Oliver Smith | Membership Application

Community Membership
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Hi folks, I feel like it’s long overdue that I apply for Ubuntu membership and have summarised my contributions below for everyone’s consideration. :slightly_smiling_face:

Summary of Contributions

Prior to joining Canonical I was a humble Ubuntu user at home, had a very nice Raspberry Pi based homelab setup and used Ubuntu a fair bit in the data science side of my previous jobs. I joined Canonical because I felt the world needed a private, open source alternative to the current mainstream desktop OSs and Ubuntu was best placed to seriously compete in this space.

2.5 years supporting Ubuntu (primarily Ubuntu Desktop) as Product Manager at Canonical

I will not go into the specifics of my day to day work, or the sales, marketing and management side of the role. Instead I would like to focus on my efforts most relevant to the community which I hope demonstrates that Ubuntu is more than ‘a job’ to me! The line here is, naturally, blurred.

Ubuntu engineering roadmap planning

  • Working with Canonical engineering leads to curate, prioritise, plan and present our work for each release. Accountable for the final product in terms of quality, user experience, security, privacy, managebility and fun.

Multiple posts on the Ubuntu blog

  • Oliver Smith | Ubuntu, in particular:
    • Announcing Core Desktop
    • Our Firefox snap improvements
    • Release deep-dives
  • As well as most of our recent Ubuntu press releases.

Conception and creative direction of our Ubuntu Desktop LTS trailers created by FreeHive which I’m particularly proud of and hope captures the spirit of Ubuntu :slightly_smiling_face:

Gave a talk at the Ubuntu Summit on Core Desktop with Ken VanDine

I work very closely with the community team, with regular update meetings, coordination around Ubuntu testing week, mascot reveals, release milestones, the Ubuntu summit and Flavour collaborations.

I have voted in every Ubuntu wallpaper competition for the last three years and proposed the adjectives ‘noble’ and ‘oracular’. Still working on ‘p’.

I attend the regular Ubuntu Flavour syncs to ensure alignment on roadmaps and flag upcoming features as well as understand their challenges or concerns.

I attend release week sprints in person to ask the team “is it ready yet” every hour, which they very much appreciate. :wink:

I also attend the GNOME Advisory Board meetings (timezone permitting) alongside Ken VanDine to ensure we’re aligned with upstream.

6 months as acting Engineering Director for Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical

I currently manage the Canonical engineering team for Ubuntu Desktop, during which time I have regularly updated the community on our roadmap plans and progress to positive reception and a wide array of coverage on Linux news sites.

I also aim to be as active as possible on discussion topics and other threads, with some great discussions around gaming performance and release-related topics in particular. I am also the author of a number of Ubuntu tutorials on discourse as well.

Please check out my discourse engagement stats on my profile for more details (4.6k posts read :sweat_smile:): Profile - local-optimum - Ubuntu Community Hub

Personal blogs detailing some homelab projects using Ubuntu, LXD and snaps

I have a poorly maintained Medium blog that tracks some of my Ubuntu-themed home projects.

Launchpad profile

https://launchpad.net/~local-optimum

Plans for the future

For Desktop I am most excited about sharing Ubuntu Core Desktop with the world, we’ve been having some really healthy architectural discussions these past months and I think the future of the project is bright and hugely exciting!

I would like us to invest a lot more in our Ubuntu documentation which could do with some TLC.

I’d also like us to think about opportunities for helping users configure privacy features in the distro, an important value that is drawing increasingly mainstream attention.

That’s not to mention our continued work on permissions prompting, hardware backed FDE, customised installs and more…

On a personal note I think this next cycle is when I spend some serious time on the Ubuntu packaging guide and the Ubuntu maintainers handbook.

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I’ve had the pleasure to work with Oliver very closely for the past several years, his passion to make Ubuntu better has been inspirational! Oliver has been instrumental in many of the initiatives that have improved Ubuntu’s viability as a competitor in the desktop space.

Oliver always looks at the bigger picture, with the Ubuntu community’s interest front and center. In particular I’d like to highlight Oliver’s stance on privacy. I like to tease him about wearing his tinfoil hat, but I firmly believe we need that inner voice questioning what our decisions mean for our user’s privacy and ensuring we always do the right thing.

I’m confident that Oliver will continue to be a driving force within the Ubuntu community.

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Hey Oliver :smiley:
All ya gotta do is set a date to meet the board:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership/Boards

Says me with a
Ubuntu Membership Board hat on

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I support Oliver’s application for membership. I’ve worked with him both as a project manager and recently as director of Ubuntu desktop. He’s consistently pushed for improvements in both the products and processes we have while at the same time having a deep understanding of the values of Ubuntu and making sure we keep those as we improve.

I’m sure Oliver will continue to drive these improvements in Ubuntu for everyone’s benefit.

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In a very short time, Oliver really got the Ubuntu spirit and does whatever he can to help and make the project better, both technically and socially.

As a Product Manager, and now acting as Director of Ubuntu Desktop, he truly has a huge, positive, impact on the project. His decisions are always looking beyond the Desktop itself and how they fit in the broader Ubuntu ecosystem.

In an nutshell, I heavily support Oliver’s application as he stands on the values of Ubuntu and keep getting the whole project better.

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Just added myself to next week’s agenda :slight_smile: hopefully everything is in order!

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Never in my life I imagined that you’re not a member of Ubuntu! Great to see you with us soon!

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In the past years Oliver showed how much he care about ubuntu, not just because he’s a Canonical employee, but he’s been dedicating lots of time to the project itself and to its community.

His availability and activity in this platform are clearly very visible signs of this and of his passion, but also the work he’s been doing under the hood to make ubuntu better and more spread is amazing.
Reasons why I totally think that he belongs to the Ubuntu family.

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The first thing I will say is… It’s about time!
Oliver has done phenomenal work in continuing the pace of progress and innovation around Ubuntu. Under his leadership, there have been some seismic changes around the desktop (and server), each making it a better, more future-focused, and more exciting operating system. It is truly enjoyable to see those efforts come to fruition and those in his team rally around his shared vision.

I also want to specifically highlight how in tune Oliver is with the community. Every decision he makes takes into careful consideration how it will impact our developers, users, and contributors. You can feel his genuine love and enthusiasm for this community in his engagements on Matrix, his developer update posts, and our flavour sync meetings. This respect for our community and it’s values is what makes him such an effective motivator and leader.

I fully support Oliver’s application and will be thrilled to see his name on that membership list!

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Oliver did a lot for Ubuntu, as all the others here already tell, especially he was engaged a lot in Snap and Ubuntu Core Desktop, here especially issuing 4 blog posts about the fixes which were done on the Firefox Snap when users complained about its performance, and also when he quickly put out a blog about how the available immutable distros and also an all-Snap desktop distro work when the not yet published Ubuntu Core Desktop got leaked. I cite all these in my Snap workshops.

And as the (interim) head of the Desktop Team he does nice monthly blogs on Ubuntu Discourse and so keeps the community informed.

I had also many fruitful 1:1 conversations with him …

I fully support his application!

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Great Oliver -

I have noted your desired date and as well notified the other members of the board.

See you there - soon.

Regards

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Oh yeah, I couldn’t agree more!

Reading this at first I thought, yeah the good things have already been said by others - and just clicked the like button on most. But then I was made to realize that almost all of them praising @local-optimum are nowadays managed by him. Well, by now, at least @aaronprisk chimed in, another external \o/.

For the sake of that not being an unexpected artificial blocker, let me please start with “externally confirming” what @kenvandine @robert.ancell @didrocks @3v1n0 @till-kamppeter have written. :slight_smile:

But furthermore let me state that he not only did all that was mentioned already, but where it comes from. In my experience he wholeheartedly cares about Ubuntu’s diverse user base, Ubuntu as a Project and the values of Ubuntu. That is the spirit we want to have!

I too, fully support his application!

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I am thrilled to see @local-optimum application for Ubuntu Membership.

Oliver is a champion of Ubuntu! His passion for this project goes above and beyond his duties as a Canonical employee.

He is very active in the flavor sync meetings, where he reports on incoming changes, listens to feedback and actions on it. If you check flavor sync meeting reports, his name will look very familiar!
Actually, if you read the Ubuntu Discourse, you probably noticed it is hard not to see his name all over the place. :sweat_smile:

He is a great citizen of open source, a true leader who can rally people around him and inspire them to contribute more. I hope we can soon welcome him as an Ubuntu Member.

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I’m going to add another strong +1 to the list. Oliver is doing an amazing job at promoting Ubuntu Desktop. As a PM he has been a great advocate for us but also actively engaged with the engineering teams at Canonical and the community to ensure we improve Ubuntu and focus on the features that will help Ubuntu to success. As a Desktop Director he’s continuing on this path and really helped us to make Oracular a great cycle.

1 Like