C, before moving onto Java and PHP. In 2005 I discovered Python and Ruby, of which Python quickly became my favorite language and has been so ever since. Quite recently I discovered Vala, which I think is an awesome language for a large number of reasons.

I first heard about Linux in 1994 after a Norwegian computer party called The Gathering was held in my home town. My first (painful) install was RedHat 5.0 in 1998. I used that until moving onto Mandrake Linux. I used that for about a year, then had a couple of seasons with Fedora Core until I finally moved onto Ubuntu in 2005. It was the ethical and moral aspects of it, coupled with the focus on making GNU/Linux more beginner friendly that most attracted me. It was my first experience with a Debian-based system, and I rather quickly fell in love with it.

I've had technical support as a hobby since around 1995 when I started using mIRC. I've participated in IRC support of mIRC scripting, HTML & al, VB6, Java, PHP, Python, Fedora Core and Ubuntu. I suppose what I love the most about it is exploring the fresh perspective that non-experience brings to the table, and the challenge of explaining complicated things in the easiest possible way.

Personal motto: it's better to drown your sorrows than teach them how to swim.
Fun fact: I have the same birthday as the Linux Kernel: August 25th.

Team Memberships

Quickly Developers
Ubuntu Norway (contact)
Python Norway (founder)

Future Plans & Projects

I recently took over as contact for the Norwegian loco where I hope to improve the internal communication and help build a strong community. I wish to spend more time contributing to Quickly and other efforts to make development on Ubuntu and GNU/Linux easier and more fun. A personal project is to record an album, and I hope to start working on getting an LPI certification.

Current Project & Goals

• Attracting attention to Ubuntu in the Norwegian media.
  Write a GTK widget GIR library for continuous applications.
  Regaining official status for Ubuntu-no and making it a more tight community
  Learn more about Ubuntu community leadership and sign the leadership CoC.
  

Contributions to the Ubuntu Community

Development &c

• Some contributions to Quickly Widgets.
  

  • A little development
    Small bug fixes
    Partial port to GIR/GTK3
    

  General testing and bug reporting
  Some translation
  

Support

• #Ubuntu-no since 2006
  #Ubuntu (not so much the last couple of years)
  AskUbuntu.com since June 2011.
  #Ubuntu-App-Developer
  #Python-no
  Held a couple of volunteer courses in Ubuntu for self-help groups.
  

Advocacy

• Written many articles about Ubuntu
  Participated in a large number of online debates about Ubuntu
  Created the Norwegian Python community with special focus on Ubuntu
  Participated in LoCo and release parties
  

  • Held a presentation about Ubuntu on ARM in relation to Green computing
    

  Created screencasts about Ubuntu and development
  

Testimonials

Am I an ok kinda guy? Feel free to embellish below!

RickSpencer

No need to embelish. I think that Jo-Erland's contributions have been both meaningful, sustained, and delivered with true Ubuntu spirit, really demonstrating the values embodied in the code of conduct. I have zero hesitation recommending Jo for Ubuntu membership.

For specifics, Jo-Erland engaged in the Quickly project first by providing good bug reports, then documentation, then code. All my interactions with him on this project were of the utmost friendliness and rigor. When Jo-Erland needed to step back from the project, he did so in style and in accordance with the CoC.

Jo-Erland also occasionally interacts with the Ubuntu Desktop team via their mailing list. If you review his discussions there, Jo-Erland sometimes brings up controversial topics, but manages in a respectful and posititive manner. These interactions also constitute high quality contributions in my opinion.

Malin Krosby Bruland

Jo-Erlend is amongst the vices and helpful Ubuntu participants I know. His ability to to be positive and construtive towards others is very positive for the Ubuntu envorienment. As a participant(s) in the Norwegian ubuntu-support channel ubuntu-no, on freenode, where I know him through, he show strong ability to help people in a down to earth maner.

Over the past two years I have participated in several interesting discussions with Jo-Erlend and other members of the ubuntu-no channel, about several subject, such as the future directions of Ubuntu, and so on. I Like Jo-Erlends ability to see the posibilities in new Ubuntu invensions, when others don't. As an example I can mention the posibilities with Unity.

I have learned a lot from Jo-Erlend, and he inspired me to create my own Unity search lenses, and introduced me to Python. He teached me how to do a couple of things, as installing and running apache-server, ddclient, and so on.

In short, Jo-Erlend is a positive element in the the Norwegian ubuntu-comunity. When I speak with people about Ubuntu, I somethimes mentions Jo-Erlend at the ubuntu-no channel.

I strongly recommend Jo-Erlend for Ubuntu membership.

Rubén Romero

Jo-Erlend is a very active community member in Ubuntu Norge. So much so that there was no doubt who should take over as Contact Team when I decided to step down.

He has good ideas, likes to follow them through and has the ability to keep team members enthusiastic and engaged.

He is long due Ubuntu Membership and I can only recommend him.

Jan Claeys (aka JanC)

I have seen Jo-Erlend around for several years in e.g. the #quickly & #ubuntu-app-devel and other IRC channels, on mailing lists, on Launchpad (bugs, etc.), as well as on AskUbuntu.com, and he always seemed very friendly, happy & competent to help other people, while always being open to learn new things himself, or to provide his view on things in a polite manner.

That should be more than enough to get Ubuntu membership IMO.