Inspired by the post by Riccardo Padovani about the awesome year that Ubuntu Italy had, I welcome you to a similar one for Ubuntu California for events I participated in.
The year kicked off with our annual support of the Southern California Linux Expo with SCaLE12x. The long weekend began with an Ubucon on Friday, and then a team booth on Saturday and Sunday in the expo hall. There were a lot of great presentations at Ubucon and a streamlined look to the Ubuntu booth with a great fleet of volunteers. I wrote about the Ubuntu-specific bits of SCaLE12x here. Unfortunately I have a scheduling conflict, but you can look for the team again at SCaLE this February with an Ubucon and Ubuntu booth in the main expo hall.
Ubuntu booth at SCale12x
In April, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS was released with much fanfare in San Francisco as we hosted a release party at a local company called AdRoll, which uses Ubuntu in their day to day operations. Attendees were treated with demos of a variety of flavors of Ubuntu, a couple Nexus 7s with Ubuntu on them, book giveaways, a short presentation about the features of 14.04 and a pile of pizza and cookies, courtesy of Ubuntu Community Donations Funding.
Ubuntu release party in San Francisco
More details and photos from that party here.
In May, carrying the Ubuntu California mantle, I did a pair of presentations about 14.04 for a couple of local groups, (basic slides here). The first was a bit of a drive down to Felton, California where I was greeted at the firehouse by the always welcoming FeltonLUG members. In addition to my presentation, I was able to bring along several laptops running Ubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu and a Nexus 7 tablet running Ubuntu for attendees to check out.
Ubuntu at FeltonLUG
Back up in San Francisco, I presented at Bay Area Linux Users Group and once again had the opportunity to show off my now well-traveled bag of 14.04 laptops and tablet.
Ubuntu at BALUG
As the year continued, my travel schedule picked up and I mostly worked on hosting regular Ubuntu Hours in San Francisco.
Some featuring a Unicorn…
And an Ubuntu Hour in December finally featuring a Vervet!
December 31st marked my last day as a member of the Ubuntu California leadership trio. I took on this role back in 2010 and in that time have seen a lot of maturity come out of our team and events, from commitment of team members to host regular events to the refinement of our booths each year at the Southern California Linux Expo. I’m excited to see 2015 kick off with the election of an entirely new leadership trio, announced on January 1st, comprised of: Nathan Haines (nhaines), Melissa Draper (elky) and Brendan Perrine (ianorlin). Congratulations! I know you’ll all do a wonderful job. In spite of clearing out to make room for the new leadership team, I’ll still be active in the LoCo, with regular Ubuntu Hours in San Francisco and an Ubuntu Global Jam event coming up on February 8th, details here.