About me

My name is Risto H. Kurppa. I'm from Finland and study physical sciences and computer science in University of Helsinki, Finland. I also work in the Electronics Research Unit there. On my free time I'm active in my church, bike, spend too much time on computer, travel, take photos and play piano. Who knows what I'll be some day. Grown up & smart. We'll see..

My mission is to enable the Ubuntu Finland LoCo to spread Ubuntu in Finland. I try to encourage people in their activities but also develop the processes of Ubuntu Finland. So far we've started teams for better focus and regular IRC-meetings to improve the transparency of decision-making process and also to make it easier for everyone to find out what's happening in the community. Lately I've been involved in the Openmoko community. I also have some other smaller projects I'm interested in, like youloc.net

Along with my own Ubuntu Member application I try to get more Finns to apply: at the time of my membership approval (2008-06-10, part of the log of EMEA meeting) there were only five Ubuntu Members in Finland - I hope now we're much more!

Contact information

• Email: risto at kurppa dot fi

• Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~risto.kurppa

• IRC: rhkfin at irc.freenode.net

• Identi.ca: http://identi.ca/rhk

• Facebook: http://facebook.com/risto.kurppa

• Personal blog: http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog

My involvement in Ubuntu & Open Source

• 199X started with Linux. PowerLinux, Mandrake, ...

• 2005 installed Ubuntu
• xx/2006 Joined Ubuntu-fi
• 06/2008 Ubuntu Member

• Signed Code of Conduct 11/2007

• Active in the Ubuntu Finland forum (stats)

• One of the administrators of the Ubuntu-fi forum, #ubuntu-fi IRC channel and Ubuntu-fi blog

• Behind Ubuntu Finland: Risto H. Kurppa interview in finnish

• Open Source news flashes and other stories in the Ubuntu Finland blog, for example Introduction to the Ubuntu-fi LoCo and Linux, movies & openness

• Participated in some of the Speaker's Corner -podcast recordings to bring some Linux aspects amongst the Windows and Mac users, see links here

• Started 'Linucast', a Linux podcast in Finnish

• Planned a medium sized Ubuntu weekend that in the end has not been organized (forum, wiki)

• Planned & started teams in Ubuntu Finland that focus on various areas of community: marketing, blog, support, localization, documentation

• Organized some Finnish events in the spirit of Bug Day: Get to know Ubuntu -wikibook update-day (major revision made) and localization of debian package descriptions -day (over 130 descriptions translated)

• Some bugs reported & confirmed in Launchpad and KDE Bug Tracking System

• Involved in the development of KPhotoAlbum. Bugreps, ideas, testing. (see mailing lists: 1 2 3 4 5 6 )

• Has written some tutorials in Ubuntu-fi wiki, linux.fi and 'Get to know Ubuntu' wikibook

• Got a Openmoko Freerunner in summer 2008. I very much like the idea of Open Phone, but seeing the project coming slowly down, I tried to activate the community to contribute in the development by organizing programming competitions, encouraging contributors, testing and reviewing apps and distros, reporting bugs etc etc..

  • http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/opkgorg-software-test-part-i/

  • http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/opkgorg-software-review-part-2/

  • http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/1st-om-programming-competition-result/

  • http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/discussion-13-openmoko-community-feelings/

  • http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/discussion-23-what-people-want-openmoko-to-do/

  • http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/discussion-33-openmoko-community-manager-position/

Interests

The FLOSS communities and their processes and efficiency is something I'm very much interested in. See some of my community related blog posts:

• http://risto.kurppa.fi/blog/tag/community/

Future plans

• I want to keep trying to enable the Ubuntu-fi LoCo and Openmoko community to contribute on the projects better - as a community and as individual community members. I try to encourage people who contribute or want to do it. I also want to help and support people in organizing events and projects of their own to make Linux & FLOSS more known and better, not only stick to solving problems at forums or irc.

• I'd like to learn packaging..

Cheers from the community

• Risto has been a driving force in organizing and activating Ubuntu Finland by introducing the team concepts, active blogging, launching new stuff like podcasts and so on. He's indeed our idea-o-matic like stated, taking Ubuntu Finland's activities to new areas and encouraging new people to become active in a way no-one else has done. -Timo Jyrinki

• cornucopia of ideas, excellence in positive thinking and organizing. "Risto's picture is used as illustration to Code of Conduct". No doubts about his applicability as Ubuntu Member. -Miia "Myrtti" Ranta