End of 2008 is close and it’s time to review the year, isn’t it? As some of you might know, I am quite active in the „Ubuntu Berlin“ team, a local Berlin(Germany)-based user group, closely connected to the internationally known hackerspace c-base.

Le me just sum up what we’ve done this year:

• about one dozen regular meetings (earch 1st Wednesday of the month) with an average of 10 to 30 visitors
• we participated in the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam in August
• we had about one dozen Bug Jams with Ubuntu developer Danien Holbach
• we hosted two Ubuntu release parties (for Hardy and Intrepid) with about 200 visitors each of them and a video feature in the Berlin metro system viewable by approx 1.5 million people
• we had several workshops and lectures for topics like „introduction to Latex“, „video editing with Cinelerra“, „fun on the command line“, „graphics and design with free software“
• we supported the „Linuxtag 2008“ and hosted the end-of-Linuxtag BBQ with dozens of free software developpers and Ubuntu affilliated people
• we started a „terminal project“, trying to set up Ubuntu powered touch screen terminals
• we organised an Origami workshop as Christmas social event (ever build a Tux or star?)
• we started a new series of events with a kind of lightning talks giving the possibility to speak just a couple of minutes about a piece of software – with really great success

So, looking back, 2008 was a successfull year for Ubuntu Berlin. We managed not to split into small groups and were able to increase the amount of members. Currently 120 people are reading our main mailing list and about 110 have joined our launchpad group. And no, they are not all nominal members.

So what are our goals for 2009?

Our main goal will be focussing on Ubuntu related topics. It’s hard to have clearly structured, topic related discussions on a mailing list with more than 100 readers. We already split our list into three lists and try to calm down every „religious“ debate.

We will definitely host two major release parties again while trying to make them even better. There is space for improvements in the lecture schedule and quality, though we were really fine with the last two parties. I guess we will also organise something like a BBQ for Linuxtag 2009, again.

I hope we’ll manage to provide at least one workshop per month like we did in the last months as this really brings people to the machine, using Ubuntu and free software. The last workshops took round about 90 minutes. We are also trying to host longer workshops (approx four ours) giving you real hands on experience. Moreover we’ll continue with the lightning talk sessions as this is a real neat type of event.

Together with Daniel Holbach we’ll continue with the Ubuntu Berlin Bug Jams while trying to shift them towards a real practical experience solving dozens of bugs each session, motivation users to join the Bug Triage team.

And we’ll continue to collect donations as we urgently need things like a new video beamer for our talks and similar events. We hope to find a sponsor providing Ubuntu Berlin with a monthly budget.

So, let’s start into 2009 and make it an Ubuntu year, again. It’s up to us convincing people of using Ubuntu, improving Ubuntu and spreading the word again.