It’s been a long time since I’ve written my last blog post. But this time, I’ll be announcing something you will surely like (or at least that’s what I’m thinking). Last UDS, we were in the IRC Workshops sessions, when a huge idea came out. We all know the developer announcements for the releases as Fridge posts, and classroom sessions as IRC-based. But we wanted something else, something where people could actively interact with our instructors, or with our developers. That’s why, we decided to launch Ubuntu on Air!.

(Thanks to Andrew Higginson for the logo!)

Ubuntu on Air! is a new project, that will bring instructors, developers, leaders, etc. to your screen. Basically, the idea consists of a Google+ Hangout, that will be broadcasted live via YouTube. You will be able to interact with the speakers in real time, ask questions, and tell them to explain things as you like. But, you may be asking how are we going to do all of this. We’ve set up an IRC channel for you to participate, and we’ve got a dedicated YouTube channel, so you can replay past sessions. We’ve even got a bot to do some hard work on IRC! (Thanks to Nathan Handler for configuring it, and to Elizabeth Krumbach for hosting it.) We’ll be using it to give some developer news, as well as Classroom sessions. That’s why some test sessions have been held during the App Developer Week, so everything’s planed now. Now, the final question is, when are we getting started with all of this?

The answer is simple: Next Thursday, July 26th at 18 UTC. You can chat in the #ubuntu-on-air channel on irc.freenode.net, the link for the stream will be provided at the start of the session. This time we’ve got Benjamin Kerensa with the Developer News, and Brian Murray explaining us a little bit more about bugs, and how useful are they to make a successful release.

Oh, and before and forget, huge thanks to Jorge Castro for helping me to organize all this. We hope you can join us and have a great time during our first Ubuntu on Air! session.