Hi everyone, First off, I want to thank elfy, knome and balloons for their work in reviewing the QA documentation in the lead up to the Ubuntu Global Jam that occurred this past weekend. This and other documentation, like which USB creation tools were working best on each release right now really helped me prepare for the event I hosted in San Francisco on Sunday.
Our jam lasted a long 6 hours (thanks to our hosts at Gandi.net for tolerating us past the scheduled 5!), throughout which we had about 12 people in total coming and going, I had the following feedback: 1. Logging into the tracker was near impossible for new people because of: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-qa-website/+bug/1416893 Three folks who attended were new to doing any kind of work on Ubuntu, so they didn't have old Launchpad or Ubuntu SSO accounts, we never did figure out how to get them logged in. After the event, I learned about the existing bug I referenced above, but it wasn't soon enough to help them at the event. 2. The row of "Bugs to look for" is too overwhelming: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-qa-website/+bug/1366581 The format of the event was pretty loose, people came and went, some were more experienced than others and I just needed to give them the ISO tracker link and swing by to help as needed, others I walked through step by step. The consistent feedback I got was that the whole process is a lot of new stuff, and once you add it mouse-overs for each bug and opening them to see if they even impact the flavor you're testing, it makes the process overwhelming for newcomers. I ended up telling them to write down on paper all the bugs they found, and then I'd help them file (or confirm with existing) them with my in-brain knowledge of what bugs were existing bugs in Xubuntu, and the Xubuntu team would just sort out duplicates later that I didn't know about (sorry Xubuntu team, I love you! :)). 3. The "URL to the hardware profile" continues to confuse people: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-qa-website/+bug/1017207 I really don't like this field, people never know what it's for and are worried about putting in the wrong thing. Even once I explain it's just a spot to put a link to your hardware specs, I got funny looks when I told folks that they could link to a manufacturer's description of their hardware. When one contributor tried to log in to wiki.ubuntu.com to create a page for his hardware profile, we sat there for 5 minutes (we counted, no exaggeration). trying to log in before giving up and leaving the field blank because the wiki wouldn't complete loading for log in. Since the Ubuntu pastebins expire, this leaves limited options for a place where people can put their hardware information. 4. Would do again! Not all feedback was negative! It was a really great event, if I do say so myself :) I didn't have any attendees quietly slink away, everyone seemed pretty engaged, and several told me they were were appreciative of what they learned and said they'd be interested to coming to such an event again. For some it was the focus on Xubuntu (a flavor they don't typically use), for others it was using pre-Beta software for the first time in a supervised, safe, setting where they could ask questions, one mentioned that he was really happy that as a "simple end user" he could participate in helping with a release, and others really enjoyed just getting a peek under the hood of how we prepare for releases. If anyone else wants to do an event like this, I do recommend having a high ratio of knowledgeable leads to attendees. I was fortunate to have a couple Ubuntu Members who came along (thanks elky and rww!) and I could leverage for assistance when things got busy, a ratio of 5 attendees to 1 helper would probably make it so you're not exhausted at the end like I was. Next time I probably will have to more formally line up some helpers. -- Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph || Lyz || pleia2 -- Ubuntu-quality mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-quality
