When last week Canonical announced the usual UDS was not going to happen I was a bit shocked and disappointed: starting from the next UDS (that is going to happen tomorrow!) the event will be online only and every 3 months. During these days I've been thinking a lot about this move and I will tell you what are the pros and cons, in my opinion, followed by some final thoughts.

Pros

Having 4 UDS every year, instead of 2, is surely a better thing. I'm a big fan of Scrum methodology, so I think that iterating more often is better than iterating less. If there are any mistakes you can correct them and iterating again before releasing the final product.

Potentially more people can partecipate to the event (even the opposite is true and I will explain why). People won't need to move from home, travel, pay any expense etc... they just need a computer and a good Internet connection.

It's cheaper for everyone: I can just imagine how expensive could be for Canonical to organize a similar event. Booking a big hotel, paying travel and expenses to near one houndred of community people. People who didn't get any sponsorization had to pay all the travel expenses to attend the event.

Cons

Potentially less people can partecipate to the event. Yes, like I said before even this sentence is true and I will explain why. First of all, using Google+ there are at least three countries that will be cut out: China, Thailand and Vietnam. Google+ is not available in those countries.

Are you sure that special people will be able to follow the event? For example blind people won't be able to chat or to ask question in the chat.

Only 10 people will be able to talk. In normal UDS sessions more people could raise the hand and ask a question or interact with the track leaders. Who will choose the 10 people with audio+video streaming rights?

We will completly miss the social aspect of the UDS. If you think this was only a secondary part, please go on. I felt more committed to work and collaborate with people I met in person than with someone I've never met before.

Announcing an event, even if online, just one week before it happens. Really? Some people had already taken vacation from work, booked flights etc... not counting many people that can't take 2 days off from work just with 1 week notice period. It's also almost impossible that community members have the time to schedule a blueprint and be able to discuss about a subject.

Final thoughts

From a cutting costs point of view I really can't say anything. Organizing UDS was surely very expensive for Canonical and nobody can blame them if they decided to spend those money in a different way.

What really concerns me: is UDS still useful? My opinion is that at least since latest 2 or 3 UDS the presence of the Community was not so relevant, because I had the clear sensation that the most important decisions were made by Canonical before the UDS and then there was just some details tuning. Another proof of my thoughts is the today announcement: despite the fact that I 100% agree with Unity switching to Qt/QML (I already proposed this 2 years ago during Budapest UDS, but nobody listened to me) I completly disagree with the way the decision was made: not a single involvement or discussion with the community.

I would apreaciate more openness and honesty from Canonical. Do you want to take all the decisions? That's fine, but at least state it clearly.

This day at UDS started a bit late for me, since i woke up pretty sick (damn air conditioned!!!). I did not follow any conferences in the morning. I relly wanted to follow the Wayland one, but when I arrived the room was already full and it was almost impossible to enter, so I decided not to enter.

I attended "What's wrong with UDS and how we can fix it" session before having lunch. We discussed the possibility to improve all the session in general, for example giving them a proper order so that a team can first discuss some API interface, then another team can discuss how to design them.

We had another wonderful and tasty lunch, even if I didn't eat so much, but food was very good anyway.

During the afternoon I followed an interesting track: "Recommend music based on current song playing or on users media library". We discussed the possibilities to implement a music suggestion service, based on user's tastes.

I spent the rest of theconference time writing these blog posts and uploading pictures.

After the sessions we had the Linaro Showcase: lot of demo running on Linaro and ARM processors. I was really impressed by a robot with Kinect that was able to follow people recognizing their faces. During the showcase there was a very nice dinner.

After dinner I went out with my friend Manrique Lopez who is here in Budapest for another conference, so we decided to meet for a good beer.

Before coming back to the hotel me, Marco Trevisan and Andrea Azzarone had a nice talk with Jorge Castro. He really make us feel part of the Ubuntu family!

My day started at 7:30 with a very nice breakfast! I was alone with just another guy this morning, in a very big breakbast room.

After it I grabbed my badge to avoid queue later and went back to my room to wake up Marco Trevisan (he was still sleeping :P ).

The keynote was opened by Jono Bacon (the Ubuntu Community manager), followed by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. The most interesting (and tweeted) part of the keynote was "how to prounounce Oneiric" (Oeniric will be the next Ubuntu release).

The keynote finished with a bit late, so all the other tracks were shifted forward. I followed "Unity 2D Oneiric Improvements", it was interesting because there were some Nokia/Qt guys and they looked very interested in helping the Unity 2D team and collaborating with them.

Now following "Shaping a strategy for Ubuntu user assistance", I just had the possibility my involvement into helping people that require Ubuntu assistance.

The lunch has been very tasty, I had the possibility to eat some local recipes, not bad at all.

After lunch we had a short session on Qt. The version 4.8 is going to be released in a couple of months, while 5.0 is announced to be released in 1 year from now: it will be almost code-compatible with 4.x, it will have an improved support for Qt Quick and QML.

As last track of the day I decided to follow "Personal Cloud". Not a perfect track, since the person who should have been here was only talking with us using Skype and it was more difficoult to hear what he said.

At the end of this day there was the "Meet & Greet" party, sponsored by Freescale and Openstack. They offered a dinner and we had some good music after it.

I left from Firenze with my friend Marco Trevisan, to go to Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest. We changed flight in Rome where we met also Andrea Azzarone. Unluckly Alitalia losts Marco's baggage, so he's still waiting for it.

We arrived at the hotel at 20:00 more or less where we met other people of the community. There are lot of italians at UDS. Most work for Canonical, other were sponsored by.

I met Marianna Raffaele (one of the UDS organizer... yeah, she's italian too!), I had to explain her a little problem I had with my booking (nothing bad) and she managed to help me. She also gave me a very nice guitar plettre with Ubuntu logo. Thank you Marianna for this!

We went out with Jorge Castro to drink some beers (he offered me one, thanks Jorge!!!) and we met lot of other Ubuntu people. A really amazing start!