JuhaSiltala

Revision 10 as of 2009-11-03 14:16:36

Clear message

I have been active in the Ubuntu community since its inception in 2004. Since then, I have remained active within the IRC community, helped with bugs, participated in discussions, and promoted Ubuntu and free software locally and globally. I am a member of the IRC Team.

Many people know me better as topyli online.

I have a Launchpad page. I signed the Ubuntu Code Of Conduct in March 2006.

I work at the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research, University of Helsinki, as a researcher and a grad student. My work concentrates on the organization of distributed work, particularly of large free software projects and firm/community relationships.

History of contributions

Community and support

In 2004, I was a Debian user increasingly frustrated by the slow (at the time) progress of new stable GNOME versions into Debian Sid. I first heard about a new, very gnomish distribution that would always release right after GNOME, on GIMPnet's #gnome-hackers. I soon got a copy from no-name-yet.com, and as soon as I found out about Freenode's #ubuntu channel, I joined. Over there I spent a lot of time in the early years discussing Ubuntu, supporting newbies (my Debian knowledge put to good use), and of course learning a lot.

I cannot remember exactly when #ubuntu became too big for general community chat and #ubuntu-offtopic was created. I joined there as well, and never left. I did, however, eventually leave #ubuntu in favor of #ubuntu-fi, the support channel of my LoCo team.

I joined the IRC operator team in late 2008. Despite frequenting numerous Ubuntu channels, I am one of the few "offtopic-only" operators on the team. I only work on #ubuntu-offtopic (and #ubuntu-fi-offtopic). I see it as my responsibility as a senior community member to work for a pleasant atmosphere in the lounge areas of the Ubuntu project, to welcome newcomers, and to try and show them how the community works.

I infrequently create a web comic based on witty or funny dialog heard on #ubuntu-offtopic, titled 'tales from the offtopic' on my blog. It is the most popular feature on my web site. Other popular topics have been

  • HOWTO-like articles on mobile devices and GNU/Linux. Fortunately, these are rarely needed with Ubuntu these days
  • Desktop organization and productivity tutorials
  • Semi-political features on software freedom.

All in all, the site is not a major bandwidth hog.

LoCo and marketing

I am active in the #ubuntu-fi support channel, and an operator and cheerleader in #ubuntu-fi-offtopic. Historically, I have less active in official LoCo business than I would have liked, but recently I have become more visible there as well.

I am a member of the Board of the Finnish Linux User Group (FLUG) since the beginning of 2009 and was re-elected for 2010. I deal with and support our LoCo people also in this role. In 2009, I was Chairman of the Committee to choose the winner of the annual Linux-tekjä (Linux Contributor) award of 2009.

I am a very active Ubuntu evangelist both locally and in the international academic world. I started my ongoing academic work on free software and open development models around 2002. I like to think my work has raised interest and awareness there as well.

Technical work

I have never written a line of code for Ubuntu or any other project in my entire life. I have never fixed a single bug in any piece of software.

I do report bugs quite often though, in both Ubuntu and upstream, and do my best to assist those who eventually do fix them. Specifically, I file wishlist bugs when I find usability problems, desktop inconsistencies or suboptimal design. I also encourage others to do so instead of just complaining.

Future plans

I am becoming even more active in my LoCo. I have an immediate opportunity coming up in the form of next year's aKademy conference, which will need support from both Ubuntu-fi and FLUG. I will continue my work on the IRC community and the IRC operators team. I want to push Ubuntu more actively in the Finnish public sector and education through evangelism, academic work and consulting.

I hope I can recognize as many opportunities as possible for making Ubuntu a little bit more awesome as they come by. Because they always do.

Community cheers

I will apply for an Ubuntu membership shortly. If you want to endorse my membership, please feel free to do so below.