Contributor Developments

During the next upcoming development cycles I plan to focus on developing and maintaining increased numbers of contributors  who help with Ubuntu Studio development.

For those who don't remember, I've mentioned it before, but most of the work we do developing Ubuntu Studio really isn't code intensive.  Therefore, you don't need to be a developer to actually help in quite large ways to Ubuntu Studio's development.

Contribute
Previously in an earlier post I noted that "most new contributors failed to have an impact" and a blog comment galvanized me to effect something that I had considered earlier.  In essence, I wanted a 'help wanted' wiki page.

But I felt that in order to be success this page would need certain qualities:

• it should display a focused list of topics needing help
• each topic should be very accessible to new contributors (i.e. not too difficult)
• each topic should have a nominal description (enough to explain without getting into the technicals yet)
• each topic would have a 'resources' link for further research into the topic
• each topic would have a contact link

By providing this scaffolding my expectation is that we will better support new contributors so they are more effective and continue contributing.

So I am very pleased to link to the Ubuntu Studio "Contribute to Development" wiki page.

Any suggestions on how to improve this page are most welcome.

QA ISO Image Testing
Another series of wiki pages that I want to create are themed around QA and testing.

The first one I have created is specific to the QA ISO image testing scheduled before each milestone.  I chose to address this issue first because it is our most ubiquitous demand and, with a low threshold to entry, an easy way for a new contributor to have a large effect immediately.

Why is it demanding?  QA ISO image testing is not difficult to perform, but the images need to be validated multiple times each cycle and completed in a short time.  In short, it is a relatively simple process but cyclic and time sensitive.

Increasing the number of people testing the QA ISO images means that we can react more dynamically and effectively to complete all the required test in the allotted time more easily.  Our goal should be to have enough people testing such that each person should only need to sign up for a single test at each milestone.

This first wiki page is an introduction to the QA ISO  testing process and intended to give a general overview of ISO testing with links to additional sources of information.

It is easy to get started contributing.  New contributors are encourage to visit the Ubuntu Studio QA ISO image page, pick the appropriate architecture, and sign up (account required)for available tests.  As images are available for testing an email will be sent with links to the image and testing instructions.  Sign up now!

Therefore, I am pleased to link to the Ubuntu Studio QA ISO image testing wiki page.

Again, any suggestions on how to improve this page are most welcome.