Michael Hall

In this open Q&A session, attendees are invited to bring any questions they have about Ubuntu.  Whether you're looking for a particular type of application, want to know how to find Ubuntu events in your area, tips on hardware compatibility, or anything else, Nathan, Michael, and Richard are on hand to help.

Everybody knows that Ubuntu is sponsored by Canonical, but not many people know exactly what that means. In this talk we'll take a trip in the Wayback Machine to the very beginnings of the Ubuntu project to see how it and Canonical came to life. As we continue through each milestone of Ubuntu's development we will explore how that relationship between company and community, product and project, has changed over the years. Finally we'll take a deeper look as Canonical's current investments, commitments, and responsibilities to Ubuntu and all of the people that make it.

Ubuntu is moving towards a converged future, where all of your devices run the same OS, the same apps and the same data. Your phone can become your desktop when you plug it in to a monitor, your convertable tablet will intelligently adapt to the availablity of a keyboard, and anything can become HTPC when connected to a TV. One interface, adapting to many form-factors, that's convergence with Ubuntu.

Over the past two years Canonical has been changing the way it works together with members of the community to deliver products around business needs, deadlines and partnerships. Starting with the Skunkworks project announced by Mark Shuttleworth in 2012, we have been evolving how we bring people in from the community, how their work is treated, what they can expect from us and what we expect from them. The most recent iteration of this is the Core Apps project, where the community has developed a number of essential applications for our first phone launch.

Mobile devices have taken the lead over desktops and laptops in the past few years, and every major provider of software is trying to make the transition to this new way of computing. Out goal, which we call "Convergence", aims to simplify the platform for app developers, giving them a consistent set of tools, interface, and experiences from mobile to desktop to televisions. In this talk I will present each of these challenges and how Ubuntu has overcome them, what that means for app developers, as well as what consumers can expect from Ubuntu when running it on multiple devices.