whois AUser ?

I while back I realised that we spend an awful lot of time talking about what users want and I dont think I have ever sat in a development or programming meeting in which a user actually sat and contributed. There are many good reasons not to involve Users at all levels of delivery and design but there should still be an opportunity to actually hear back from users in an constructive and informative way; and as a result I give to you

I started this a while back and its a project that will take some time to find its feet and to get some momentum. The premise is to invite my own users, clients and friends who are in some way using open source software on a daily basis. It is broadcast on Ustream since this gives me the opportunity to go out live and to have a chat room and a live conversation with any User who wants to drop in and watch.

Primarily these conversations are aimed at the Ubuntu and Open Source community with the view to hearing more about what Users expect, desire and want from their technology. I do hope they will prove useful and todays subject Mark Harrison of MyThinge.com is one person Ive been looking forward to interviewing for a while now.

The show goes out live at 10.30 am this morning

Please take time to listen to the users and as more appear I will keep you updated.

Thanks for Reading.

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4 Comments on “whois AUser ?

  1. One of the advantages of open source is that, more than in perhaps any other development model, the people writing the software are also the end-users.

    People rarely get involved with open-source projects that don’t interest them. E.g. the people developing Gimp are graphic artists as well as programmers.

    Which means that, whilst Photoshop programmers need to rely more on UI guidelines and user interviews, Gimp developers know what the user needs because they ARE users.

    Obviously, that doesn’t mean that there’s no need for FOSS devs to get feedback & ideas from their users. Just that it’s worth bearing in mind that typically, FOSS devs are end users as well, so end users are always represented in FOSS projects.

  2. I’d like to comment on the choice of technology for this initiative. Why use Flash ? Unfortunately this limits it to people that can or accept to have Flash support installed. It also means those videos will live and die within that website and its technology. As a “user” and advocate, I expect this kind of initiatives to be available to 100% of other Ubuntu (and non-Ubuntu) users, without restriction.

  3. Very good video.
    I tried watching it the day it came out by I had issues with the flash. I’m now watching it on my feisty desktop at home and really enjoyed the content.
    I think the comment about is quite fair. It would be lovely to be able to wget these lectures rather than having to visit ustream, but it’s down to you how you do it. I understand the point you made in the actual video. It’s doing it on the easiest and platform best built to create it. If you spend three hours doing it, it’s not worthwhile. But yeah, I would encourage an alternative to flash – can you save the video as a torrent whilst streaming it so that the ‘gnu purists’ can download the video. I’m also on a long car journey tomorrow where i’d love to download the video to watch it. Instead I’m now 30 minutes later to bed that I wanted to be with an early start due tomorrow.
    Keep up the good work 🙂

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