Join me tomorrow on a new Translations Training session where I’ll be talking about workflows you can use to provide better quality translations to our already awesome OS. I’ll cover different approaches to reviewing translations and some tips interesting to both experienced and new translation teams.

• WHAT: Ubuntu Translations Training Session: QA Workflows
• WHEN: Thursday, 17 Mar, 16:00 UTC
• WHERE: #ubuntu-classroom IRC channel on Freenode

Remember that if you’ve got any suggestions about a translations topic you’d like to learn more about, you can add it here.

Image: Quality? by dieselbug2007 (CC BY-NC 2.0)

As previously discussed,  I’m happy to announce the first in the series of biweekly Translations Training Sessions, starting tomorrow.

So here’s the rundown: we’ll be having a 1 hour IRC session, where you can learn how to use the Launchpad Translations web UI to translate your favourite distro.

• WHAT: Translations Training Sessions
  
• WHERE: #ubuntu-translators IRC channel on Freenode
  
• WHEN: Thursday, 3rd February, 16:00 UTC

What will you need?

Not much, really. It would be great if you could create a Launchpad account before joining the session, so that you can get started trying your first translations during the hour, that’d be awesome. You’ll simply need an e-mail address and an Internet connection for that. You’ll find how to do this on the Translations QuickStart Guide.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to easily contribute to Ubuntu in your language and to ask all your questions.

See you tomorrow!

Following the first in the series of posts about the plans for Ubuntu Translations on this cycle and their progress, this week I’d like to talk about Translations Training Sessions.

What we’d like is to run a series of regular events where translators can just attend and learn, in a hands-on way, all the different aspects of translating our favourite distro. There, they should also be able to ask their questions and discuss any topics related to translations. Another goal is to also provide material for all teams to adapt and reuse for their own training events for new translators.

The plan is to start by running a regular series of IRC training events focused on particular translation topics. Here are some suggestions:

• The Launchpad Translations web interface
• Translating Ubuntu online and offline
• Ubuntu Translations review workflow
• …

Do you want to help grow your translations community in your language? Help us with the training sessions by providing suggestions for topics you’d like to see covered in them. You can also help by running the sessions yourself!

You can leave them as comments on this post or directly on the wiki page we’ve set up for that here.

Looking forward to hearing your suggestions!

Canonical over the last four years or so has brought businesses a growing range of services and software tools to help them make better use of the Ubuntu platform. Many of these services, such as Landscape systems management and technical support, have proven valuable for companies that want to more easily manage and maintain Ubuntu in their business.

Rather than having to decide which tools or services are useful, we decided to make things simple by bringing together all the necessary tools and services into a single offering, Ubuntu Advantage.

Ubuntu Advantage has four service components:

* systems management

* enterprise technical support

* legal assurance

* access to knowledge base

At Canonical, we believe these are they key service areas that help enterprises make successful use of Ubuntu in their business. As new technology features and capabilities are incorporated into the Ubuntu platform, the Ubuntu Advantage service offering will also grow to support those new platform capabilities.

The systems management service category offers Canonical’s Landscape systems management and monitoring tool. Within any enterprise it is crucial for IT departments to have the necessary systems management tool to avoid having to spend copious amounts of time managing and maintaining systems with patches and security upgrades. Although, these tasks are vital for enterprise systems to remain safe, they can also be tedious and unnecessarily time consuming without the right tools. The package management and automation features of Landscape help to remove much of this manual work.

Ubuntu Advantage includes enterprise-level technical support for the desktop and server to give businesses direct backing from the source of Ubuntu, Canonical. This is a valuable service because businesses can deploy Ubuntu with a greater sense of security; should they run into any problems, they have the support from the organisation which released it.

Our aim is to provide comprehensive support, but we also want to give customers flexibility with the type of service they receive as we recognise that different machines will run different workloads and need different levels of support. On the server there are three options ranging from support for basic server workloads to the most complex setups:

* Essential Server – to cover common workloads such as file and print serving

* Standard Server – for more advanced business needs like server virtualisation and integration into existing Windows networks

* Advanced Server – to cover complex configurations such as high-availability and clustering

On the desktop there were two main usage types we want to cover, general business use and developer use:

* Standard Desktop – covers general end users using standard business applications such as email, office suites and web browsing

* Advanced Desktop – covers developers that have more complex desktop configurations, such as desktop virtualisation, and use advanced developer tools

A major aim of Ubuntu Advantage is to ease the adoption of Ubuntu by providing quick and easy access to a definitive answers. The online Knowledge Base gives customers a central repository from which they can quickly reference at any time definitive guides on how to resolve common issues or information about best practices deployments. Canonical’s support engineers create the content in the knowledge base keeping it accurate and up-to-date on the latest releases.

It’s also crucial that staff using Ubuntu feel comfortable with it, because the more confident they feel the more they can take advantage of Ubuntu’s many features and the fewer problems they will come across. So we also included training credits in Ubuntu Advantage. These can be redeemed to train end users on how to make the most of Ubuntu Desktop for their daily job, or they can be redeemed for system administrator training to help them more easily deploy and manage Ubuntu systems.

We know it is important for many organisations to have legal assurance to enable the adoption of an open source platform, which is why we have also included our legal assurance programme, Ubuntu Assurance, with all Ubuntu Advantage service options.

Ubuntu Advantage provides simplicity and an easier way for businesses to purchase the necessary tools and services to manage, support and use their Ubuntu platform more effectively and efficiently. Ultimately, it saves them precious time and money that can be spent elsewhere in their businesses. Initial reception has been very positive and we look forward to getting more feedback on the new services as users become familiar with them and hopefully see the value in them.

The Ubuntu Advantage website is live at: visit http://bit.ly/cOasJ3

Fern Ho, Ubuntu Advantage Product Manager

Following the growing success of Ubuntu Server Edition, and in response to requests from both students and partners, Canonical has now launched an Ubuntu Server-dedicated course, called ‘Deploying Ubuntu in the Enterprise Environment’.

This five-day course is designed for intermediate-to-advanced system administrators working in organisations which are about to deploy, or have already deployed, Ubuntu desktops and servers in the office.

Participants will acquire the skills they need to deploy, configure and maintain Ubuntu Server Edition within an enterprise infrastructure. As well as building skills for new Ubuntu Server deployments, it has been tailored to meet the needs of companies switching from UNIX, Red Hat and other Linux distributions.

Canonical is trialling an online ‘virtual classroom’ version of the course for two weeks from Monday 4 May 2009, with limited seats sold through the Canonical store. The trial is offered at a special price and includes a special guest speaker, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Project. We expect it to be very popular, so if you are interested, don’t delay.

Ubuntu Training Partners will offer classroom-based training for this course from June 2009.

Visit the training website for detailed course objectives and more on virtual classroom training.

Canonical has recently signed and trained up instructors from Fast Lane and Bridge Education, the  latest two partners to join the Ubuntu Training Partner Programme. Ubuntu courses are now available in many locations across the USA.

Two, 5 day courses which form part of the Ubuntu Certified Professional certification train System Administrators on how to deploy and make the most of Ubuntu in the office.

A 2 day course assists desktop users in the home and office to transition smoothly to Ubuntu and use key applications, including mainstream office applications, Internet connectivity and browsing, graphic art tools, multi-media and music.

Courses are available in classroom and self-paced elearning formats. For details of the current 3 month classroom schedule, click here
Closed and pre-booked sessions are also available by contacting the partners directly.

Ubuntu training activities will be expanding significantly throughout 2009, with new courses and delivery mechanisms available to students globally. Stay tuned for updates over the coming months as learning to work with Ubuntu gets even easier.