This
years Ubuntu Summit took place in Riga from 4th to 6th of November
2023. This years summit was a good summit! Why? Because the UBports team
had a stand there fully equipped, showing off lots of cool devices and
Alfred was even giving a talk (yeah!). This was also a great chance for
all of us to meet some people "live" that we only knew from chats or
news posts. Or did you meet Mark Shuttleworth in person before ;-)?
Yumi was proudly watching the stand, joined by Alfred, Danfro, Diogo, Jami, Jeroen, Kiek, Moem, Raoul and Ricardo. Moem carried plenty of merch to Riga (heavy lifting involved). She also equipped us with our "work clothing". Our shirts did certainly stick out of the crowd, watch out for some Yumi's on purple!
We
had an impressive display of devices set up, ranging from a good old BQ
E4.5, via OP5, OP5T, PinePhone, Xperia X, PineTab1 up to VollaPhone 22,
VollaPhone X23, Fairphone 4.
We got some great convergence displays up and running:
- a fairphone 4 connected to a thinkpad usb-c docking station equipped with a monitor, mouse and keyboard
- a device connected to a monitor via miracast wifi
- a miracast wired connection to a monitor
- a Xperia X connected to a mouse + keyboard combo via usb-otg with a Logitech nano receiver
And
to finish it of, we had a pebble smartwatch connected via Rockwork App,
to prove that running Ubuntu Touch does not mean you have to miss out
on your beloved smartwatch.
We
definitly managed to impress people. I remember one Canonical employee
herding a few collegues to our stand, explaining to them that after
today he needs to spend 1k dollars for the fairphone 4 + dock setup. We
also made very clear that Ubuntu Touch does live on and is usable in
everyday life ("Yes, of course we can make calls with Ubuntu Touch.",
"Yes we do use those phones as daily driver,
no other smartphone needed"). I believe it was a good feeling to some
Canonical staff that had been working on Ubuntu Touch some years ago to
see their work was not futile, but a starting point of something lasting
for many years now.
One
of the highlights on our stand was certainly Mark Shuttleworth
exploring our devices with Alfred happily answering all his questions.
If you don't know Mark yourself, a pro tip: if everyone is wearing a
badge with their name on it, the one single person without a badge, well
that person doesn't need a badge... ;-)
During
the whole event some photographers went around taking photos and movie
clips. Our stand was often in their focus. Alfred also got the
opportunity to do a special video recording and show our devices.
Talking about talks...
One of the opening talks was full of movie characters, Randy Packer talking about Dreamworks MoonRay technology. Good to learn, that all Dreamwork animations are done 100% on linux machines. As a bonus, everyone attending that talk, got to watch the short clip "Bilby". Very well done I must admit! Alfred was giving a talk about snaps on Friday which attracted attention, there where a couple of chats coming back to that topic during the days that followed. AI is everywhere, so of course there where talks about it in Riga . And guess who joined there? Microsoft! Yes, they participated in this years Ubuntu summit.
In
the evenings it was nice to retire to one of Rigas restaurants. After
talking to people all day long at the top of our voices (approx. 450
people do make some noise), we definitely needed to let some drinks
flow. The great Sunday evening closing party was a nice finishing event.
Canonical had booked us in the Digital Art House gallery just around
the corner. With plenty of food and drink there was time for some last
chats. The whole gallery was equipped with screens and displays of all
the Ubuntu releases mascots artwork. So great to see them all!
If
you think the show was over then, well yes you are right. It did stop
here at Riga for us. But Michal, from the Slovak community, asked for
some stickers and other merch for his stand in Brno for acommunity
meetup a week later. So Yumi was present there as well. Thanks Michal.
Danfro
