Congratulations to Allan Caeg for impressing the Regional Membership Board and becoming a fully-fledged Ubuntu Member.

Allan got his first taste of Ubuntu love after the release of Edgy Eft in 2006. He is the main organizer of the Jaunty, Karmic, and Lucid Release Parties. His passion for Ubuntu and Open Source Software transformed him from a mediocre student to a local emerging authority on User Interface (UX) Design and Workflow. He is also a founding member of Ayatana UX, a Board Member of the Philippine Open Source Network, and ,most recently, becoming part of GNOME.Asia Committee.

His current projects revolves around GNOME Usability and Firefox UX.

Links: Wiki Launchpad Blog Twitter IRC Log - Aug. 31, 2010

Starting August 31, 2010, Zak B. Elep will take over as the new Philippine Team Local Community Contact. He is our representative to other LoCo Teams, the LoCo Council, and the Ubuntu Community.

He got involved with Ubuntu since 2005 and became an official Ubuntu Member on October 2005 in recognition for his contributions. His contributions varied from advocacy, translations, and packaging. He soon became a MOTU the following month. He's no newcomer to this position either by serving as the LoCo Contact from July 2006 to March 2009.

Zak also has a long history in the Open Source Community. He embarked on the FOSS journey with Debian back in August 2003, becoming a Debian Developer soon after for maintaining a number of packages. He is also a well-known Perl hacker, an OpenBSD tester, and a Plan 9 n00b.

Three cheers for Zak!

Links: Wiki Launchpad Blog Twitter

The second Ubuntu Global Jam event in the Philippines was held at the Orange and Bronze office at Makati. Presenters introduced IRC and Mailing Lists followed by individual lightning talks.

To sum it up, the attendees had a great time learning as well as meeting people with the same interests.

The Philippine Team rocked the Ubuntu Global Jam by kicking off with the Zamboanga Jam. Kudos to Yolynne Medina and RJ Ian Sevilla for organizing the jam and lotsa thanks to the Elearning Centre Inc. for providing the venue.

I'd like to announce that our tutorial series will commence this week. The first tutorial will tackle on how to translate packages using Launchpad. We will hold 2 sessions, so those who couldn't attend the first session, will have a chance to participate in the second.

Requirements:
- an account in Launchpad[1]

Session 1: February 12, 2010 at 8PM (UTC +8)

Session 2: February 13, 2010 at 8PM (UTC +8)

Thanks

[1] https://launchpad.net/

I know many of us have wondered how Ubuntu development works and some of us are itching to join in the development itself! Wonder no more because Ubuntu Developer Week is here and it's target are guys like you!

The latest Ubuntu Developer Week which started on Jan 25th 2010 and ended Jan 29th 2010, showcased a series of online workshops that will help you get started in Ubuntu development, fixing bugs, kernel patching, Internationalization, Bazaar and packaging, and many more!

If you missed the latest Ubuntu Developer Week and want to take a few courses or just curious on what goes on under the hood, the session logs and session details can be found here.

On January 23, 2010 the first ever Ubuntu User Days Session was launched!

What is Ubuntu User Days you ask? User Days was born out of a discussion at the Ubuntu Developers Summit in November 2009, It was created to be a set of courses offered during a one day period to teach the beginning or intermediate Ubuntu user the basics to get them started with Ubuntu.

The first ever session focused on the most basic questions a beginning or intermediate Ubuntu user would normally ask like; how to use the command line, how to use launchpad, setting up a gpg or ssh key, how to get rockin' with the community, how to manage packages, etc.

For those who missed the session or want to take the course, the course outline and logs can be found here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDays

I'd like to announce that our First General Meeting for 2010 will take place on January 29, 2010 at 8:00PM (UTC +8). The venue would be at #ubuntu-ph on Freenode[1].

The agenda will be as follows:

1) Activities and Events for 2010
a. Online tutorial on package translations
b. Webinars for new Ubuntu users
c. Other seminars and offline events
d. Tools (conference packs) and Resources (presentations) for offline events
2) Translation of Packages for Lucid Lynx
3) Locales due for libc
4) Preparation for the LoCo Team Re-approval
5) Regional contact persons
6) CD Request Process
7) Other matters

Thanks

[1] For those who prefer webchat, the URL will be at https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=ubuntu-ph

Minutes now available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PhilippineTeam/MeetingLogs/20100129#Minutes

Six days from now, Ubuntu will release its next version... the Karmic Koala. A week after, the Philippine Team will join teams all over the world in celebration of this event. And everyone is invited. Bring your family and friends, and get to meet local Ubuntu users.

Date: November 6, Friday
Time: 6pm onwards (9pm?)
Venue: Unit 502 Orient Square Building
Discussion thread at the Philippine Team Forums

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On May 26, 2009, at 7:27PM, Loell Anthony Erecre was officially accepted as an Ubuntu Member by the Asia-Oceania Membership Board. Membership is a recognition of an Ubuntero's significant and sustained contribution to Ubuntu and the community.

Loell has posted a couple of Howtos and provided substantial and timely user-support in the Ubuntu Forums since October 2005, earning him a position as Moderator in the LoCo sub-forum on October 6, 2007.

But his contributions aren't limited to the forums. He developed a third-party tool for searching Personal Package Archives (PPA) Repositories called PPA-Search and has maintained a PPA repository for Gyachi, a Yahoo!Messenger client that has webcam and video-chat support.

Loell hails from Davao City, Philippines whose day job is a Marine Cargo Surveyor and Developer for Syeport Marine Services.