I am Jason Nucciarone - some of you may know me as nuccitheboss - and I am excited to formally submit my Ubuntu Membership application to the Membership Board!
Past and current contributions
I have promoted the use of both Ubuntu Desktop and Server at multiple employers and organisations. When I secured my first tech job as a High-Performance Computing Software Consultant at the Pennsylvania State University Institute for Computational and Data Science (bit of a mouthful), I maintained a public repository containing Ubuntu-based Singularity container images for distributing software to researchers, faculty, and students. I also assisted with and lead several trainings to teach new cluster users “how to survive Linux” using Ubuntu. I temporarily left ICDS to be an undergraduate research fellow at Florida International University. My groupmates and I used Ubuntu - with a sprinkling of CentOS 7 - to develop Jespipe, an open source workflow engine for conducting large-scale adversarial machine learning analysis on HPC systems. After my fellowship concluded, I returned as a software engineer to ICDS and managed our lab of Ubuntu machines so incoming graduate students could get hands-on, learning experience with “surviving Linux.”
I, along with others, founded the Ubuntu High-Performance Computing community team to focus on engineering initiatives around making Ubuntu and Debian better for supercomputing and HPC. I am the community manager for our public Matrix and weekly calls, and have been recently working on setting up the Charmed HPC organisation on GitHub for the converged HPC stack that we are developing for Ubuntu.
I assisted the community with its initial exploration into adopting Matrix as an official communication channel behind the scenes. Mauro and I had several calls testing out different Matrix features such as migrating rooms between homeservers, room management, the various widgets (my favorite being Etherpad), and GitHub + RSS integrations.
I had the privilege of chairing the 2023 Ubuntu Summit in Riga with the Canonical community team as a community volunteer. I assisted with social media promotion and planning, and I managed parts of the Ubuntu Summit website such as the “During the Summit” section, “Exploring Riga” and “Travelling to Latvia” pages. During the summit weekend I helped with event set up. Enjoyed the white/pin board questions? If yes, it was me who came up with them! If no, it was Mauro.
I’d also like to say that I was the “self-appointed” life of the closing party with my Minotaur mask. I have a picture with myself, a penguin, and sabdfl floating around…
I also played a smaller back-stage role at the 2022 Ubuntu Summit supporting Mauro the weekend before. If you liked the pin boards next to the elongated Foosball table, it was me! If not, it was Mauro. I also sprinkled Ubuntu-branded pens and stickers throughout the venue.
I am currently chairing the revival of UbuCon @ SCaLE alongside Aaron Prisk, Nathan Haines, Richard Gaskin, and George Mulak of Ubuntu fame. Congratulations to those that had accepted talks accepted and I hope to see many of you in Pasadena in March.
I have been assisting with laying the bedrock for the first, standalone North American UbuCon in Ubuntu’s ~20 year history. Lubuntu release manager willing, I hope to be invited on the organising comittee
I have had the privileged of attending several HPC-related conferences on behalf of both Canonical and Ubuntu. Before each event, I write (or ghostwrite) a blog post, and after the event I share my findings in the Ubuntu HPC weekly community calls. With each event, I promote Ubuntu and open source to HPC communities, and I meet with several folks who are interested in adopting Ubuntu for supercomputing. I don’t like going to conferences empty handed, so I usually bring a submission too. This year I attended FOSDEM’23, PEARC23, and SC23; I have more planned for 2024.
I am a semi-active snapcrafter and a LoCo rebooter.
Future plans
Making plans keeps the mind young and optimistic, and I have a lot of them. I am very enthusiastic about Ubuntu’s future!
Further grow Ubuntu’s footprint in HPC and supercomputing through Ubuntu HPC. Activities I have plan include:
Continuing work on Charmed HPC.
Setting up virtual bi-weekly HPC/supercomputing workshops to teach folks about HPC and how to use Ubuntu (and a variety of other open source technologies).
Chairing a supercomputing track at the next Ubuntu Summit.
Bring HPC tech demos to Ubuntu community booths at conferences.
Maintain accessible documentation for both novice and expert HPC users, admins, and developers.
Start a YouTube channel teaching folks how to do scientific computing on Ubuntu, and how to effectively use Ubuntu-related tech like Juju, LXD, snaps, etc.
Start a blog about my Ubuntu-related happenings.
Bridge other open source communities into Ubuntu. They may not specifically work on Ubuntu or be related to Ubuntu, but I am because we are.
Restart the Pennsylvania (maybe Greater Appalachia) LoCo with my buddy Aaron Prisk. Lot’s of HPC and Ubuntu users in western Pennsylvania.
Attend more conferences on behalf of Ubuntu/Canonical. I like travelling to places and meeting new people, so I’m always down to go staff a booth and/or submit a talk/workshop/panel/BoF/etc. My airport is budget airline central
Start, support, and sustain the re-emerging global UbuCon movement. Each year, I want to there to be an UbuCon on each continent with the great global gathering of the Ubuntu community being the Ubuntu Summit in November/October.
Great that you take this next step, applying for official recognition.
Please choose a time and date to meet with the board on IRC: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership/Boards
(Several of us are in the West - night-time meeting is a preference)
I had the pleasure of meeting Jason at the Ubuntu Summit this past year (although I think we met in 2022, I just did not associate the face with the name.) What drew me to talk to Jason in the first place was the fact that we look to be similar in age (I think we’re maybe a year or two apart.) He’s right, he was the life of the party at Ubuntu Summit 2023. The Minotaur mask was such a great talking point, and it made the event much more fun.
I don’t work with Jason regularly on technical work, I work with him on the community side of things. From his help in Ubuntu Summit 2023 to his help with various events we’re planning, Jason is on top of it. It’s obvious he’s skilled in and has a deep passion for community management. He brings up new ideas all the time, and I’ve come to know him as a friend.
I’m really excited to see what Jason will do in the future. I wish I had the opportunity to work with him more on the technical side; that being said, the HPC effort is definitely worthwhile.
I, Simon Quigley, officially endorse Jason C. Nucciarone for Ubuntu Membership, and believe he would be a great addition to the team.
A recommendation from a fellow yinzer (Western Pennsylvanian):
Jason’s efforts to extend the Ubuntu community into new, untapped spaces like the high performance computing world is worthy of great praise. Where some in a similar position may see the community as a barrier or something to be worked around, Jason sees an opportunity to forge meaningful, reciprocal relationships and bring new, diverse talent into our community. His work will go on to serve as a prime example of how engineering teams can build and nurture community around their products and projects.
I also want to shine a light on Jason’s willingness to help with community events and initiatives. Without Jason’s volunteer work at the Ubuntu Summit, it would not have been the great success that it was. His unique insight and perspective during our planning meetings was invaluable along with his always engaging social media campaigns. I would also be remiss not to mention his ‘legendary’ dancing skills
Jason has also been a key player in the effort to bring UbuCon back to SCaLE this upcoming March. He understands the value of supporting these long standing community staples. As both an organizer and speaker, he will serve as an excellent representative of the Ubuntu spirit.
Jason’s energy, enthusiasm, intelligence, tactfulness and community first mentality is a rare commodity. It has been a tremendous pleasure to work alongside someone with such zeal for his work and I happily endorse his application.
I met the not-so-ancient Jason shortly before the Ubuntu Summit 2022. He volunteered to help with the event and immediately jumped on all tasks we needed help with. After the event he told me he wanted to have a bigger role in the next iteration of the event.
After the Ubuntu Summit 2022 we had many opportunities to hang out and discuss community. Last year Jason jump started the Ubuntu HPC community, got many things right and kept coming back for more advice and help. Ubuntu Summit 2023 was a great improvement over the previous year also thanks to Jason’s dedication. The Jason-Minotaur was also quite a great addition to the event. Not being enough he jumped on and helped revive the UbuCon at SCaLE event. He supported the Ubuntu Matrix project from the very start.
Jason is a force of nature, he always thinks about community, he is always flying around giving talks at events, helping organize conferences, hosting virtual meetings, encouraging people to join groups, locos, and showing up at events. His enthusiasm is infectious and his energy is inspiring. He also apparently has the ability to infiltrate every single community oriented chat room, server and platform, as we keep bumping into each other pretty much all the time. Jason would be a great addition to the Ubuntu membership ranks.
I’ve met @nuccitheboss early last year at FOSDEM, where we were both part of Ubuntu stand volunteer team. Jason did an excellent and dedicated work at Ubuntu stand, brought lots of energy and was always excellent at dealing with everyone. Jason brought the same constructive, cheerful and kind spirit to the Ubuntu Summit 2024, and I believe many of the attendees had the opportunity to experience it.
I also appreciate Jason involvement with the LoCo Teams reboot effort, always taking interest and making interesting proposals for the debate and helpful in general, while also working to revive the Pennsylvania LoCo.
For all this, I’m very pleased to support @nuccitheboss membership application, and I’m confident it will go through.
Thank you for all the endorsements so far! I greatly appreciate it
@bashing-om I signed up for my meeting with the Membership Board at 20:00 UTC on February 1st. I chose this time so that @ilvipero will be able to attend the call. Please let me know if there is anything else that you need me to do before the meeting!
Will meet you Feb1. In the meantime I will send notices of your desire to the other board members.
You have done all that is needed to make your application. I d not expect any thing will deter success.
I fully endorse @nuccitheboss’s membership application. Seeing someone so dedicated to the Ubuntu community is an inspiration. Jason’s attitude and enthusiasm toward the community and interaction should be something we all aspire toward.
In addition, Jason’s sustained and significant contributions speak for themselves. Not only did he help organize Ubuntu Summit 2023 which was a huge success, but he also is much of the brains behind the HPC initiative.
Honestly, when I found out that Jason wasn’t an Ubuntu member already (and dared him through some not-so-subtle means to apply), I was extremely surprised, so, in my opinion this application should be a foregone conclusion and basically a handwave. Not that I have much say in the matter except this endorsement .
I have had the unique privilege of working closely with @nuccitheboss for bit over a year now, though I’ve known him for longer. I have had the opportunity to observe Jason’s enthusiasm, commitment and engagement with the Ubuntu community and the HPC community and seeing him navigate various waters to establish the Ubuntu HPC community, a perfect blend of the two.
The most notable contributions that Jason has had to the Ubuntu community has clearly come from his love of free and open source with an Ubuntu flavoring. As others before me have mentioned, he has not only put his voice and enthusiasm into Ubuntu but has put his time, effort, energy into helping build new communities and community events. From helping to revitalize LoCos to organizing Ubuntu Summits, Jason is engaged everywhere he can find the opportunity and time to contribute.
Jason’s enthusiasm and contributions to the Ubuntu Community do not stop at the Ubuntu-focused events; Jason has attended various conferences in the HPC space (e.g. PEARC, Super Computing, etc) with an endeavor to not only go to learn and engage the community, but also to promote and discuss Ubuntu with anyone who will sit and listen.
I fully endorse Jason’s application to become an Ubuntu member.
I wholeheartedly support Jason’s membership application. He played a significant role in the organization of the Ubuntu Summit (2023), displaying incredible passion and enthusiasm. His performance at the end of the event truly added zest to the after-party While I have not had the fortune to collaborate with him on other projects, I am certain Jason will be a perfect representative of the Ubuntu community as a whole.
