About Me

I am Nicholas Skaggs. Man, thinker, dog-owner. I have a wonderful wife named Stacy, and live in sunny Florida, USA. I have run ubuntu since Hoary Hedgehog and ubuntu has been a key part of my growing up with linux and OSS. I lurked for awhile after installing, but joined ubuntu forums in 2006, and launchpad in 2007. I served as a Community Manager for Canonical to act as a liason to the greater ubuntu QA community and now work specifically on the juju project within the realm of QA.

Contact Information

Interviews

Serial-coder did an excellent interview not long after I joined Canonical. AkGraner as well did a video interview with me following the precise cycle.

http://serial-coder.co.uk/blog/2012/02/an-interview-with-balloons/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUEldL5-mIg

Contributions

My first ubuntu contributions probably came through the forums which are a wonderful source of community and information. During the dapper/edgy/feisty days I had a brother printer, which had some finicky drivers. I helped to support installing and running this printer via my best bash skills (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2277190#post2277190)

More recently I have attempted to become more involved in the ubuntu community. I started by attending UDS-P last year and submitting my first patch and merge-request for software in ubuntu (http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/update-manager/main/revision/2278). I joined the QA community shortly after and ultimately began working in for Canonical in January of 2012.

During precise I,

• Helped migrate and update old testcases from testcase wiki to checkbox

• Created a proposal to help better organize the QA community and solicited feedback (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/ProposedTeamStructure)

• Created a targeted list of applications to test and helped make sure testcases and coverage existed for these applications (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/CriticalPackages)

• Performed a survey of current QA landscape in ubuntu, in order to help increase awareness, participation and communication in the community (http://www.theorangenotebook.com/2012/03/whos-who-on-quality-in-ubuntu.html)

• Host weekly ubuntu QA meetings on IRC for the QA community
• Created checkbox-app-testing to help deliver manual application tests to the desktop for those running U+1
  • 2 releases, 18 contributors (including me), 26 test cases covering core desktop applications
• Held 13 calls for testing, bringing 8 different developers/teams together with hundreds of end-users to help test

• Participated in several ISO testing events, coordinated 'adopt an iso' program (http://www.theorangenotebook.com/2012/04/would-you-adopt-iso.html, http://www.theorangenotebook.com/2012/04/iso-adoptions.html) for over 100 users

• Track lead for QA at UDS-Q
• Contributed a charm, documentation and evangelized for the juju project
• Active on the U+1 forums for the precise cycle

• Active on askubuntu, gave and received reputation; earned 12 badges (http://askubuntu.com/users/32111/balloons)

• Attended several greater ubuntu community sessions, including global jam with Florida Loco team

Future Goals

I want to help make ubuntu be the benchmark for quality in open source projects, especially open source operating systems. Ubuntu is uniquely poised to be a leader in this area and to contribute tools and best practices to the rest of the FOSS ecosystem.

Testimonials

If you know me and have something nice to say, please leave a comment here.

• I'm very lucky to have Nicholas as a team mate. What I like most about him is his good nature and that he never seems to lose his sense of humour. Although he had little time during last cycle, he put together a great tool to ease manual testing of Desktop programs and collected the results. I was impressed really impressed how quickly he got everything together. I wish Nicholas good luck, but it's clear to me already that he's a great addition to Ubuntu's QA world. -- dholbach 2012-05-22 16:03:26

• With Nicholas taking over the as the co-ordinator of QA that team has made great strides and it is a pleasure to work with him. His plans for the future are well thought out and taken with full discussion between all who care about QA. He is certainly well worthy of his full Ubuntu membership and I ask that you look favourably upon his application.. phillw 2012-05-30 19:43:30

• Nicholas has made a major impact on QA & community -- where we (read "I") had not been successful before. I am glad of his work and ideas, and appreciate his willingness to discuss and reach a consensus. He is certainly worthy of the Ubuntu membership, and I will be there to cheer. Hggdh2 2011-07-31 01:40:05

• Nicholas is a really pleasant person to work with. He got up to speed very quickly and in the right (community) way to deal with the wider ubuntu community. He did some awesome work (and will continue, I hope ;)) on the QA side, working with the ubuntu-qa team to reach and leverage community testing, because everyone can help, and that's completely the ubuntu spirit. didrocks 2012-06-01 07:00:30

• Having begun working on QA issues for Xubuntu and Ubuntu Studio, the help coming from Nicholas has been extremely valuable in getting up-to-speed. He's always willing to help, finding time to listen to my problems and providing information. With a broad smile on his face while at it (okay, maybe I'm just imagining it, but you get that feel anyway :)). Excellent fit for the community. astraljava 2024-11-03 17:42:21

• Nicholas is doing an excellent job of coordinating with the release team and getting everything much more structured and inclusive around our manual testing. He is a delight to brainstorm with, and I'm very much looking forward to watching the improvements he's come up with emerge and deploy in this coming release cycle. I also appreciate how he is reaching out to the ubuntu flavor's qa teams and making sure the infrastructure pieces we're putting in place will work for them as well. ...And no, astraljava isn't imaginging it, every time I see him on G+ there is a smile on his face :). +1 from me. kate.stewart2024-11-03 17:42:21

• Nicholas is very active in the Ubuntu Community and it seems he brings much value to the community even outside of his role with Canonical. bkerensa 2024-11-03 17:42:21

• Nicholas was the first person I ever interacted with in the Ubuntu Community. It was after a Snappy Clinic in July 2015, and I requested help from him to get an Ubuntu Snappy VM running on my old system. We worked for a few hours together on that, and at the time, I did not know how to interact with people efficiently online, to say the least. He stuck with me through all of that. That is extremely commendable in my eyes, because he had the patience to help me when I didn't know much about what I was doing. He is the person who really indicated to me that the Ubuntu community exists and has patient, caring, friendly, knowledgable, and motivated people like him. His work was one of the factors that led me to start contributing to the Ubuntu community and today, I am an Ubuntu member. Beyond that interaction, I have had the privledge of working with Nicholas in the Ubuntu Quality Assurance Team before his recent departure. He continued to work with me as needed and was friendly in doing do. If you look at the work I've done for the community, Nicholas is the spark that ignited the fire. I wish him the best of luck in Juju and beyond, and I can't thank him enough. -- tsimonq2 2016-05-20 01:05:02