Ubuntu Global Jam report-back

Well Ubuntu Global Jam 2010 came and went. Since we took the bug out of Global Bug Jam, there now seems to be a move towards Free Culture jamming. Yes I am rather proud to have gotten the words "Free Culture" on the Ubuntu-Za LoCo poster.

With all the talk about the new music store it seems we also need to start including musicians and artists in the local mix. (Put the Love back into Ubuntu Global Love Jam!) Since my coding skills are rather rudimentary, I can only cheer people on in the pursuit of an ever more refined desktop experience.

After a rather downbeat start to the event on Friday, Saturdy and Sunday, Okay, I did have video issues with the Jono Bacon linkup during the week on ustream, and IRC trouble with bugs in Empathy, Telepathy and Pidgin, I headed up to the Shuttleworth Lab at UCT.

About 15 jammers were there and there was some kind of an informal programme/presentation. Guess I should have taken a bite of the opportunity to introduce the Ubuwiki and ZA-Free,  but this is all year round stuff so no worries.

But good news is ZA-FREE now has its own IRC channel on Freenode #za-free (we are not trying to get people to use linux, we are trying to get people to use freedom) and Ubuwiki, after a rather long hiatus, is going to losen up and follow soon.

Michael Graaf and I are conspiring to produce some subversive flash-stick material. It was interesting just logging in with one of the terminals and realising my mail in Seattle was sitting on a server that could run the bots we need to keep our channels open.

Good to meet up with Marcog in the real world, who helped me get out of the tricky ops situation on IRC friday night (with no xop, locked in a room, he came to my my rescue with the mode command).

Pizzas and Caramel Bears were flying all round turning the event into a CLUG + LoCo Double Thick Melted Sundae

A big shout out to Stefano as usual, and Adrian for entertaining me with the great OGG vs FLAC debate. Not sure if we need a bake off, but its coming, and also to the Jammer who gave me the Dollar to verify my shell account on the Super Dimension Fortress before it gets erased -- that was so intense dude. It was real.

Enter the discussion on bots and building the next big thang - a personal robot avatar who can go to Global Jams for you. Video Face 2 Face and play the part of the fellow who discovers the bug while saving an airline ticket (along with the planet). This idea is a hot one. It is only a matter of time before we all start hiring out personal robots as extensions of our life on IRC datalinks and so on.

Is this anything like the kind of artificial intelligence they promised us we would see in the 21st Century? Hell no, its your own intelligence amplified like  i android will be by machines, modulated, and mediated through minds via computer information technology.

Robot or Cyberborg still need to fight for their rights at Ubuntu Global Jam.

Part human and part machine, the combination always freaks people out.

Nothing new on that front, but just nice to see the essence being implemented in a computer lab.

What else to report, I saw some very  interesting consoles, and a few rocking user scripts, also some competition with Google Code Jammers.

I can claim victory for getting one Human Bug to accept his bug status, and another kid updated on Dell Wing Tux which is a lot better than any old school Tux.

Also before I forget - another two or three obsevations:

Total Absence of OpenSim at the Global Jam (Whatsup folks, no Virtual Reality in Ubuntu?)

Also where are the videolinks and people throwing Skypes?

Not enough bandwidth is no excuse for building something that will work with no bandwidth.

Finally, I  would have thought a couple of CCMixter DJ jams would have been in order but we still a long way from breaking through the ivy walled garden of the Shuttleworth Lab.

Keep those legal torrents flowing.