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Bug tracking month for Bulgarian web L18n

We’ve started a campaign to make our locale better. More than 500 000 Bulgarian every day using localized content from Mozilla and we think they deserve a better quality. We cannot afford to pay big numbers as Google does for localization, but for every confirmed bug  you will get a @mozilla.bg email address and maybe something else, if the bug is very nasty one :) ))

If you read/understand Bulgarian, Join our effort now., if not, why don’t you start similar action for your own locale – we can help you with some advices.

Bulgarian Mozilla community Rocks!

P.S If you will go to FOSDEM, feel free to attend my talk about communities and to eat some Belgian chocolate at the same time.

 

(Mozilla) Communities – Agile approach, tools, patterns and metrics.

I will be talking about that at FOSDEM in Mozilla’s room. (*)

Abstract:
We’re living in hard times right now. Most of the F(L)OSS projects suffers from lack of volunteers especially if they must donate a large amount of time to this project. My talk will show how you can plan better your community how to measure it, how to use tips and tricks from the commercial world and how to use some agile methods and tools to make you community kick-ass squad.

  1. How to plan your community for next couple of months; (ex. We need 3 more people to join our translation effort) and Create the Flow – how a bug report goes from bugzilla to the  the end of it’s life. (a.k.a kill the bug)
  2. Define how to do it (ex. Troll the forums, create twitter campaign, contact universities, or something else?)
  3. How to Measure it (How many retweets do you have, how many clicks, etc) and Why?
  4. How to find patterns into your community and how to use them. For example – Most of the answers I receive to my mailing comes during business hours OR Friday is not a good day to send emails
  5. What is Agile and how to use it to make my community life easier? ( Trello show-case )

(*) room U.218A (next to Chavanne)

Feel free  stop by, eat some belgian chocolate (provided by me) and listen to my thoughts and share yours.

P.S If you still don’t have place to stay during the FOSDEM, take a look on my blogpost here.

FOSDEM 2012 – hotels and useful info.

If you are going to Fosdem 2012, here is some useful hotel info.

  • Hotels near to Grand Place and to the Delirium Cafe (yes, the party is there). This location is near to all sights and it’s good idea to stay here instead near to the FOSDEM venue;
  • Cheapest hotels in Brussels.
  • Hotels near to the ULB – the venue
  • The nearest hostel to the Venue is Hostel Brussels Louise (Price is about 19E/person/day)

 

Personally I can recommend CitaDines apartments, because there is a small kitchen included into the price and you can make a dinner or breakfast. If you are more than 2 people, they can offer you a really great offer and it’s near to the bus stop for FOSDEM bus.

 

FOSDEM

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event organized by the community for the community. The goal is to provide Free Software and Open Source developers and communities a place to meet to:

  • + Get in touch with other developers and projects;
  • + Be informed about the latest developments in the Free Software and Open Source world;
  • + Attend interesting talks and presentations held in large conference rooms by Free Software and Open Source project leaders and committers on various topics;
  • + To promote the development and the benefits of Free Software and Open Source solutions.
  • + and to SHARE knowledge with each other

Sharing the knowledge and ideas is the most valuable think you can get during FOSDEM and it’s free. There is no excuse not to be there.

If you are worried about anything, just feel free to ask me and I will help you, especially if this will be your first visit. If you are living for Free software NOR Open Source – you must be there.

(cc) Image is under CC lisense by bertogg

How the Suits should assign tasks to Geeks

Not unlike the great zebras and lions of the wild, the “Suits” (Marketing, Sales, Creative) and “Geeks” (Dev, Ops, Infra) in an IT company often face misunderstandings. When highly-technical and less-technical employees in a fast-growing tech shop like ZeroTurnaround need to accomplish something jointly, good communication is clearly necessary, but it’s not a one-sided thing.

There is a symbiotic relationship at play; the Suits are at least partly responsible for propagating the Geeks’ natural habitat so that we can all work together in peace and take home a salary. The Geeks make the product and tell the Suits why it’s good. The Suits then turn this into revenue and we all have jobs. Yay!

So how does it work in a distributed work environment, where most direct communication occurs over Skype? In a company where people are working in different offices in different continents, communication becomes naturally less efficient. While technology has been responsible for making a successful distributed work environment possible, I’m continually noticing that, like anti-virus software, solutions to communication struggles are always a few steps behind the next emerging challenges.

Read this true story here and feel free to add comments.